Bismo is the centre of Skjåk municipality, about 17 kilometres west of Lom along Road 15. It's a small village of around 630 people along the river Otta. There's a grocery shop, a café and basic services - useful if you need to stock up.
The area around Bismo is one of the driest in southern Norway, with only about 300 millimetres of rain per year. Stryn, just 90 minutes to the west, gets six times as much. That's the rain shadow effect - the mountains catch everything coming from the coast. But dry doesn't mean sunny - overcast skies are common, it just doesn't rain as much. One side of the valley is called "solsida", the sunny side, while the other is "baksida", the back side, which gets very little sun. Despite the dry climate, farmers have used irrigation systems for hundreds of years, so the valley is green and productive.
Skjåk municipality sits between two national parks - Breheimen to the south and Reinheimen to the north.