We started from our cottage in the morning to Egilsstaðir, the largest town of Eastern Iceland. After so many days, we saw a sunny day and felt happy looking at the clear sky.

We didn’t plan to stop at places in the middle. The plan for today was only to drive in Eastern Fjords. Fjord is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created by a glacier. It’s the day for photography and good music!!

The drive was amazing with mountains on one side and ocean on the other side. The mountains looked completely different from what we have seen so far in the south Iceland, with shades of black and light green.

We could spot a lot of small waterfalls in between these mountains. We initially started counting, but later gave up 🙂

We stopped by a beautiful lake in between, which looked so clean and had reflections of sky and mountains around it.

One good thing about Iceland was that the roads have clear signs all over indicating  attractions nearby etc., and the best part was that they have constructed benches beside the road in every 25 kms or so, wherever there is a great view. The symbol with a tree and T beside it below was a bench symbol. If we get to see this symbol, we used to know that there is a good landscape there. They served as a perfect place for our lunch. That was really well thought by their government and we highly appreciated their concept of benches in the remotest parts of the country too. What can be more wonderful than having your lunch in the middle of a great landscape!

We found a beach on the way and just stepped out of our car to spend sometime there. I was just observing all beaches on our way, to see if the color of the sand changes anywhere. But, all the beaches we have seen so far have black sand, because of the volcanic rock I guess.

It was so calming to be at the beach and it felt like a like private beach, with no people around. It was so tempting to play with water at the beach. But, we couldn’t venture out in the water as it was freezing cold. It felt like a punishment to just watch the waves without stepping in 😦

Our journey continued with a variety of landscapes on the way. It was fun to watch how clouds cast shadows on the mountains and changed their colors. Everything was so intense here, cold and sun both. It was too bright outside and goggles were a must to venture out. I had to wear my winter cap today, just to protect myself from the sun.

We stopped at a very small town on the way, Djúpivogur, with a population of around 400 people. Most of the towns here have fishing ports and their economy revolves a lot around fishing. The port looked very cute, with small fishing boats.

Our journey continued further, with fishing nets on the way. Surprisingly, I didn’t get any smell of fishes at the port or on the way, which felt good.

The white lines in the sky still surprise me, I decided to buy and read a book about Iceland Geology once I reach India. I got curious about a lot of things here.

Suddenly, we saw a lot of clouds on our way and the surprising fact is that the cloud is so low that it appeared as if it was on the water. I haven’t seen any cloud that low so far. We were not at an altitude also and this looked really strange and I wonder how that’s  possible.

After playing hide and seek with the clouds, we entered a 6km tunnel carved in between the mountains and it was fun to be inside it. I am particularly a big fan of tunnels and flyovers (anything different than the regular road).

By the time, we came out the tunnel, the clouds reduced and our way was more clearer. Even though a couple of friends tried to sleep during the drive, they couldn’t sleep for a long time, as they were afraid to miss out on varying landscapes.

By evening, we reached our destination Egilsstaðir.

We wanted to see Puffins (type of birds, located only in Arctic countries) and messaged our Airbnb host on the best place to locate them. He suggested an eastern most cliff in the village Borgarfjörður eystri. Since we had a lot of time before sunset, we started off to that place immediately.

It was a gravel road for sometime and it look a lot of time to reach the cliff, even though it was only a 50km drive. There were no people on the road at all on this drive and it was a little adventurous drive.

After reaching the cliff, we couldn’t see any Puffin there and we realized that Puffins have left Iceland already 😦 We were a little late, they just stay here in Summers and leave the cliff in August.

We felt sad but later we found a different set of birds called Arctic Terns, which looked similar to Puffins, but have a different color. There were a lot of birds there, like a big colony.

We simply loved the place these birds choose for their nests 🙂 Wish we could also just change places like these birds every few months to the location of our choice, wherever the best weather is present.

We drove back to our cottage outside Egilsstaðir, for our night stay.

It was great drive today, watching great landscapes, couldn’t have asked for a better road trip! The best road trip so far 🙂