Interlaken: Part 1

Our first day in Ringgenberg, and in the Interlaken area, we decided to see the area from the local ferry / cruise service, which rungs in a zig-zag loop around lake Brienz stopping at Iseltwald, Oberreid, Giessbach, Brienz, and then looping back with some more stops at Boningen and Iseltwald Ost.

We had a lovely day of crusing on the ship, and hopped off a couple of times, once to experience the pier made famous by the K-drama “Crash Landing on you”, as well as a lunch stop for Pizza at Brienz.

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The next day, we made the trip to see the iconic Matterhorn. This involved quite a long drive to the town of Täsch, to then take a short shuttle train to the car free mountain town of Zermatt. We then had to be mini taxied to a ski lift, and then proceeded to gain another 2500 meters of elevation via a series of Ski Lifts to reach “Matterhorn Glacier Paradise” at more than 4000 M of elevation.

After some lunch at the top, we had a chance to go outside to take in the views, marvel at the courage of the people hiking to mountani peaks in the vast snowy expanse, and enjoy some snow play.

Although Tejas was feeling a little altitude sickness, and had to be escorted partway down by Purni, the rest of us also visited the ice caves under “Glacier Paradise” to take a look at the ice sculptures, and had a chance to experience sliding down some ice tunnels.

We stopped a few times on our way down the mountain, and were wowed by the views everywhere we went. After dinner in Zermatt, we stumbled into an mountain horn performance on the streets.

On the drive back, the 2 cars that we were in ended up taking different routes back. Purni, Tejas and I (unintentionally) took a longer route, which skipped the car train that we had to take to get here. Our reward though was the amazing experience of driving over Grimsel Pass, and enjoying sights of Furka pass (a preview of our next days events).

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Wanting a more relaxing day with less driving, and less structure, we decided to go back to Grimsel Pass. The weather forecast for the day had thunderstorms on the menu, and our scenic drive up to Grimsel was constantly interrupted with both rain, as well as alerts on our phones about thunderstorm warnings and adverse weather.

A storm decided to crash right over our head just we pulled into parking spots at the pass. We eneded up eating our picnic lunches in our cars, while passing food items across quick-recloses car windows :P.

Suba, Mahesh and Sanju were a bit nervous about staying in the storm, and opted to return back to the house. Purni, the kids and I waited for just a little bit more, and were rewarded with a few hours of amazing sunshine to explore Grimsel pass and surrounding areas.

Having had our fill of the pass, we started driving back down to the house, but made a brief stop at Handeckfall Bridge (Handeckfallbrücke) - a pedestrian suspension bridge above the Handeck Gorge. The kids and Purni were a little reluctant to full cross the bridge, but I had fun walking across and taking pictures.

We had more adventures during our stay in the Interlaken area, so more coming up in a Part 2 :)