SUP Norway - Third Stand Up Paddle Expedition in 2024 - Part 3 - Paddling with the Orcas

Recap of Part 2: Amen and I went to stock the inventory - Welcome party - addling in the rain - 360-degree waterfalls - cross-cultural knowledge of the team.

June 18th.

I woke up at 5 with a puffy face; guess I didn’t get enough sleep last night. Sipping my coffee in the wooden cup, I spent some time looking outside my tent to fully get into the “awake” zone from the “groggy” zone. The coffee woke me up, and the chocolate kept me awake. The dew on the green grass shimmered like little diamonds, the sky was clear and no visible sign of rain along the horizon.

We started around 8:40 pm after a yoga session. Amen and I looked at the weather predictions on the weather app, and put on our raincoats for good measure. I was slowly getting to know Amen better - he would switch personas depending on how stressful the situation was. He was worried about the weather, rightfully so. Around 11:30, we were paddling towards Drydal, and Amen was giving a beautiful account on the history of Drydal, the stretch we were headed towards, etc. During our snack break, I captured the surroundings as much as I could.

We were closing on to the tri-fjord junction, which was about 2 kms from where we were. To our right, a group of kayakers were returning from their expedition. Almost immediately, we heard a hissing sound. It was confusing yet foreboding. Then a team member spotted a peculiar movement in the water, and we saw it. Orcas. The killer whales. This was my first ever encounter with them, despite my many expeditions.

Although they do not kill or even harm humans, they got their name as they are known to be the “killer of the whales”. They come to the Norwegian fjords in search of the migratory herring. Orcas are friendly, but they appear threatening to us, as we don’t understand each other. A playful move from an orca can damage us badly. You see, an average orca can reach up to 20 feet in length and weigh upwards of 7500 kg. We don’t stand a chance.

Crossing the orca-territory, we paddled like a wolf-pack, Amen at the lead, me at the tail, with all of the team in-between us. A teammate Rob wanted to attend Nature’s call, so we sidetracked, and he took a detour to a nearby cliff. We almost reached the wild camp, when I saw a pod of orcas swimming  in the middle of the fjords; the pod extending up to 2 kilometers. The others reached the camp and unloaded, and were capturing the orcas from a safe distance, while Rob and I were still in the waters. All was fine until the orcas noticed us. To be fair, we were dressed in contrasting life jackets with colourful paddleboards; to them we were likely confetti. They were just 300 meters before me. 

Then it happened. An orca started swimming towards me. It took me back to my Agasthiyar Malai trek memories where I encountered a herd of wild elephants. I literally surrendered to them, and they left me alive. I wanted to go as close to the shore as possible, as the orcas wouldn’t prefer shallow waters. However, since the terrain was rocky, there was no shallow point. So we took shelter behind the ribbons of kelp on the shore. I asked Rob to take a picture of me with the orcas in the frame. However, the tension of the situation wasn’t very good for a photographic aim, so we did what we could and captured a few videos instead. The orcas, sensing our tension, decided to swim away. Only then did Rob and I come out from behind the kelp to the campsite.

Rob offloaded to the camp, but before I could, a cruise ship passed by. I think as a delayed reaction to the orcas and the weather that had turned biting cold, at least for me, I froze in action. Amen was concerned for our safety. He helped me lift the board and offload. He was upset, and rightfully so - I was in the breaking zone of the waves and had I stayed frozen, the waves would have cleaved the board into two.

It was around 1:45 pm when I finally reached the campsite. Once on the campsite, we assembled the boards, protecting the fins and leashes, and made preparations for a delicious lunch. I started capturing photos and videos with all the cool gear I had. After chilling a while in the camp, I informed Titus about our encounter with the orcas. I retired for the night. What an eventful day it was!

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19th June.

We woke up early. At the wild camp, relieving oneself was not quite easy - we had to climb the slippery rocks atop a waterfall and do our business. Washing up after was even harder, with the chill waters literally numbing our skin. Once we were back, we had our breakfast, and I saw rain atop Atnes. The weather was a little gloomy, and as expedition leads, our main motive was to ensure our teams’ safety. The ease of paddling in the stretches between Odnes to Wild camp and from wild camp to Undredal depended upon the weather. 

As we started to gear up, we found out that one of our team members’ life jacket was missing. Amen did reprimand her about this being a huge safety breach, but immediately offered his PFD (personal floatation device) to her. Talk of being a model expedition leader, Amen checked all the boxes I could think of. We started with a yoga session; the practice of yoga has crossed oceans, and I’m happy to come from its birthplace. We then had a strategy meet, on how we would navigate the day’s stretch. 

At around 8 am, we launched. We had to cross over to the opposite side of the camp. There was a beautiful waterfall from the cliffs, where the team got down to admire and capture for a later admiration. A few of the team started fishing in the waters, and as I was paddling last, I could capture beautifully what everyone was doing. We reached Atnes, and luckily for us it was very flat. We reached Undredal by 12 noon, crossing the stretch in 4 hours. After our team rested at Undredal campsite, Amen and I went to the supermarket to buy items for the next days’ adventures.

As a part of the SUP Norway' s updated itinerary, there was a sauna experience, and for me it was the first time. After a hot sauna, the team jumped into the cold waters and had a great time. I chose to capture the moments from the shore, as I had experienced it three days prior, when I had come along with Titus. It would be a liberating experience to sweat out in the sauna and to immerse into the biting cold waters. This was followed by the amazing Undredal dinner of pizza and Brunost cheese, a game of foosball, icecream, beer, and some great conversations. We retired at around 8:30 pm after a great day.

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20th June.

I woke up at 5:45 am, had coffee, and started preparing the breakfast spread of eggs, bacon, cheese, and toast. The weather looked gloomy - it was fine from Undredal to Atnes, but from there back to Odnes was a little tricky. We would be staying at Styvi, which was opposite to Dyrdal. I’ve never stayed at Styvi before, it was a sheep farm where they sheared sheep for wool rearing. With the weather looking not so good, Amen and I decided that we couldn’t go to the left, as if we did we would struggle. With Titus’s approval, we took the ferry. 

I boarded the ferry back in 2019, and again now. The aerodynamics of the ferry was so sleek, it was as if we were skating on the waters. We had lots of equipment and gear, and the stop time at each point was less, so we had to think fast and act faster. We assembled near the dock area and deflated the boards from around 11 am and were ready by 12 noon.

The ferry arrived, and within five minutes we loaded and boarded. The tourists of the ferry looked at us with amusing looks on their faces - us wearing bright colourful vests against the general muted theme of Scandinavia would be striking indeed. We felt like hippies to them, but we soaked it in and started enjoying it. As predicted, the headwinds and waves intensified as the ferry turned left. We saw a few double kayakers struggling to cross the stretch. A seagull followed us all the way along us through the ferry. Forty minutes passed by and we reached Styvi, we unloaded within 3 minutes as everyone waved to us. We started inflating the boards, and that’s where I saw the strength of the veteran.

Singlehandedly he inflated almost all of the boards, and was still wanting more. The fishing enthusiasts started fishing, and we chilled out for a while. Atop Styvi sits a giant glacier that resembles a U-valley. The remnants of the Royal Post road can be seen here. The owner of the farm was a chill person; he was always tending to his goats.

Around 3 pm we started making burgers, chopped up wood for fire, and had some beer, all while nervously glancing at the glacier that ominously looked as if it would cave in. I had planned to leave the expedition early, as I had an early bus from Gudvangen to Bergen the next day.

The team gave me a wonderful farewell as I left around 5:30 pm. Amen did warn me about the choppy waters back to Odnes, but I thought I would risk it. How wrong I was! Twenty minutes in, the winds changed direction to extremely strong headwinds, and both sides of the fjord were extremely steep. I didn't have my PFT as well, and I was literally defenceless against the winds and the waves crashing against the cliffs. I risked everything if I lost my balance or my board got punctured. Near the Odnes camp, I made a decision to turn back. The return was seamlessly effortless - the very same headwinds now were tailwinds, acting in my favour. My brain kicked into overdrive - what if I encounter an orca? Or an otter? But nothing of such sorts happened, and I went back to Styvi in just fifteen minutes.

Back at Styvi, everyone had a great time at my expense, but were genuinely happy to see me in one piece. A couple of beers later, I started again around 10:30 pm. The waters were flat, unlike in the evening, so things looked good. But my brain wasn’t ready to settle down. It was 11 pm, and I was alone, paddling in the fjord of Norway, in the waters where Orcas were plentiful. Although 11 pm there looked like dawn, it was scary. I conjured up scenarios of the Loch Ness monster coming my way, encountering orcas, and me preparing for such hypothetical situations.

Simba to the rescue. Simba is another expedition lead, he would come from Gudvangen to Bakka, and I would meet him there, at Bakka. We were coordinating over the phone, and that gave me a feeling of company in the silent fjords. I closed near Bakka around 11:40 pm, and there I met Simba. Sensing my tiredness, he carried all my gear to the car, and we left for Gudvangen. We crossed the tunnel that I had come across in 2019, listening to music and chilling in the car. We reached the Gudvangen camp at around 12:30, and to my surprise, my bed was made and ready. 

It was tempting to crash out immediately, but me being me, I unpacked and repacked my luggage for my return to Bergen, and only then I could rest.

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21st June.

I woke up, took my luggage, bid farewell to the people at the Gudvangen camp, and took the bus at 9:30 am. I reached Bergen at around 12:30 pm, well ahead of my check-in at 3 pm. So I dropped off my luggage at the automated luggage station at my AirBnB, and went out into the city, to the same places where I had been the previous week. The cafe was almost like a speakeasy, akin to a tea shop where friends would have their regular catch-ups. I was hungry, wanted to go to the Madras Restaurant but as it was on the other side of downtown, I headed to Namaste Bergen, a North Indian restaurant and had my fill. I went to the huge mall where I did a lot of shopping, and then I went to bed.

The next morning, I took the flight to Chennai with a connecting flight to Frankfurt.

I had booked a Premium economy with two full meals. I was amazed to see the huge Lufthansa  network. It was a fitting last lap of my journey, and I came back home to Chennai, my home that I hadn’t visited in a long time. 

Speaking of homes, I realized that in the past few years, there were many that I would call mine. Kuwait was where I currently live and work, Norway was where I kept returning to, and in Norway, snippets of Thanjavur was what I felt, and Chennai - well, that’s where I am from.

Home - it’s not a place, it’s where your heart is, and I’m fortunate to be able to carry a piece of home wherever I go!