Salla, Finnish Lapland

Soon after New Year my friend had started planning a visit to his holiday cottage in Salla, Lapland. He invited some friends, and 3 + me joined him. So all of us ended up driving  900 kms down the road to Lapland at the end of February in two cars full of baggage and skiing gears.
We started our 10 hours long drive at around 3 am and stopped every now and then at ABC, which is a 24×7 super market/restaurant situated on main roads all over Finland.

Friend’s holiday cottage in Salla. We cooked our food in the kitchen.

After reaching, we ate and slept and the next day we went to rent downhill skiing gear for three of us who didn’t bring it.

The slopes downhill are named blue, red and black according to their difficulty level; blue being the easiest and so on. I have to confess that it was my first time to ski down a hill though I have lived here all my life! So i was a bit terrified compared to my seasoned friends, who left me no choice but to stumble down the hill somehow

My friends outside a church.

We drove down to a popular tourist area Rukatunturi, about 90 Kms from Sallatunturi (tunturi means field). It was so windy on the day we visited, that it even got on news, the wind was up to 100 kmph, about 28m per second, so some of the rope trolleys were closed every now and then.

We had saved snowmobiling for the last day after our lift tickets (to go uphill) had expired and it turned out to be a perfect sunny day. We drove about 100km in total with snowmobiles, to one lounge and back.