When you're out travelling, not everything can go as planned. To believe so, would be quite ridiculous and naive. But one could always hope!

For us, it went well until we arrived in Boden. There we stopped to try an Escape Room - Let's Escape, and the room called Hemsökt. It was nice. Scary and a bit different. One of the better ones we've tried.

After that we were supposed to take the train to Kiruna, and from there ride helicopter to the Three-country-cairn. None of this worked out as planned. Kim had decided to call the helicopter company to double check that everything was okay. Just to find out that no, due to a misunderstanding we didn't have a booking in place at all, and they were fully booked. After some discussion back and forth, we finally got squeezed in on Saturday, so now we will start on the 10th of July instead of on the 9th July. But it is what it is...

After this, we also got to know that the train to Kiruna was cancelled due to a lightning strike in Norway, which had caused trains to not work during parts of the way. This meant having to take a bus to Kiruna. Making the trip almost 5 hours instead of 3.5 hours.

We arrived late in the evening, the midnight sun still high in the sky, and proceeded to find a camping spot. Just at the outskirts of town, with the Kiruna mine's fence not far away, we put up our tents. It felt weird and sneaky to put them up here, so close to civilization and not far at all from the bus station. And just the year before when we were there, and in 2018 when Kim was there, there were still roads here and the spot would've been almost in the middle of town. But with the mine slowly "eating" its way into the town and the town moving, this was not the case anymore. Felt odd, to say the least.

But as far as we know, only a single runner passed us that night, so we didn't bother anyone. In the morning we walked away to Ica to buy breakfast - baguettes that we filled ourselves with Skagen, garlic cream cheese and tomatoes. We also had some juice and bought fresh tortellini for lunch/dinner. After a short stop at a nearby gas station to use the toilet and fill up our water bottles, we got going. It wasn't even far, but it still felt like endless roadwalking. Since we weren't going to take the helicopter until the next day, we had decided to walk from Kiruna to Kurravaara. It was a surprisingly well trafficked asphalt road to get there. In the end we walked a total of 14.8 km today, were almost all of them were on asphalt. Finally we found a pretty okay place to camp, and here we feasted on the food we bought and some of the bars and Snickers that Mikael had brought with him. We also read through what Jonas' (wayfaringinthewild.wordpress.com) had written about his hike from Treriksröset to Katterjåkk that he did last year, while following along on the map and discussing trail choices on this section. Mikael told us that he was surprised that there would be so much hiking "off-road". We're sure it will work out well in the end, but we can't help but be a bit nervous!

Tomorrow we're heading for the Three-country-cairn! 😀