Driving on a frozen Finnish lake, racing a snowmobile through a blizzard, chasing the Northern lights and more as Kushan Mitra visits northern lapland
As our Finnair flight made its way north towards Ivalo and then on to Kittila, the sun was setting over the western horizon bathing a snow-draped landscape in a beautiful orange glow. It had been a long day, we had started out from New Delhi early in the morning. The price that we had paid for travelling was to miss the wonderful colours and revelry of Holi, yet that sunset from 34,000 feet in the sky ensured that the grey sleet that had welcomed us at Helsinki-Vantaa airport would not be the abiding memory of the day.
We were travelling to the town of Muonio on the Finnish-Swedish border in the area known as lapland. This area at the extreme north of the Scandinavian peninsula is a sparsely populated part of the world, and while apologising for the cliché, to describe this place as a winter wonderland would not be a cliché.
The reason for this long journey 150 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle was ostensibly to participate in Audi’s ‘Ice Drive Experience’. We were a group of Indian automotive journalists, who were going to drive very nice cars on a frozen lake in Finland. This is the sort of trip, which when you are offered, you cannot even come up with a single rational reason to decline.
It is a good one-hour long drive from Kittila Airport to the lapland Hotel Olos. The lights from the hotel reflected off the fresh powder snow that had been falling over the past few days. This, however, did have one negative impact — we knew we were going to be driving on ice, but had clearly forgotten that we would be walking on ice, which even with the right shoes takes a little getting used to for warm weather folks. It was a pleasure to finally see a bed after a full day of travelling and it was even nicer to step on a warm floor. Jokes aside, under-floor warming is surely an idea that North India should adopt.
After a lovely dinner and a great night’s sleep, it was time to prepare ourselves for the driving experience. In the morning, we drove down from the hotel about 20 kilometres away to a huge frozen lake where after the cold, cold winter, a thick layer of ice over a foot deep had formed. We were driving the new Audi S5 Sportback. This car, which is based on the A5, features a 3-litre V6 turbocharged engine that produces 333 horsepower. Crucially, it also has as standard, Audi’s proprietary ‘Quattro’ four-wheel drive technology.
We had switched off the Electronic Stability Control (ESC) of the car when we went onto the ice; this is not a recommended idea when one is driving on the road. Switching the ESC off removes most of the computer interference in the process of driving, where today almost every input is first monitored by a computer. We were on a frozen lake that was closed to the general public, and switching the computers off, even to a limited degree, allowed us a purer driving experience — just you, your hands on the steering and your right foot alternating between the accelerator and brakes.
There is a lot of physics involved in driving, usually you do not sense the massive load shifts when you are driving on regular roads. You might get some idea of the different reactions a car makes on a slippery surface, such as when it rains. Most Indian small cars are front wheel drive cars, this means that under acceleration when momentum shifts the weight to the back, steering inputs to the front wheels might not be as effective, under braking a rear-wheel drive car is also not effective in getting on to the power quickly. These factors in a low-grip surface, such as a frozen lake, would test our driving skills to the limit, and we were glad that we had special winter tyres with metal studs that gripped the ice, similar to the studded boots cricketers and footballers wear.
However, we were most grateful for Audi’s Quattro system. Initially developed in the late-1970s, this four-wheel drive system splits the power from engine between the rear and front wheels. The system also uses sensors placed in the wheels that measure the amount of grip or lack thereof on each wheel. So while the ESC was off, the system constantly makes sure that the car has some grip. Of course, with the ESC and Quattro or not, it was relatively easy to put the car into a slide.
In fact, while sliding about is not the fastest way around a corner, it is an extremely fun way of going around a corner, especially as you manage the throttle and the brake with just the right amount of pressure. The idea is to hold the slide, counter-steer and use the brakes to whip the tail of the car around into the next corner. Of course, that all sounds very easy, but in reality it is not and that is why this is not attempted on public roads. Rally drivers do such moves all the time, but none of us, well all but one of us, were not professional drivers. Which is why doing this sort of mad-cap fun driving on a frozen lake was so much fun. The worst that could happen was that you would end up off the track in a nice soft snow bank.
Not that any of us wanted to end up on a nice soft snow bank. It was not about getting hurt or damaging the car, a nice soft snow bank is a lovely area to get stuck and not worry about even a dent on the car. The problem was having to ask to be hauled out, a nice jovial Finn, Jarmo would come on his tractor and haul the car out but you would be left with a hole punched on your tractor card. And that is not something that anyone wants, particularly anyone from a group of hyper-competitive motoring journalists.
The very first day, in almost white-out conditions as a blizzard moved in, your writer managed to spin several times but only ended up in the snow a couple of times. Driving in icy conditions was not easy at all, but our driving instructor from Audi, Uwe Fricker, a grizzled German former racing driver managed to give us some great tips. For example, because traction is so limited on ice, you could be steering a lot but the car might not respond. Again, physics. But a very counter-intuitive way of dealing with such an issue is to actually steer less, not something your brain, used to two decades of driving would think is the right thing. “Steer less to be able to turn more.”
The second day, we lucked out with the weather. The sun shone brightly, covering the entire lake in a wonderful golden glow. And while a bright sun oddly meant that the outside temperature was colder, it also meant improved visibility. That meant that most of us began pushing our cars harder and began to spin in ways we had never thought possible. But you know whatIJ Even though some of us were driving like children in a candy shop, we all had huge grins on our faces.
And to add some spice to this, we even went on a helicopter ride above the cars swooping down over our colleagues still driving. Once, when your writer was driving, he saw a helicopter’s image in his rear view mirror, which is quite a terrifying sight. Of course, that was a decent excuse to offer up as one spun-out into the snow bank yet another time, or so Jarmo was informed.
Every couple of hours, we would take a break from the driving and head to a traditional Finnish ‘Koda’, a small hut with a warm fireplace and lots of hot chocolate. And swap stories about our adventures and misadventures and laugh at each other while Uwe would glare at us and probably think what complete morons we were. And so it went on, until suddenly we were told that we would have a timed race. Not a good thing for some of us, like your writer who was doing this for the first time but despite trepidation, one managed to complete a long circuit in a significant amount of time without slipping up.
In between, on the evening of the first day of driving, our second day in Muonio, we went on a ‘safari’ of sorts, climbing onto 600cc snowmobiles and racing across the Finnish landscape. This is exactly as much fun as it sounds and, boy, those snowmobiles can go very fast. Although the huge arctic gear that one has to wear while driving through is very heavy, albeit quite warm. We ended up in a traditional Finnish forest home where a lovely spread of smoked salmon and reindeer meat had been laid out. After a long day of fun, nothing beats a great meal.
And on the last night of our trip, we were going to have even more fun as we ventured into the empty wilderness to try and capture the sight of the Northern lights, the fabled Aurora Borealis. Frankly, what we saw was a mild form of the lights, as our guide Scott told us, “just a 2/10” but he reminded us that we were extremely lucky to have seen the lights in the first place, “people spend days in lapland and never see a thing because it is so overcast”.
Before starting our long journey back to Delhi, we also managed to fit in another hour of driving on the frozen lake. This time, after Uwe’s exacting lessons, we made few mistakes. The light was even nicer early in the morning, spring had not properly come to lapland, but the sun bathed the lake and the surrounding forest in this wonderful light. The air in lapland is considered one of the freshest in the world and this was one trip that all of us enjoyed.
Our flight back took us over the white landscape of Finland, with little patches of green and brown becoming visible as we approached the Finnish capital of Helsinki. As we had almost six hours to go before flying back to New Delhi, so we decided to go into town. Finnair has a bus service that runs into town every 20 minutes from the airport. While a quick visit to the Finnish capital did not let us really enjoy the city, we did get a nice taster of the town, which is beautiful.
A visit to Helsinki and lapland should be on everybody’s agenda, it is a must visit location. And if you can afford it, one should also really try out the Audi Ice Drive experience. The experience costs upwards of Euro 3,500 per person, including stay but excluding airfare. The cars change every year, but rest assured it will be a fun car and will feature Audi’s latest Quattro system.
This experience is open to anybody, not just Audi customers, and if interested one should contact drive@audi.in or their local Audi dealership and arrangements for the 2016 season can be made. The Ice Drive Experience also takes place in Arjeplog in Sweden and always occurs between February and March when the sun has started to peek over the horizon and the lakes have a nice, thick layer of ice on top. If nothing else, driving on ice helps you understand why countries like Finland produce so many championship winning drivers. Great experienceIJ You bet!