Day 07: Fun in Switzerland Continues…

After a drenched night and an amazing adventure in the hills, today was going to be a lot more civilized. We had planned out the day to checkout the following:

1. Schilthorn, Switzerland
2. Interlaken, Switzerland

But it was not turning out to be a great day to enjoy the mountain views as it was foggy and drizzling. Plan was to reach Aspen Alpine Lifestyle Hotel, check-in and then continue with out outing plan. Read about the amazing experience we had staying in Aspen Alpine Lifestyle Hotel

Sygic (Offline Android/iOS GPS Software), had been guiding us every since we started our journey, and we will taking its lead to our hotel as well. As we got within 5 miles of our hotel, the road started becoming thinner and thinner. I was loving it as I like these kind of reads but not Aarti. Our Dhanno (our car) was taking it well when suddenly after few amazingly steep and sharp turns, we were going uphill a 40 degree gradient and no jokes, while Aarti was screaming OMG.. OMG, I was trying to keep my cool and accelerating steadily and hoping our car which already weighed 2.8 Tonnes with another 0.6-0.7 tonnes of stuff on it including us, would not go backwards and keep on moving. I only wish that we weren’t scared and had recording the climb but the reality was different. The way the car moving ahead effortlessly, made us believe that getting a Range Rover indeed was the best possible decision we took 🙂

* The path marked in RED is that dangerous road. There is a proper way to the hotel from the other side, and thats what we used for rest of our commute to and fro from the hotel.

There was a white Audi behind us ever since we took on the narrow road, and as it turned out to be they were lost and following us to catch us and ask for directions. They were an Arab family of four, and Aarti told me that lady in the family too was terrified on the way up.

We were happy, scared, lucky and excited at the same time. Trying to digest that we almost got lost in the woods yesterday and today again could have been in trouble but there we were in one piece. Spoke to the lady at the hotel desk but she wasn’t amused and suggested that we should have taken the proper road. We told her that we saw direction marks for the hotel on the road directing people this way, to which she agreed and replied that they will be removing those signs soon .. Duh!

Don’t know whether the hotel was empty or she was moved by our experience, she upgraded us to a Junior Suite and that was simply amazing. We checked in, refreshed ourselves and started for Schilthorn, as per the lady at the desk we were running late and if we missed it today there was not time to visit it again tomorrow. Took the proper road this time and reached our destination, only to find out that the observation point on top of Schilthorn was too foggy and there was no visibility. At the reception counter, the lady showed us the live feed via the cameras at the top, and it was no point buying the ticket.

Schilthorn has a revolving restaurant and this is where James Bond movie ‘On her Majesty’s secret service’ was set. This restaurant, Piz Gloria revolves full 360 degrees. Disappointed we got back into the car and left for Interlaken.

On the way to Interlaken we came across a cow processions taken out by local villagers. Cows with big bells tied around their necks, here is a video of the same below:

While waiting at one of the railway crossing, Kapil Sharma fans who were traveling to Zurich in a train saw CNWK banner on our car and started chatting and raising slogans. People in cars front and back must have wondered what was going on but it was fun. Aarti wanted to jump out and hand them Kapil’s signed t-shirts but it was not practical so we let it go.

The fog and drizzle followed to Interlaken as well, but the city was beautiful and the weather was adding to the experience. We took a stop over and decided to check out the restaurants there.

Our food was followed by cup of coffee and hot chocolate. The cafe we had our drinks had lot of flyers lying around regarding para jumping, there were videos also being played on big screen and it was quite luring. Me and Aarti looked at each and decided to give it a go but when we spoke to the company who did this, they mentioned th weather was not great and they cannot really confirm if they will be doing the jumps today. We got out of the cafe and clicked few pics.

One of my close friends “Susti”, her real name in Suhruda but she is as lazy as a rock, hence the name “Susti”, she was also in Interlaken with her partner as they both were enjoying their honeymoon. We couldn’t make it to her marriage so we were really looking forward to meet up. Thanks to Whatsapp, we got her address and started driving towards her hotel. Spent good 1-2 hours with the cute couple and then came back to the hotel and called it a day.

Some videos from our time spent on the beautiful roads of Switzerland (ignore the wind sound please ;-D):