Riding north on the E45 this afternoon south of Jokkmokk, I glimpsed something white in the eastern forest fringes. The trouble with these northern glacial fields are that the glacial erratics can look like animals, but this was different, so I did a quick turnaround and slowly retraced my steps and I was privileged enough to witness for maybe five minutes, a startling white reindeer and two darker females grazing on the forest floor and eyeing me up with interest. In a few months time, the native Sámi people will gather these reindeers for slaughter. The white reindeer is more often selected for slaughter since they are said to be weaker and an easier prey for predators – I prefer the old adage that says that seeing the white reindeer means luck… after all I have at least another 6000km to ride.
Tag Archives: Wildlife Encounters
الصحراء الكبرى – Sand gets everywhere
After a really early start this morning, I fell asleep again in the sand of the eastern desert, on the edges of the great Sahara, awoken only by a strengthening onshore wind, I watched the sun rise. So close to the equator there is really no discernible length of twilight at either end of the day and sunrise to full strength takes a matter of minutes – pulling my self together I could not help notice tracks in the sand made by an unknown nocturnal visitor as I snoozed, seems he was not interested in me at all – I just like to think it was something small and fluffy…
I disagreed with something that ate me
Family and friends were worried I would be eaten by a bear or savaged by wolves and having taken every precaution to avoid ticks when camping in the forests in Norway and Sweden I think I have survived tick-borne encephalitis, swimming in the lakes proved interesting and having seen the biggest leeches on the lake edges I have restricted my swimming to rivers, but yet today I have two parallel fang marks in my foot – to be fair the culprit must have been an expert as I did not feel a thing just noticed the blood, so good luck to it!