Romantic Engelburg

Lucerne

The Euro rail is a delight to travel in. The train timings are so perfect and punctual with no room for error or delay. On our way to Engelburg we halted at Lucerne for a couple of hours, took a bus, walked around a little and saw the city where people mostly prefer to stay for a day or two since it is supposedly the central place from where you can visit all the mountain tops.

However against Aakaash’s will I decided to stay at Engelburg which was very close to the tallest mountain in Switzerland - Mount Titlis. Once we reached there Aakaash did pat on my back to choose Engelburg since this was a beautiful small quiet town with a population of not even 4000 people. Its snow peaked mountains, romantic aura and picturesque view left us spell bounded.

I was totally surprised when we got off the station in Engelburg since the hotels were just a min walk, literally. It was like the rail tracks were put right in the middle of the town with no entrance or exit. Although our hotel was 5 mins walk but to see the hotel boards from the station was something I had not witnessed before. Before boarding the train at Lucerne we had an early dinner because we were not sure if we would find anything open when we reached Engelburg which proved to be right but…. We regretted eating early dinner since our hotel had a full spread of Indian food, from dal makhani, butter chicken to kheer. So we quietly listened to our stomachs which denied giving any access to any other food particle and went out for a stroll on the lonely but beautiful lanes of Engleburg surrounded by lush green mountains with snow white peaks.

Once we came back to our room, we asked for a baby cot which was installed immediately upon our request but we hadn’t realized that we hadn’t seen the complete room and adjacent to our room was another small room with attached balcony which had bunker beds for the kids and Aan and Aananya once again had a blast going up and down the beds till they were exhausted and it was their queue to call it a night. Aan slept up and Aananya insisted on sleeping alone in the lower bunk. Another hectic but beautiful day gone and we too retired since the next day we were hitting where Shahrukh and Kajol shot for DDLJ. For breakfast amongst other things upma was there and the hotel had signs written in Hindi which was a delight to see. So we packed the kids very well with sweaters, snow mitts and headed for the snow.

We headed towards Mount Titlis in the world’s first revolving cable car called the Rotair and then had our first experience in an Ice flyer which is a chairlift that spans over the glacier. I was just hoping and praying that it would snow and it did. We had a blast and the kids saw and played in the snow for the first time.

Once we reached the top, we were startled to see life size boards of Shahrukh and Kajol in their famous DDLJ pose right at the entrance which was funny too since loads of Indian families were getting their pics clicked there. I also experienced that it was very difficult to see without goggles due to the glare of the sun. We had a blast tobogganing, swirling rides on snow tubes and sledges. Half heartedly we had to leave since it was time for us to catch our last train for Interlaken. After we came down from the mountain peek, Aakaash headed to the hotel to get the luggage while I couldn’t resist the temptation to buy idli, vada pao, samosa and pav bhaji for our journey to Interlaken making it a perfect end to our stay at Engelburg.