To Shahrukhland and Kajolberg

This is a post on the Europe Trip day 5 afternoon. The previous post in the series that covered Lucerne is here..

After lunch in Lucerne, we were off to Engelberg. It was like a small town (maybe Village) on the base of Mount Titlis. A few people who could not climb high altitudes were dropped off by our guide to spend the afternoon there. The bus started climbing after that brief stop and we were treated to some amazing scenic views and we reached a parking lot of epic proportions. 

This was the gondola ride up the mountain. The Gondola takes you up to 10000 feet. Then there is a five story building with multiple restaurants where you get out of this ride. It is a rotating Gondola and that means amazing views of the mountains and everything below as we go up.

There were 8 people to a carriage and we were joined by another Desi family from Chicago and made pleasant conversation. They had grown up kids, with the youngest just finishing college and when we got out the guide promptly said "okay. We have fixed time here. There are many activities here. you can go through an ice canyon, go to an ice flyer to 13000 feet and then go for a walk on the edge of the ice. we will wait here. The last gondola down for you to make it to the bus on time is at 4:15 PM". 

Given how the traveling Narayanan family had done with such hectic schedules over the last 4 days, we accepted the challenge and walked to the ice flyer. On the way to the ice flyer, we saw a cutout that made Mt. Titlis a household name in India. 

I knew what had to be done. Gave the camera to our tourguide who was Swiss German and she goes "yes of course. you have to take a picture in front of Shah Rukh and Kajol!".. she said it so matter of factly as though they were local Swiss names. The world is full of wonders I thought and asked San to pose.. She was happy but for some reason, could not bring out the inner Kajol on time! Eventually for some strange reason she was doing that pose in front of the Hogwarts Express in UK and I was doing a facepalm! Where were we?! Yes.. Kajolberg..

We walked to the ice flyer. There were snow flurries falling pretty heavily... and then we had an adventure of a lifetime.. which is a post in itself. So we will skip the ice flyer for now and move on. 

We barely made it back to the five storied building again and were greeted by the sight of Pav Bhajis, rice, pickles, papad etc.  

While the family went for it, I grabbed a hot cocoa and while we were eating there was a realization that we were about to miss the ride down. So we scrambled and made our way back to the parking lot. Our guide was nice. She said "you can get some Chai and Samosas and other Indian snacks at a restaurant outside the ticket counter. We are still waiting on some folks.". So off we went and got Chai Samosa.

Life comes full circle I thought. Many years ago, we had Maggi noodles at ~10000 feet in the Himalayas at Manali and that was a Swiss company product. Now we were having Chai Samosa in Switzerland!

The panoramic view of the mountains from the parking lot was amazing..

Then the bus filled up and we were back on our way to Zurich and were treated to more scenic views.

The bus dropped us at 7PM. We went to a mexican place after going to our new Air B&B and dropping off the luggage. We had booked one walking distance from the bus terminus for the night. We went in at 7:20 and the waiter was nice enough to let us eat as long as we were out by 8 as it was a reservation only place. The food was amazing, the wall decor had some kind of masked wrestler photograph everywhere.. and were back in the Air B&B. On the way back we went to an Indian grocery store run by a Sri Lankan Tamil, saw a Sari Store, a bunch of Indian restaurants and realized we were in Little India in Zurich!

There was laundry to be done.. using a German washing machine in the basement that looked ancient and some precious sleep to be had before another all day adventure the next day. 

Here is a tip. Air B&B laundries are not reliable. After making multiple attempts to dry the clothes after washing, the thing promptly gave some fatal error. There was no one to help in that place at 11PM and I had to translate using google translate to find that it was a fatal error. 

While the family was sleeping, I hauled a bunch of semi wet clothes (practially half of our luggage) and put a cloth on every possible exposed surface in that Apartment. There were bras on the kitchen cabinet hooks, jattis on the TV.. think you get the picture.. I created surreal art and went to bed praying. Set an alarm for an hour earlier than we had planned. San woke up and I gave her the bad news.. 80% of the clothes had dried completely! 20% still needed some help. So we used the iron box and ironed out the moisture for an hour and were all set! 

Back to pictures and videos..

A video of most of the afternoons trip..

We were not coming back to this place the next night.. it was going to be another all day trip that ended in a different city!