[vinayrathore]

The Journey continues...

The Lakes on the way.



The biggest one "Lago or Lake Bianco"


The landscape.



A tunnel approaches.


The Palü Glacier.


The Alp Grüm Station. We shall see more of it on way back.


The Palü Glacier as seen from the Alp Grüm Station


The Valley or Val Poschavio. The Italian speaking region of Switzerland.


And the descend begins.

[vinayrathore]

A series of loops and tunnels take you down faster than you think.





View from the other side. The Palü Glacier still with us.


A small halt at a cute little station Cavagila.



And we are back on.


Into another tunnel.


A steep gradient begins. This side


And another loop later, that side.

[vinayrathore]

Almost there.


Reached Poschavio. We had 40 mins before the Panoramic Bernina Express starts towards St. Moritz. Came out for a short walk as the town center is a 5 min walk from the Bahnoff. Good time for Lunch. Pizzas ofcourse. Sadly no pics for that part.

Anyways, we reach the bahnoff in time for the Bernina Express. As we were late, we could only get aisle seats.

As we were boarding. A Classic Pullman train at the next platform.



This is what greets us inside.


Panoramic view.


Yours Truly.



And the loops start to take us up.

[vinayrathore]

The uphill journey continues...









The Palü Glacier in a different light.


A Closeup of the various falls at the base of the glacier.


And we reach Alp Grüm Station again.





Lot of Japanese tourists on this circuit.


The train stops here for 15~20 mins due to it being a passing station.

We Indians are not the only ones who create a racket in a train. European are very well experts too

[vinayrathore]

We start off from Alp Grum station..


Oh my god!! a goat coming our way in the train??

No, its a vendor selling souvenirs and her basket has a toy goat attached.

And we move along..



And after some time, the train stops again. No Signal it seems. The passengers get out and so do I.


And climb a adjacent ramp.

[vinayrathore]

Originally Posted by anupamtiwari

Wow, your TL has forced me to do a rethink on my decision to leave Europe travel and rather spend the little money that i have on India itself as it will be a huge saving burden for me. Amazing and congratulations.

Thanks Anupam! This indeed was an out of the world experience and totally worth every buck.

[vinayrathore]

As mentioned in my opening post in this thread, I do not have pics of the last leg on this trip due to a HDD crash. Therefore this will be the last post of this trip. I, however, will try to give all the relevant details. After that, my this year's Netherlands road trip will follow.

Chugging along, we reached back to St. Moritz. What a train journey it was. Surely out of the world experience. Would have definitely missed something had we skipped it.

De-boarded and reached to the car parking to an utter shock! The front right window was open . Everything, including passport, some cash and laptop etc apart from main suitcases were in the car.

We checked and thankfully all seemed to be well! No one had even touched the car. Switzerland has one of the lowest crime rates in Europe. Stories of thieves breaking glasses to take away belongings lying in cars in Paris/Amsterdam are pretty common and that thought had scared the hell out of us at the first sight.

Anyways, it was already 4 PM. We start from the bahnoff and the destination was our hotel near Grindelwald in Interlaken. GPS said it was approx 4 hours away if we take the Highways. That meant we need the Swiss Vignette which we had not taken till now. Stopped at a fuel station just outside St. Moritz and bought a 10 day one for 16 CHF.

Around 15 mins from St. Moritz, the ascend to Julier Pass starts. At 2280 Mts, its one of the lower passes that cuts through towards Chur/Davos and onwards towards Zurich.

Atop Julier Pass.




Then we descend


And go on towards Chur.


Heaven. I guess yes!


Silk Smooth roads.


And then we get onto the freeway.


We reach Walensee. A lake just before Lachen. We took a short break here.






A waterfall on the other side. Look at the amount of water coming down.


We drive on..



We leave the freeway and take a left just before Zurich towards Zug and onwards to Interlaken. The road goes through lush green meadows. We saw quite a lot of rural hinterland on that way. We further joined another freeway that joins Zurich with Interlaken and onwards to Bern. We take a small coffee break here.

A small viaduct.


this is the last pic I have unfortunately.

We went on and after few more breaks and 100s of tunnels later, we reached our hotel in Interlaken at 9:45pm. Pretty late but the lady at the reception was waiting for us as we had informed her about our ETA a while back. We were pretty tired after a long long day and had MTR Rajma Chawal and slept. A small problem that crept was that the Swiss wall plugs are very different than normal European ones and we were not carrying it. I had to cut open my camera Charger's AC lead and take some wire from it to use it as a small contraption to make our electric stove work. Next day we woke up pretty early and set out towards Jungfrau and around. A pretty beautiful day with so many awesome things to see. As mentioned earlier, I have a cousin who stays in Zurich. Next day we were invited for a farming event near Lake Zug and we checked out from our Hotel and drove to the farm at Zug. It was an even promoting local farm cuisine with barbecue and the likes. This followed by a swim in the lake Zug. At 6 degrees, the water was close to freezing but it was an awesome experience. Today we were staying at my cousin's place and the following day went around Zurich and Rhine falls and then drove onwards to Munich for our flight back to India. Phew!! What a trip it was. Hopefully will be done again.

The route we took is as below:


Comingup: Costs involved in this road trip.

[vinayrathore]

Below is the cost description:

Airfare:

Delhi-Munich return via Dubai (Emirates) = INR 81k (2Adults, 1Infant)

Hotels (All were Including Breakfast, WiFi and Parking):

7 Nights at Hotel B&B Augsburg: Euro 110/night
1 Night at Hotel Ankora Prague: Euro 109
2 Nights at Park Inn by Radisson: Euro 105/night
2 Nights at Hotel Grand Europa I guess Innsbruck: Euro 130/night.
1 Night at Hotel All Seasons Grand Venice: Euro 100
2 Nights at Chalet Del Sole Livigno: Euro 50/night
2 nights at Hotel Jungfrau Mürren Interlaken: CHF 120/night

Food: An average of 20~25 Euros per day considering we took lots of MTR RTE foods.

Car rental: 13 days @ 26 Euro per day = 338 Euros
Baby seat 12 days @ 10 Euros per day = 120 Euros

Diesel: approx 480 Euros

Toll: Approx 16 Euros Czech Republic, 16 Euros Austria, 68 Euros Italy, 19 CHF Switzerland.

That pretty much sums up the expanses excluding out of pocket and shopping.