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The night train takes me from Stockholm to Kiruna, the biggest city above the polar circle. It is only after Böden when 2 ladies enter the cabin that I am able to understand a little bit. They speak Mandarin. Now, my my Chinese is not perfect either, but at least it is better than my terrible Swedish.
The ladies are from Taiwan and planned their journey back home, on Internet. Their idea was to join a tour. Well, that is just a partial truth.
The enlighten their journey even further, the train halts for an hour. The locomotive broke down. An other one is on its way, so I think there is no reason to panic.
A Swedish announcement tells about a train strike further up. As far as I understand there will be a bus in Kiruna for the ladies. A fine arrangement in my eyes. But it is an additional stress factor for the Chinese ladies.
My destination is a small lake. It should be only a dozen kilometers. I am not in a hurry, yet halfway I sit down to relax. Going downhill is very nice and all, but how about the return trip going up? I pause for lunch and head back. It seems wise to keep the return journey as short as possible. Gravity is not working in my favour.
The smooth path down is a boulevard of pain going back.
The further he went,
the longer
was his return journey.
I switch to the smallest gear, but to no effect.
My heart has trouble pumping enough oxygen around my body. Sweat runs down my spine after a few hundred meters. Sweating in Lapland was not one of my expectations. I'll have to break down this return journey into many small stretches and plenty of breaks. I plot the slowest ascending back. It takes me hours of sweating to reach my point of departure.
Ay, ay, my very own travel plan was way too detailed.
The bit about
heading for Kiruna by train
wasn't too bad,
but I'll have to rethink about cycling here for a couple of days.
If only I'd simplified my travel plan to a blank piece of paper.
That is far from detailed, but offers the
ultimate flexibility.
A travel plan is
only complete when you can't take anything out.