Danger to life on spectacular pass road

(Photos of the diary entry can be found at the end of the text).

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The route climbs steeply into the mountains towards the Jostedalsbreen, Europe’s largest continental glacier, along the edge of which runs one of the most beautiful mountain passes in the world. The plan is to unpack our new e-bikes up there and use them to cross the glacier. The narrow, breathtaking road winds its way towards the sky. Strange, striped clouds stretch over our heads. Dark, sometimes bright blue peeps out between the gaps in the clouds. It’s the first day without rain for over two weeks. So far at least. With great concentration, I steer our Iveco Daily 4×4 up bend after bend. “Is something coming?” I ask before the next blind bend. “All free,” says Tanja. I swerve a little to the left and then steer to the right. This is the only way we can negotiate the hairpin bends in one go. “It’s going down quite a bit,” I say with my eyes glancing to the left for a split second. “Drive carefully,” says Tanja a little tensely. “Of course I’ll drive carefully,” I reply, taking the next bend. Now it goes steeply down to the right of us. The slightest driving mistake and we would end our lives here. “You seem to be enjoying it,” Tanja breaks my concentration. “Absolutely, that’s real driving,” I reply with a grin, shifting down into second gear to take another hairpin bend. “An automatic gearshift would be a great advantage here,” Tanja replies. “Maybe, but it would greatly reduce the fun factor. I like to be in control of our vehicle and want to choose the gear myself,” I reply, shifting up into third again. “Did you also put the gear reduction in?” asks Tanja. “Yes, yes, at the bottom, before it got so steep, I put in the translation,” I reply. Suddenly the road becomes even narrower. No two cars can drive the thin strip of asphalt side by side for the next few kilometers. If a car or even a truck were to come towards us, we would have to stop and roll backwards to one of the passing places to get past each other. “Watch out, there’s a truck coming!” warns Tanja before the next right-hand bend. “Shit,” I curse, brake and come to a halt. Sure enough, the large radiator of a truck appears in front of us. “And now?” asks Tanja. “Backwards,” I reply. “Do you want me to get out and show you in?” “No, no, that’s fine,” I say, slowly rolling the Terra backwards. “Yes, that’s good. You still have 20 centimeters on my side,” Tanja tells me the distance to the abyss. “Okay,” I whisper and notice beads of sweat forming on my forehead. Just 50 meters behind us, I steer our 6.2 tons into the narrow passing bay. The truck driver raises his hand in thanks and speeds past us. “Phew,” I blow the air through my pressed lips, shift into first gear and continue our ascent. Yellow signs on the roadside warn of upcoming construction work. Because of a tight hairpin bend, we can’t see if anything is coming towards us. We crawl at walking pace through the passage, which is bordered on the left and right by rugged, sloping rocks. The asphalt has given way to bare gravel. “Ahhh!”, I yell as we’re about to come through the bend, yank the steering wheel to the right, get into the irons with all my might as a Tesla shoots towards us. He slows down with an emergency stop, skids briefly and then catches himself again. I close my eyes for a moment and wait for the inevitable collision, when it slams past our radiator without touching us. “That was close… Ahhh!”, we are shocked again as another madman races around the hairpin bend, brakes hard like his predecessor, skids briefly, catches himself and misses us by just a few centimeters in the drift. “What was that?” asks Tanja after a pause in horror. “The idiots are racing each other on the mountain road,” I reply, my whole body trembling. “Thank you,” says Tanja, clasping her hands in front of her chest and looking up. “Thank you,” I say, fully aware that the divine ray has protected us here. It takes a while for us to recover from the near-accident. I put the car into first gear, the engine roars and we continue our journey. Higher and higher into the strange and beautiful cloudy skies of Norway.