Who wouldn’t be enthusiastic to see the beautiful valleys of Switzerland!

In the morning at 7 am, we were waiting at the platform of Freiburg railway station for our train to Switzerland. The enthusiasm of seeing the beautiful vistas of Mount Titlis with our own eyes could not be hidden. When the train arrived, I put my hand in my back pocket to take out the ticket, but wait! what? Ticket disappeared. Or maybe, in haste, we forgot to bring our tickets. The train left in front of our eyes and we remained standing at the platform. In helplessness, we purchased another ticket and boarded the next train after 1 hour. Thus we left for Engelberg town, situated in the foothills of Mount Titlis.

From the scarcely populated Engelberg station, when we went to the ticket house of the cable car, we were amazed to see that there was a lot of crowd, and that too of Indian tourists. For food and drinks, there was only one small food joint which was serving Indian samosa, kachori, wada pav, tea, etc. It felt as if we were not in Engelberg, but in Manali.

After some time, our cable car started climbing the Alps on our way to Titlis. Like a flying bird, when we saw Engelberg from above, the small town located in the heart of nature looked even more beautiful! After travelling for 45 minutes over the treacherous terrain of Alps mountains, we reached Mount Titlis. The scenes that awaited us over there- expressing them through any photo or word is impossible. Since childhood, I had been hearing that Kashmir is a heaven on earth. But this place too was no less than a heaven.

Right after reaching Titlis, we set out to roam around nearby mountains and got lost in the lap of nature. In the winter season, the tourist companies over there make hotels of ice and in summer, when the ice begins to melt, they leave them behind. Later, they start looking like caves. We saw a similar cave of hotel in our path. It had several rooms with beds to sleep and statues of ice for decoration. Had we gone there in winter, then it would have been a completely different experience to spend a night there.

From there, we took another cable car to reach the top of Mount Titlis. After we came out of the cable car station, we came to know the mystery behind so many Indian tourists visiting there. We saw a big cut-out of Shahrukh Khan and Kajol. DDLJ was filmed there. I too waited in queue for 10 mins to get my photo clicked. 🙂

From there, we took an ice-flyer to reach another hill top where there were some snow-fun activities. At that time, there was snow storm there and nothing was visible for some time. A near-by guide asked me to take a sledge and skid downwards. But I felt damn scared while thinking about how deep this valley might be. Still, after he insisted 5-6 times, I started sliding down. And that was so awesome that I came up, and again got in the same queue for another round. After enjoying for around half an hour, we were completely bathed in ice. The clothes had become white due to stuck ice. Our hands & legs had become sensation-less due to cold. We came back to the cable car station. On our way back, we also saw a few ice caves. We ate food in a restaurant and stayed there for around 2 hours to keep warm. That restaurant also felt like some restaurant from Mumbai. In the menu, there was a pure vegetarian Indian meal. All the names in the menu were written in Hindi, Chinese and German languages. All the staff working there was also Indian.

After having full meal and rest, we came back to Engelberg by cable car. Now, it was almost time for return journey, but I was not feeling like leaving these heaven-like beautiful valleys. The magic of that natural beauty was such that even now, while writing this post, each sight of that place is clearly in front of my eyes. In reality, if you are a ‘Dilwale’, then you will be happy to take your ‘Dulhaniya’ there. 🙂