Day 4 - Travel to Voss and Flam Railroad

We took a four hour bus ride from Oslo to Flam and stopped by Borgund for lunch and a short visit to an old church made by pine wood called Stave Church. The sun came out when we left Oslo, the scenery along the route was very beautiful. We followed the river with green meadow on one side dotted with little cottages and sheep and cows on the grass and mountains on the other side with waterfalls hanging and trickling down. We went through a lot of tunnels. The Lærdals Tunnel is the world's longest road tunnel (24.5 km, ie 15.23 miles).

The stave church is a medieval wooden Christian church built during 11th to 14th centuries. There used to be up to 2000 churches, but only 26 still standing now. It was mainly built using pine timber. The exterior was treated with pine tar thus looked pitch black. The one we visited is one of the most-preserved churches in Norway.

Flam is the starting point of the famous Flam railroad. It is at the tip of a fjord. Big cruise ship can sail to the harbor and unload the people to take the train. The train ride is 20km long and climb up to 866 meters (from sea level) and ended at Myudal. It passed through 20 tunnels.

Elevation Change: 864 meters (2,834 feet). Steepness: 80% of the route runs on a steep 5.5% gradient (1 in 18).

Tunnels: 20 tunnels total, 18 of which were dug entirely by hand, including a horseshoe tunnel that twists inside the mountain to manage the altitude change.

Toward the end of the ride, The train stopped on the bridge under a gigantic waterfall called Kjosfossen and let the passengers off to take pictures. There was a girl in red dress singing and dancing on top of the mountain next to the fall. Her voice was broadcasted in loudspeaker to entertain the visitors.

After the Flam train ride, We were then transferred to another train to continue heading to Bergen. We left the train at Voss where we stayed for the night.