Lofoten, Svalbard and Senja: Our October Road Trip Through Arctic Norway

It started with our Mumbai flight getting cancelled. Not a great omen when you’ve spent weeks planning a road trip to the top of the world. We were booked Mumbai → Kuwait → Paris → Oslo → Evenes, and the very first leg simply vanished from the booking. I looked for other tickets and everything was expensive. So I did the most boring thing possible: I wrote an email to the airline explaining what had happened. They actually called me back.

I asked if we could fly New Delhi to Kuwait instead and keep every other leg the same. They said yes, but it had to go through our agent, budgetair.in. I emailed them and then spent the next three or four days in a low-grade state of dread, even though everyone kept telling me it would be fine. It was fine, obviously. But you know how it is.

There was one more thing to sort out before any of that: the kids. They were staying with Mariya’s parents in Pune and flying there alone for the first time, which meant minor tickets, unaccompanied minor forms, all of it. They were genuinely excited, which made it much easier on us. Once we stopped overthinking it, their first solo flight was more of an adventure for them than a worry for us.

We flew into Oslo from Paris, slept at the airport, and flew north to Evenes the next morning. From there we drove the length of Lofoten and back to Harstad, took the express boat to Tromsø, flew to Svalbard and back, chased the northern lights toward Finland, spent two days on Senja, and flew from Tromsø back to Oslo. That is about 1,350 km of driving, plus boats, ferries and four flights within Norway.

When we landed in Paris we still had all our luggage with us, which is not ideal for sightseeing. We spent about 30 minutes looking for the left-luggage room at CDG, and when we found it there was a queue. CDG is enormous and the signs are less helpful than the airport seems to think. Pay attention, or you’ll walk to the wrong terminal twice.

There was a queue for train tickets too, so I downloaded the app and bought them on my phone. The app was not user friendly. I’ve used Swedish public transport apps, and they’re clean, simple and obvious. Paris is the opposite.

Somewhere on that train I decided we should buy a drone. I’d been looking at the DJI Neo for a while: good specs, compact, and forgiving enough for someone who had never seriously flown one. Mariya assumed I meant renting one, until she realised I was actually buying it. Her reaction was basically “huh”. Mine was basically “ya, why not”.

The DJI store was close to the Luxembourg Gardens, so we took a few photos there, went in, bought the drone and got the VAT refund form filled out. Then a cab to the Eiffel Tower. I had seen it before. Mariya hadn’t. Her first reaction was “ah, it’s not that big”, which is fair. It’s a lot of metal.

We didn’t go up. The queues were long, we had no time, and honestly the view from the road opposite is more fun anyway. Photographers everywhere, couples dressed up for their big backdrop moment. Mariya had brought a red coat specifically for this, and I had rented a bulky DSLR even though I am not a photographer. I sort of managed it. We took a lot of photos, a few couple shots and some videos for reels, all in about 45 minutes, and then it was back to the airport.

Check-in at CDG was its own adventure. Automated check-in, self-tagging luggage, and then the QR code on the boarding pass wouldn’t scan. Someone at the counter sorted it out and printed our tags, and then we ran for security. We made it. The flight to Oslo was almost full and everyone looked tired.

We landed in Oslo around 11:30 at night and our connection to Evenes was at 6 in the morning. That’s about six hours, so we decided to sleep in the airport instead of paying for a hotel for a few hours.

Oslo is one of the better airports to get stuck in. There are big sofas you can properly stretch out on, nobody bothers you, and there are charging points everywhere, so our phones and cameras were full by morning. The toilets were clean and huge, which sounds like an odd thing to mention, but after CDG it was a relief. Food was the one problem. At that hour there was almost nothing vegetarian, and whatever was open was mostly meat. We managed, but if you’re vegetarian and passing through Oslo at 1am, carry something.

It’s better to ask than not to ask. That’s probably the lesson of the whole trip.

What nearly derailed us was the luggage. In Paris we’d been told our bags would be transferred to Evenes automatically. We were almost at the gate when, on impulse, I stopped at the SAS counter and asked. The woman there made a call and told us our bags were sitting in unclaimed baggage at carousel 10. We had to collect them and check them in again ourselves.

If we’d only found out at the gate, the bags would have gone on the next day’s flight and we’d have started an Arctic road trip with nothing. So we ran to carousel 10, grabbed the bags, checked them in again and still made the flight with time to breathe.

Evenes is a small airport with two carousels. It was cold, grey and nearly raining when we walked off the plane. I grew up in India, where you drive on the left. Norway drives on the right, so this was my first time on the other side of the road, in an unfamiliar car, in the Arctic, on roads I’d never seen.

The Avis desk checked my licence (I had my international driving permit as well, which made it smooth) and put a damage hold on my card. The car was brand new with no scratches, so we filmed a quick walk-around video just to have it on record. There was nothing to note, which is the best outcome. Keys in hand, off we went.

It was a Toyota Yaris hybrid: compact, very clean, heated seats and a heated steering wheel. Comfortable for two. We had two large suitcases, one in the boot and one on the back seat. That worked for us, but if you’re four people with four bags, you’ll have a problem. Two people and two big bags is about the limit for a Yaris.

The first few minutes on the right side of the road were the most tense. After that your brain adjusts. Mostly.

We’d hoped to catch a fjord boat trip from Svolvær that afternoon, but we were too late and couldn’t work out where to park. When we called the boat company, the woman who answered said she was on leave. That was the end of that, so we headed for our place in Kabelvåg.

We got to the address at 2pm. Check-in was at 4. So we sat in the car, tired and hungry, eating snacks we’d carried from India. The thing is, we were parked outside the wrong house and didn’t know it. We waited two hours assuming someone would come out and wave us in. At 4 we called the host, and she said come over. The right house had been right there the whole time, already unlocked. I had followed the instructions a bit too literally.

The room was very small. Not charmingly small, practically small: we couldn’t open both suitcases at the same time. You’d open one, deal with it, close it, then open the other. But it had a good shower, a proper kitchen and private parking, which is plenty when you’re just sleeping and leaving early. A French woman was staying there with her dog, just back from further up the islands, and she showed us how the heater worked. We’d been cold for a while and were too embarrassed to ask.

We tried for the northern lights that night. Total cloud. We went to sleep in two narrow beds in a small cold room, and it was genuinely fine.

We’d brought ready-to-eat vegetarian and vegan meals from home, the kind where you add hot water and wait. We made coffee in the kitchen and took everything out to the porch. It was very windy, but we sat outside anyway and had breakfast in Lofoten, which still sounds slightly unreal to me. Then we packed up and drove to the football stadium.

When it isn’t raining (and it often is), the October light in Lofoten has a low golden quality, even at midday, that you don’t get further south. The mountains come straight up out of the water. There’s no build-up. You’re just in it.

The Henningsvær stadium sits at the very end of the village, surrounded by water on almost every side. A real pitch with painted lines and goalposts, the sea on three sides and mountains behind it. I wanted to fly the drone for the classic aerial shot, but the wind was too strong and I was still too new at it. If you want that aerial, Google it. There are plenty of good ones.

While we were there a film crew turned up. They’d booked the stadium for a private shoot and politely asked us to leave. We’d only been there 10 or 15 minutes. Lucky we came early. An hour later and we’d have seen nothing.

From there the drive was beautiful the whole way. Narrow roads, wide roads, tunnels through mountains, bridges over water, fjords on both sides. I never got bored of it.

A bit further on we stopped at a beach. Perfect sand, obviously freezing water, mountains right behind. We got out and I decided to try the drone again.

The drone went up, immediately drifted sideways in the wind, and then drifted further sideways toward the water. I pulled it back. It wasn’t graceful, but it didn’t go in the sea. We both laughed about it, but for a second I really thought I’d lost a brand new drone to the Norwegian Sea on day one of the road trip.

Ryten had been on the plan from the start. Parking is at a private farm that’s been turned into a paid car park, 100 NOK. When we arrived the booth was empty. A few German tourists were standing around just as confused, and they said someone on the phone had told them to park and pay on the way back. We were about to do the same when someone appeared at the window a minute later. We paid, got our ticket, and set off. It cost us maybe ten minutes.

One of the nice things about the Ryten trail is the wooden planks laid along the path. It crosses private farmland that would otherwise be very muddy, so the planks show you exactly where to go and keep your boots clean. Someone clearly put a lot of thought into them, and the whole trail is well kept.

We made it to the top. There were a lot more people up there than we expected. It turned out to be a Chinese national holiday that week, and a big group had come out. Nobody shared a language, but we helped each other with photos. They took some great ones of us, we took some of them, and everyone was happy. It was very cold and a lot of fun. I didn’t take the drone out. Same wind problem as Henningsvær, so it stayed in the bag.

After Ryten we drove through Reine. It’s the Lofoten village you’ve seen in photos: red rorbuer cabins on stilts, water all around, mountains that hardly look real. We’d been following a couple online called Guide to Lofoten, who answer questions about travelling here. They’d been really helpful while we were planning and always replied properly on Facebook. We tried to meet them since they’re based around Reine, but they were out that day, so it didn’t happen.

We had vegan burritos from a food cart just outside Reine. I don’t know what I expected from a vegan burrito at the bottom of the Lofoten islands, but it was really good. Then we drove on to Å, the village named after the last letter of the Norwegian alphabet (it’s pronounced “aw”), at the very end of the E10. We stopped for photos the whole way between Reine and Å. We couldn’t help it.

Brygga Inn at Å was the treat of the trip. It’s technically a hotel, but the room was simple: a bed, a skylight that opens above you, and a shared toilet just outside. The shared toilet sounds like a problem, but it was spotless and almost private, because there was barely anyone else around. The whole place felt very peaceful.

That night we went out looking for the northern lights. We stood in the dark and the cold for a while, looking up. Cloudy again. We came back inside and let it go.

At night, Å is dark in a way city people don’t really notice until they’re standing in it. No streetlights, no cars, nothing moving. Just water and wind.

That morning was one of the best of the trip. Cold and calm, with the view you picture when you think of Lofoten: red rorbuer on stilts, fishing nets drying, old equipment along the waterfront, the sea flat and grey, mountains behind. Nobody else around.

Breakfast at Brygga Inn was lovely, a proper sit-down breakfast looking out at the water. What surprised us was how many vegan and vegetarian options there were. After days of ready-to-eat meals and burritos, we ate until we were full. There’s no kitchen in the rooms, but with a breakfast like that it didn’t matter.

We set up a camera on a small tripod outside to get some shots of the place. The camera fell over. Nothing broke, and we got some photos anyway.

Before heading back north we took the Reinefjorden ferry, a boat trip into Kjerkfjorden. We’d never done anything like it, so there was the usual figuring out when we arrived. Parking came first: no obvious spot and no sign telling you where to go. We sorted it out, parked and got on. You pay on board, not at a booth beforehand, which we didn’t know.

The boat was almost empty, so we could sit wherever we liked and move to whichever side had the better view. The ferry does a loop and stops at a couple of remote villages with no road access, so the boat is their only way in and out. At one stop a couple got on with clothes absolutely caked in mud. Not splashed. Caked. They had obviously been trekking in the backcountry for days. We didn’t talk to them, but we couldn’t stop wondering what they’d been through.

The trip took about an hour. The fjord is dramatic in a quieter way than the open sea: enclosed, with steep walls on both sides and very still water. Good for just sitting and looking.

On the way back we stopped in Reine again. We walked past the burrito cart, thought about it, and skipped it. Then we drove through Hamnøy, a tiny village that’s almost too photogenic: red houses on little rocky islands joined by a bridge. We took our photos and kept moving.

We also stopped at Storvatnet, a small lake on the road to Nusfjord. It’s known for the “Batman mountain” reflection, where the peaks on either side mirror in the water and form something that really does look like the Batman logo. It’s better in person than it sounds. The lake was calm and the reflection was there.

Then Nusfjord, another fishing village, very well preserved. It looks like it hasn’t changed in 80 years. We walked around, took photos, and then headed for our bed for the night.

The Harbour House in Ballstad is right on the pier. It’s a self-service hostel, and it’s small, smaller than Kabelvåg, which was already very small. It felt like a converted shipping container, which may not be far from the truth. We had a private twin room. Five or six other people were in the dorm area cooking and doing their own thing, and inside it was actually quite cosy.

The night was a different story. A large ship was moored right alongside us on the pier, and the wind was loud. Properly loud, the kind that keeps you awake, thumping against the metal walls without stopping. The road outside was wet, so every passing car hissed. We both lay there feeling a little uneasy. Not scared exactly, but not relaxed either. Very different from Brygga Inn. We cooked dinner, went to sleep, and by morning it had calmed down.

We left Ballstad early. The plan was to reach Harstad in time for the ship to Tromsø, which gave us a full morning if we didn’t waste it. First stop was Haukland Beach, one of the most photographed beaches in Lofoten. White sand, mountains, all of it. Then Eggum, a tiny settlement on the northwest coast. The drive out is remote and exposed, and the road just ends at the sea. There were sheep everywhere. We took a lot of photos of sheep.

At some point we checked the time and realised we were cutting it close. So we skipped everything else and pointed the car at Harstad.

One thing worth knowing: we picked up the car at Evenes airport and dropped it in Harstad, one-way, with no extra charge. I’d found this online while planning. Evenes and Harstad are about an hour apart and Avis treats them as the same zone. It made a big difference. If we’d had to return the car to Evenes and then get ourselves to Harstad for the ship, the day would have been longer, more expensive and much more stressful.

Harstad is a proper town, with shops, traffic and the general feeling that civilisation still exists. Finding the Avis drop-off point was not easy. We drove around it two or three times before working out that it was a fuel station. We parked, then stood there holding the key with nowhere obvious to put it. There was a mailbox, so the key went in the mailbox. A Chinese group we’d been crossing paths with all week pulled up and did exactly the same thing, which made us feel better.

The ship from Harstad to Tromsø was a big passenger vessel, not the small ferry we’d imagined. It was almost full, with luggage piled in the corridors and people from everywhere, including that same Chinese group. The trip takes a few hours along the coast: fjords, islands, low cloud and the occasional break of light. We found seats, sat down, and stopped moving for the first time in days.

We arrived in Tromsø and walked to our Airbnb from the ferry terminal. The wind that evening was wild. It pushed you sideways even when you leaned into it. Welcome to Tromsø.

We got to Tromsø in the late afternoon, checked in, walked around a bit and cooked dinner. That was all the Tromsø we had time for. We had a 6am bus to the airport for the Svalbard flight the next morning, so it was always going to be one night.

Then, sometime in the middle of the night, we looked out of the window and there they were. Northern lights. Not the dramatic full-sky version you see on Instagram, but a quiet green shimmer moving over the city. We stood at the window for a long time without saying much. After all the cloudy nights before, it felt like a reward.

The next morning it was the bus to the airport at an unreasonable hour, and off to Svalbard.

We flew out of Tromsø on the morning of October 13. The flight to Longyearbyen takes about an hour and a half, and at some point you look out of the window and there’s nothing below you. No towns, no roads, just tundra, ice and ocean. You’re at 78 degrees north, much closer to the North Pole than to home.

We stayed three nights, October 13 to 16, at Mary-Ann’s Polarrigg in Longyearbyen. It’s one of the best-known places to stay in Svalbard, a guesthouse that’s been around a long time and has real character. Basic, but right. Everything in Longyearbyen is very expensive, very basic, or both, so a place with some personality is worth it.

Longyearbyen is a strange place. It’s a real town, with a supermarket, a university, restaurants and people who live there all year, but it still feels temporary, like civilisation is trying something out here and hasn’t fully committed. The mountains around it are bare, grey and enormous. As soon as you leave town there are signs warning you about polar bears. Not tourist signs. Real ones.

The big thing we did was Pyramiden, a Soviet-era mining settlement a few hours north of Longyearbyen by boat. The Russians built a whole working town there in the middle of the Arctic: apartment blocks, a cultural centre, a swimming pool, a hotel, and a bust of Lenin that’s still standing. Then, in 1998, when the coal stopped being worth it, they left almost overnight. Everything was left where it was.

Walking around Pyramiden is eerie. Not haunted, just frozen in time. The gym equipment is still there, and the piano in the cultural centre was apparently still playable for years. The mountain behind the town is almost perfectly symmetrical, which is where the name comes from. The glacier is right there at the end of the road. Our guide kept reminding us to stay together because polar bears pass through. We didn’t see one. I was half relieved and half disappointed.

On our last full day we explored Longyearbyen and went up to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, the building in the mountain where seeds from all over the world are stored as a backup for humanity. You can’t go inside, but we stood at the entrance for a while anyway, a long way from anywhere.

We flew back on October 16. In October the sun barely rises in Svalbard. You live in a long blue twilight and then it’s dark again. After four days of that you start to feel it in your body.

We landed back in Tromsø in the afternoon. Then someone (I think it was me) suggested we drive toward Finland that night. The forecast said the aurora might be visible further inland, away from the coast and the cloud that had followed us all week. So we got in a car and drove east into the dark.

In the dark, in October, with temperatures near zero, the road from Tromsø toward the Finnish border feels like you’ve left the inhabited world. No streetlights and almost no other cars. At some point we pulled over and stepped out, and the sky was moving. Green bands slowly brightening and fading. Not violent or dramatic. More like the sky was breathing.

We had basically given up expecting it. That’s exactly when it showed up.

It’s funny. We’d spent days in Lofoten, a night under the skylight at Brygga Inn and evenings in Tromsø actively hoping for the northern lights, and got cloud almost every time. Then on the last stretch, exhausted, just back from Svalbard and driving east on a whim, there they were. Standing on a dark empty road near the Finnish border with the aurora overhead, it was worth every cloudy night before it.

Senja is Norway’s second-largest island, and it gets a fraction of the visitors Lofoten does. The roads are quieter and the viewpoints are emptier. We drove out from Tromsø on October 17 and spent parts of two days driving around the island.

Senja isn’t as famous as Lofoten, but in some ways it’s more satisfying to drive. You aren’t stopping every five minutes for a well-known viewpoint. You just move through the landscape and stop when something makes you. On the second day we drove back toward Tromsø and started heading home.

We flew from Tromsø to Oslo on the evening of October 18 and ended up back at Oslo airport around 10pm, the same big sofas, this time going the other way.

Then Kuwait, one more transit, and home. The kids were fine. The trip was done. A drone that nearly ended up in the sea, two nights of northern lights, one Soviet ghost town, one football stadium at the end of the world, a night slept in an airport, a car returned with zero damage, and a Toyota Yaris that handled all of it without complaint.

We saw the lights twice: once from a window in Tromsø, completely unplanned, and once on a dark road near Finland, on a total impulse. Both times we weren’t really trying. That seems to be how it works.