Why a hot-air balloon ride over Sweden’s snow-covered Lapland is like no other

The best party guests know how to make an entrance: arrive when it suits them, be dramatic and extravagant, and leave long before the end.

This is how it is when we snowmobile at night at Aurora Safari Camp on the banks of the frozen and snow-covered Råne River in Swedish Lapland.

Jonas (boss) turns off the engine, and without warning, the Northern Lights appear. So.

The guest of honour, all the swirling green shapes miraculously stretch vertically for miles and miles, as if lighting up a mountain range. Dancing like ghostly apparitions, changing shape, changing color, then vanishing.

It’s fascinating and I’m not sure I was so perfectly in the right place at the right time.

It’s quite a welcome to this camp built among pine trees, about 25 miles south of the Arctic Circle. It moved into this north facing location up the river last year and has added two new structures next to its three ‘tent rooms’ so it can now sleep ten.

Inexplicably named cones (not conical at all), the new timber-framed rooms are warm, cozy and shaped like 50p pieces with floor-to-ceiling windows and a ceiling panel, the best for gazing straight into the starry depths. of the night. from the bed

The camp combines the best of solitude, peace, and the otherworldly wildness of extraordinary scenery, without being completely off the grid (you can still check your phone messages).

Kate is staying at the Aurora Safari Camp, pictured, which is about 25 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

It’s totally laid back and set up for sociability, with the wood stoves always on, the kitchen always open and someone always there. Benches covered with reindeer skins surround the log fire on the deck.

How could you follow the welcome of the dawn? Well, here’s how: with a hot air balloon ride.

While the Northern Lights can be seen from October to April, the window for ballooning, which needs high clouds and clear days, is from February to early April. Move, in other words.

Seeing the huge inert form that lay carefully unfolded on the ground before being pumped with hot air and brought to life is strangely alarming.

Pilot Björn, Navigator Jonas and I climbed into the small wicker basket, handcrafted in Oswestry in Shropshire, and gracefully ascended to 500ft.

Björn is a cheerful Swede who fell in love with flying as a teenager and has logged thousands of hours piloting planes and balloons over 40 years.

The timber-framed rooms at Aurora Safari Camp feature floor-to-ceiling windows and a ceiling panel, allowing Kate to “gaze directly into the starry depths of the night from her bed.”

I’m in safer hands, which is a consolation, as I’m not sure when you’re in the air is the best time to be told that no one can direct (I hear ‘control’) a balloon to the left or to the right. right; the pilot, instead, uses the speed and direction of the wind.

We have the heavens to ourselves. Below us are blankets of pristine snow, silver birch and pine forests, and the occasional elk leaping through the trees.

It’s surprisingly warm and quiet (when the crew isn’t giving the balloon a blast of hot air). You almost expect to see the edge of the world curving away from you on the horizon.

Back at the Aurora camp, encouraged by two fabulous women vacationing there (one a devoted ice bather and cold water swimmer), I sit in the sauna on the frozen river and then, to to my total astonishment, I went under the icy water, without hesitation. Twice.

It feels like another example of the wonders this ethereal land has to offer.