The Volcano

Imagine your day 1 in a new country. How would you want it to be? You would perhaps want yourself to be acclimatizing with the new people, neighbourhood, the nature & geography around you. But NO, we accidentally stumbled upon the best way to Baptize yourself into Iceland.

 

Since it was quite windy & drizzling, our whale watching tour got cancelled and we were left with about 4 hours of unplanned time.  We googled places of interest near us in Reykjavik & found a volcano nearby – Thrihnukagigur. The drive out of the city was quite fun. Smooth highways, lower population density & ice glazed mountains getting closer was a great feeling. As we drew closer to nature, the sheer view of sea, mountains & straight roads all together was so serene (especially if you come from India).

This pleasurable ride was soon going to take the “RIGHT” turn (pun intended!). Map showed a right cut off the highway 1 onto road 417 to give us a glimpse of what our next 7 days were going to be like ( For the full 7 day itinerary click here).

Now enter a thin road, surrounded by what appeared to be glacial water (since it was running water) on both sides, a breeze (so strong that it was an effort keeping a 4WD Duster straight) blowing the ice onto the car, snow clad mountains on your left & ice waves on your right. Add to this no traffic whatsoever for as far as you can see. The map still showed a good 8km to go but the sheer magnanimity of what seemed to be ‘Nature’s Might’ was so overwhelming that the realisation of how small & insignificant we are dawned upon us & it soon turned into fear (Oh c’mon it was our first day). And it is bound to turn into fear if you see a sign board with a crossed car (turns out it is just F-roads which are not advised to be traversed by 2WD vehicles during winters).

We took a pause, turned quite, simply assimilated what we are just seeing & hearing – strong waves of ice blowing onto the car, a straight road in the middle of nowhere and no sight of a volcano gave us the impression of an endless road with such might of Nature. We could not muster the courage to move forward as we saw the sun setting with such surroundings. We reversed the car & drove quietly to the hotel with a sense of gratitude to Nature, and a very positive hope of what this beautiful land holds for us over the next 7 days!

Please note – This is the only volcano that you can enter but only on a guided tour. So please get your booking done in advance to plan your itinerary accordingly.

 

Cheers!