Karigasniemi – GoZa Mite

My friends Eero & Lauri decided to continue west towards Kilpisjärvi. I had other plans so I started riding east. I was riding a big road all day. First it was paved road until I was in Finland and then from Karigasniemi to Angeli and Inari it was big gravel road.
In Vuottašjávri I took a short break and checked the place beside the lake. But there was too many mosquitos and black flies. So I continued riding.

The landscape and views are incredible in this area! So I can say that I did enjoy my ride. It was 370km all together!

The village of Angeli I have never visited before. I had to search the result for a quite a long time about how many people lives in this village. It’s less than 100!
The road from Karigasniemi south to Angeli and then east to Inari is also part of TransEuroTrail Finland section 7.

Here’s the video of this day. It’s the road up and away from Alta, so called Alta Canyon road.

This day was little bit cloudy and it wasn’t so hot. We started to ride the beautiful road to Karigasniemi. The route follows the Teno river and you can see to the other side of the river (Norway) almost all the time! From Karigasniemi we turned to Norway, this had to be done because it’s a really nice shortcut to Enontekiö (in western Lapland) -the road in Finnish side would be 340 kilometers:
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And if you take the road from Norway side, it will be more than 100km shorter!
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Almost right after we crossed the border it started raining! And we were riding in the heavy rain about 5 minutes and then the rain was light and it didn’t bother anymore -but the road was wet.
In Vuottašjávri we made a short sidetour to a small cape in the lake. There was quite nice sandbeach and I’m already regretting that I didn’t go to swim!
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I also fell with the bike here but it was so soft sand so no marks to the bike!
It took awhile before the road was dry again and we could actually see some sun peeking behind the clouds. It was very nice to stop beside the road and take a good look around you. This part of Norway is called Finnmark and the surraundings here are simply amazing!
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Maybe our visit to Norway was a bit short… We were back in FInland much too soon!
We chose the road to Näkkälä village (40 inhabitants) and this was again a very good choise! This kind of totally empty landscape (beside the road) is very rare in Finland!
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This picture is about from the end of the road. There’s a beautiful creek (or a river) and this small village with few houses. Ofcourse in the deepest winter it’s little bit different here! (The sun doesn’t come up in 2 months, it can be -30 celsius with more than 1m of snow…)
We had very nice cabin from Kelotin Rantamajat and we went to have a dinner in Galdotieva -this was unfortunately the worse meal in our trip. Wife had the reindeer kebab and I had the “local steak”. Both of the portions were mostly terrible! Meat was almost burned and you couldn’t tell if it was pork, reindeer or pieces of soil from the yard… We do not recommend this at all!!
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This cabin had the kitchen and toilet! It was very nice!
My wife made a video of this day: