There are many tandem paragliding companies who have kiosk around Hohematte Park in Interlaken. We came across Alpinair Paragliding through the brochures available at our hotel reception and booked with them. The basic package starts with 10-20minutes flight with add-ons for photos and videos, double air and coffee and cake. The total activity time for 10-20mins flight is around an hour and a half, with drive to the hill top, few minutes trek and the preparations.
Our day 2 at Switzerland was for Interlaken and Lauterbrunnen valley. Hubby had gone on an early morning paragliding, and we started our Interlaken tour with Kursaal Garden, which has Yash Chopra statue. Kursaal Garden was 2mins walk from Hotel Harder Minerva where we stayed. Yash Chopra is named as Ambassador of Interlaken, with numerous scenes of his movies shot in the region, which attracts many Indians to visit Interlaken. Kursaal Garden is also known for the manicured flower beds, Kursaal Brunnen Fountain and the Congress Center and Casino. Most of the lanes were still getting ready with the floral plant arrangements for the upcoming touristry summer season.
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| Yash Chopra statue at Kursaal Garden, Interlaken |
Interlaken Ost(East), train station is the primary departure point for all the mountain trains, while trains to rest of Swiss have connectivity from both Interlaken Ost and Interlaken West. Interlaken Ost station is around 15mins walk from Kursaal Garden and we took our train to Lauterbrunnen. Lauterbrunnen, an Alpine village, in the glacier carved U-shaped valley, also known as the Land of 72 Waterfalls, with many springs and falls. While there are not many waterfalls during summer, Staubbach Falls is mostly active throughout the year, which is also the highest free-falling waterfalls of Europe falling from 297meters. Lauterbrunnen was too touristry even during shoulder period, while a few minutes trek gave a calm serene views off the crowd. Lauterbrunnen is also the gateway to car-free mountain villages Wengen, Murren and Gimmelwald on either side of the valley.
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| Staubbach Falls |
After wandering around for few hours, we walked to Lauterbrunnen bus station and took our bus to Stechelberg Schilthornbahn station. Stechelberg is known for the cable car to Schilthorn mountain peak, where James Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service from 1969 was shot at the iconic Piz Gloria revolving restaurant. The Schilthorn cable car goes via Murren with a change over cabin at Gimmelwald. We thought of getting off at Gimmelwald and exploring the Alpine mountain peak village instead of going to too touristry Schilthorn. The village was all for ourselves, and the trek through the village was beyond joy. The village also houses Europe's first honesty shop entirely unattended, self service village store, were you pick up the things and drop your cash with a note into the postbox or just pay online. This tiny village also offers the views of famous Jungfrau peak. The trek was just too good to be real, with the purest airs in a car free village. We still wondered how do those people even manage just on the cable car transportation which only operates through the day, with no other connectivity, apart from trekking down to Lauterbrunnen. While taking the cable car down, we were accompanied by a local who was just going down through the cable car to take her pet for a walk and took back the next cable car up home.
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| Gimmelwald village |
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| As the valley village disappears, as you move up to Wengen |
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| Wilderswil just an empty station on the Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen route |
Our day 1 at Switzerland was planned for places around Gstaad. One of the most expensive places of Swiss, often the favorite holiday destination of cricketer Virat Kohli and Anushka, and Bollywood stars Saif and Kareena and more. When we planned for Swiss, we knew we wanted to explore as many versatile things the country had to offer. Glacier 3000, apart from the beautiful glacier, offers the Dog Sled ride, and Saanen in Gstaad was the place where Bollywood movie Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and many other Bollywood movies were shot.
We had booked our Swiss Travel Pass on SBB website long before our travel dates and that covered all our travels around Swiss by trains, ferries, buses, most cable cars(others with 30% to 50% discount). So we need not book our tickets on every ride which saved most of our time. We often hopped on and off trains and buses with jiffy. Glacier 3000 dog sled was offered on discount which included glacier ticket too. I will have a separate post for different passes offered by Swiss.
Husky rides/dog sled at Glacier 3000 is fixed for a window of half an hour and you need to plan your visit accordingly. Since we were travelling from Interlaken, a train ride from Interlaken to Gstaad, bus from Gstaad to Col-du-Pillon, 2 connecting cable cars from Col-du-Pillon to glacier top, Ice express chairlift to get down and finally walk to the husky ride point, that's how we had to reach our days activity.
We started from Interlaken by 7:30 in the morning, we had packed our theplas from India and had picked hummus, salads, yogurts from Coop previous evening at airport. Had our thepla wraps on our train journey. Interlaken to Gstaad train ride has 3 transfers - Interlaken West to Spiez, Spiez to Zweisimmen - Zweisimmen to Gstaad. The train runs once in an hour with travel time around 2 hours. So we couldn't miss our train we had planned, ran to catch the connecting bus next to Gstaad railway station. Gstaad railway station to Col-du-Pillon bus stand of glacier 3000 is half an hour ride. Col-du-pillon - Cabane - Scex Rouge cable car travel time 15mins operating every 20mins. Like they say the journey in itself is so beautiful, taking a Golden Pass Panoramic route from Interlaken to Gstaad(which goes further till Montreux) gives you the spectacular views of mountains, wooden chalets, the green meadows, Swiss cows.
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| DDLJ Saanen Bridge |
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| DDLJ church where Kajol goes to pray |
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| Saanen Railway station |
It was in last December that I was looking for tickets to Dehradun for a vacation in March. But my dates on google showed up for flight prices for next day and the price turned out to be around 18k per person single trip. Just a thought in my mind, why not plan an international trip if the domestic flights were that expensive. With no second thought I looked up for Bangalore - Zurich flight and guess what the single trip flight ticket showed up 25k with London transit. That didn't work out though as we had to get a London - transit visa too to take this flight, but still an international trip to Swiss a dream destination for most, was how seeded. For next few days I went on looking for more possibilities and options, and neither did hubby or kiddo took me seriously, saying, "Ye tho Dehradun se seedha Swiss chaligayi"(she went from Dehradun to directly Swiss).
I started browsing on different packages online travel agents were offering, but none covered the off beat destinations I was looking for and definitely not with in my budget to go for a customized trip covering them all. So we had to plan a trip on our own. More and more I started looking for vlogs, my dream destination seemed coming closer. My fashionista kiddo showed no interest in Swiss and wanted me to add Paris along, to travel to the fashion capital of the world. So by mid of Jan all three of us were convinced we were for sure planning for a Euro trip, which initially was started with Swiss. This trip was much needed for my daughter who had spent last 2 years preparing for her 10th exams which she was about to give in Feb. So when we told everybody later, it was gift for kiddo's 10th exams, they asked us how come you are gifting here ever before her results and we said, its for the efforts that she had put in, whatever the results could be.
We downloaded the visa application and started gathering our documents. Heard of saying Schengen visa documentation is no less than a 300 pages text book, that's perfectly true. Long list of documents and high rejection rates makes Schengen visa still a task for many. So next was the set of vlogs to check out how to get our visa approved. The big catch with Schengen visa is, you need to have a confirmed flight ticket and hotel bookings to apply for the visa. So you put a whole chunk of money on the flight, even without being sure, whether you will be able to travel or not. We had some hopes that we could manage to clear our visa with the proper documentation and so didn't go for a refundable ticket which costed around 10% more. Also took a longer transit flight to save bit. This longer transit, ended up in adding another country(Germany) to our trip. Best thing about taking Lufthansa airline with Frankfurt transit is you have entered Schengen region with a visa and are free to get out of the airport after immigration and explore Frankfurt . However, since your first entry to Schengen is Frankfurt, your entry to Swiss and France then after becomes domestic travels with no immigration/passport stamping, that was a disappointment though. Yet another country that got added just before we submitted our visa application was Liechtenstein. A half day trip from Zurich and you get to explore another country.
Here is the brief itinerary, will have a separate blog for Schengen visa documentation in coming blog post.
