I had always heard of the place viz movies and people going there for honeymoons and stuff like that, and after spending some 15-16 years in the Dev Bhumi Himachal, i was a bit skeptical before this tour, thinking if i would find anything new, or will it be yet another Manali or something. Hell i was proven wrong.. today i understand all the hype around Swiss and its natural beauty. Its not that i haven't seen lakes or snow before, i have seen plenty
of that but one cannot just visualize how beautiful it was without being there..
The first destination Zurich wasn't something we were much interested in.. we have had plenty of museums and big cities by now, so the three musketeers were soon headed towards Schloss Laufen, for the rine falls. To put it blatantly.. from top it looked a nice huge waterfall, then we moved closer, down its trail and about a few inches away from the actual flow, which mind you was terrifying, Rhine is the Ganges of Europe and the river falling down from the alpes to enter mainland Swiss.. its like you have to hold your breath for a second or two before being bold enough to go that close. And finally at the bottom of the cliff, with the water flowing underneath you at that speed, if you stare at the flow for sometime time,, it feels like there is some attraction force and you are gonna fall into the water if you dont look away!!
I have to admit it was scary..
Next destination was Interlaken, but before i mention that place the amazing journey to the lake locked city has to be spoken about... Moving from the alpes to the valleys of swiss
the entire trail has numerous lakes and decorated fields, cows munching there stuff,horses running around and the snow capped mountains in the background, i have never seen this face of natures beauty ever before, its like you are in the song sequence of soe bollywood flick.
The trains are awsome ofcourse and expensive as hell, Thanx to the eurail pass we avoided paying for about 350 euros of train tickets with that pass which costs 240 euros :)
Well interlaken is a place where you would want to come and stay for a atleast 4 days have enough money in your pockets to enjoy the paragliding, helicopter/ craft jump (i dont knw what that is called ;)) the hikings, the awesome view, fishing, camping and what not..... Please dont get carried away, everything is "expensive" so jyada senti nhi hona hai!! We had planned to go upto the top of Europe, thats Mt. Jungfraujoch but as i have been mentioning, budget thoda tight tha,, n we couldn't afford to spend some 10000 rupees for that cliff...My long time dream of owning a swiss knife came true. The thing that was a bit annoying was that, we could see more Indians then foreigners around..
The man at chocolate store even joked that, during the month of may, we call this place "INDIANLAKEN". :)The cozy hostel and the lip smacking pizza summed up the day.
Next morning, we set sail towards Mt. Titlis. Its something you can't dream of missing. Firstly going up to more than 10000 feet on the GONDOLA was an amazing experience.. then the glacier cave was okaaay types, and then out in the snow, falling, playing, clicking was the order of the day.
Previous night someone had suggested that to save some bucks we could avoid taking the ice flier ride.... but fortunately we decided to go for it... that was the best part of titlis
Skating in the snow, at times falling on your face and sliding or even rolling deep down.. it was at that moment i told myself.... alryt its decided.. i am coming back again here and i'll atleast a week in this paradise.
Luckily noone got hurt coz falling on ice is fun only intill you don't get hurt, it can even break a few bones on your unlucky day :)
The weekends last two days only, what a pity, we had to leave, though resisting the temptaion of staying on for another day was difficult, we delayed our departure as long as possible and finally ended up missing the last train by what at max, 2 seconds.
I wa there at the platform and the train was there in front of me,, but these automatic doors had just shut me out and i couldn't anything about it... as result we had to spend the night at a station in Hamm and back to Paderborn in the morning..
but if you ask me, staying up there for that extra half an hour is worth waiting on the platform for a few hours :)
Getting back to that honeymoon part.... my verdict.... yes this is the place you need to be at!!! and like sharan would say.......... peace!! sb
:) nice!!
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