Kazim's Trips

Creux du Van Trip 17-18/07/08

2008-11-19T21:47:00.011+01:00

The Beginning
It was long before we went on this trip that we had reserved the 2 days. As usual I wanted this trip to be in the Alps. Initially I had also hinted on a few prospect destinations. As the days came closer however, the rest of the friends made a pact and decided that we go somewhere in the Jura mountain range, more precisely Creux du Van. In a discussion which lasted a week I ended up using all the tricks I had up my sleeve to push towards a destination in Valais. I had used the weather card which showed better forecasts for the Alps (though no one agreed with me), I used the better landscape argument, I suggested that going to Creux du Van didn’t interest me a bit and I tried being stubborn. But all to no avail.

I had two reasons for my opposition of the trip. The first being going hiking in Jura in July seemed like a waste of precious time, a month more suited for hiking in the Alps. There are only a few months suitable for hiking in the Alps whereas some regions of Jura are suitable for hiking all year round. The counter argument I got for this was that a friend was permanently going back to India and wanted to go see Creux du Van before he left. An argument against which nothing much could be done. The other reason I had was a completely selfish one, I had already done a part of the trip proposed for the second day.

At the end I ceded and went along with their proposal thinking that in a trip like this what mattered the most was the time you spent together with your friends and not the actual destination.

The Group
We were a group of 4 for this trip. The members were Thomas. Adhitya, Cindy and yours truly.

I didn’t know Thomas before this trip. He’s one of Cindy’s flat mates. From the time we spent together I couldn’t form much of an opinion of him. He seemed like a cool guy who could get along well with everyone.

Adhitiya’s a tall Indian guy who looks more Pakistani than Indian. Knowing him completely erased whatever little bias I had towards India. He’s a very friendly guy. However, sometimes I wondered if he was being really nice or if he was flattering me. Given that I didn’t see any reason for him to be flattering someone like me I always went for the being very nice option.

Cindy and I were in the same class when we were taking the preparatory classes to get into university. The funny thing is that we never talked to each other much notice each other before we got in a group of 3 to prepare for the entrance exams. The first I had heard of Cindy was through a good friend, Jessica who had once complained during one of our frequent lunches.

“What unnerves me the most are the cheerleading (pom pom in french) girls.” She had declared.

“What?” Another person at the table asked.

There was a reason to be surprised because there were no cheerleading girls in the university.

“You know those three four girls that are always coming late to class even in the afternoon? With huge smiles? They always have loads of makeup on them and some wear heels. I don’t even know what they are doing here. They should be out looking for men.” Jessica put it down pretty bluntly.

She said all this while mimicking the style of fashion victim girls which gave it a humoristic approach. I remember that we had all laughed to that.

What Jessica said had vaguely struck a bell. I knew there was a group of girls which was always coming in after the class had started but I hadn’t paid much attention to their appearances. After that lunch I did. What Jessica said was true to a certain extent. Clearly that group had 2 of the most fashionable girls among all of the preparatory class students. Cindy was also part of that group. She wasn’t fashionable but as they say: You are judged by the friends you hang out with. Personally I’ve always thought that fashion victims were too self centered. Therefore, my initial opinion of Cindy had gone from neutral towards the negative.

It was only later that I got to know her better and she turned out to be the exact opposite of what I had initially thought of her. In fact she’s one of my closest and most respected friends now.

The Hut
It hadn’t taken us long to get to the hut where we were going to stay. I don’t remember it well but it must have taken us 3 hours at the most. Once at the hut we went right in to get rid of all the formalities. This was going to be my first time staying at a hut. Cindy had made the reservations over the phone so she was the one to go to the reception. There they asked her to fill in a form. It was a form which required the nationalities, number of people etc. To avoid all the hassle the receptionist recommended us to fill out the family form. So, we became a Swiss family of one mother and 3 children.

Thomas couldn’t resist and he asked Cindy:

“Mother, can we have some beer please?”

Right after this we went to claim our beds. For those who don’t know how it works in a hut, huts usually have a few big rooms with loads of beds usually side by side. There are no designated places it’s like a low budget airline flight. First one in gets to choose first.

This hut was quite particular. There was only one huge room with an enormous quantity of double deck beds. The limit of that room if I’m not mistaken was around 117 people. Above the entrance to this room, up a ladder and below the tilted ceiling was another small place which also contained beds. The beds were actually mattresses lifted about an inch above the floor probably by laid out wooden planks. This place looked like a chicken den. There was only enough space to stand straight in the middle of the den which served as a small pathway. On both sides of this pathway were lined mattresses so small that two of them together made one mattress big enough for a single bed, three if you have an American one. Above it all was a slanting roof. The mattresses were glued together so that if you had an urge to stretch your arms you would be violating your neighbor’s space well before you could even have stretched out your elbows. If you were to lie down on one with your head towards the pathway you could only raise your foot by one fourth of a meter before hitting the ceiling. The pathway was itself so narrow that two individuals couldn’t cross each other without walking on a bed. Hence, the name chicken den. We choose to claim the chicken den as it would allow us a little private space and hoped that no one else would venture here.

Luckily we had come here on a weekday so there wouldn’t be a lot of people and I was thanking god for that. Personally I would have felt extremely uncomfortable if I were to have perfect strangers sleeping so close to me. I have my reasons to worry. There are a lot of ‘what if’ scenarios here to take into account besides the usual snoring or smelling problems. For example, what if one of your neighbors spread out his arm while sleeping and ended up hitting you with the elbow while slapping your other neighbor and you got into a fight with the second neighbor because he thinks you were the one who slapped him? There’s no light so who can tell? Or worse what if there was an obese guy sleeping next to you taking up your whole bed as well another persons and forcing you to share your other neighbor’s bed? And what if he turned while sleeping crushing and or suffocating you to death? There are a lot more other scary what ifs to consider here.

The Dinner
Once the claims were made, by throwing our stuff on the mattresses we set off to see Creux du Van. It was 15 minutes from the hut. Creux du Van is a geological wonder. It’s a half circle cliff. It’s what Niagra Falls would look like if there was no water. I guess one of the reasons why I was never really intent on seeing this place was because of what I just wrote. I have seen Niagra Falls and this place really did seem like Niagra Falls without all the splendor of tons of water falling down. What I didn’t know was that from Creux du Van you had a nice view of the Jura Mountains as well as a lake which we had decided over a discussion was Lake Biel. It was here that I had for the first time decided to try my hands on stitched panorama photos. After this trip I ended up getting addicted to stitching photos.

After about an hour’s hiking we returned to the hut. Once there we had some refreshments and saw that the restaurant served fondue. Cindy had seemed tempted by it and then the big question came: Should we order fondue for dinner or eat what we had brought for dinner?

As usual at that period of life I would try to avoid all possible expenditures. The reason for my reluctance in spending was directly linked to my budget. It was only a few months ago that my bank account had showed an all time downturn of -300 francs. For the first time in my life and hopefully the last I was in debt. The funny thing is that at that time there were speculations of the possibility of UBS going bankrupt and people losing their money. If that had happened I probably would have been one of the few who would have gained instead of lost money. It was also at that time that I miraculously got hold of a small part time job in the school library. I say miraculously because when I had 300 francs left in my account the university fees came in by mail followed by the AVS bill. AVS in Switzerland is your retirement fund and all non working students have to pay about 400 francs per year because they haven’t worked. It’s completely ridiculous asking a student who couldn’t work to pay up because of the fact that he didn’t work. So with those 2 new headaches getting hold of a job which I had applied for a year earlier and had forgotten completely about was miraculous by all standards of the word.

Getting back to the question of the day in the hut, the price of fondue was 25 francs. Since it didn’t mention per person I thought it was 25 for 2 persons and Adhitya thought it was 25 for all 4. Cindy made it clear to us that we were being downright ridiculous in making such assumptions and it was 25 per person. She was right about that. But I personally think it’s the price that was downright ridiculous and not us. If 4 people share a fondue with nothing else included, not even water and it cost them a 100 francs for me that’s like having dinner in a mid-luxurious restaurant located at the lake side. The hut we were in as I mentioned earlier was like a low budget airplane flight. In the men’s room there was 1 toilet for everyone, 3 showers side by side without any enclosures between them, a pig stein about 5 meters away from all the sanitation installments and there was only cold freezing water coming out of all the faucets and showers. Need I remind that the number of places in the hut was 117 people? This place was anything but luxurious so why would I want to pay 25 francs for a fondue here? Even the usual argument for mountain huts about being impossible to reach and being supplied by helicopters fell apart because there was a tarred road right behind the hut. So I didn’t pay the 25 francs. And because of my refusal to participate everyone backed down as well even though I’m sure some of us would have liked to have fondue.

By the time we made the decision to eat what we had brought with us it had already become dark and it was cold outside. The question now was where we were going to eat. Since no one dared to ask the hut keepers if we could bring in our food to eat in their restaurant we went back to the sleeping chamber. When we got there we discovered that the sleeping chamber wasn’t equipped with any lighting equipment whatsoever. Not even a moon roof. It’s true that Cindy had told us that the hut keepers had advised on bringing flashlights but I was hoping those were to be used for night trips to the bathroom.

The first item on the agenda was to find some light. We all scrambled up the ladder to our chicken den and Thomas and Cindy brought out their flashlights. With the help of 2 flashlights we found our food and well ate in the flashlight lit den. It was a first timer for me and had I not prepared the food myself I might have refused to eat it with the pretext of not seeing what I was eating.

The Breakfast
The next day we all woke up an hour later than we had planned. I don’t remember well but I think we had planned on waking up at 7 with the possibility of waking up at 5 (if we could see the sun rising) but we ended up waking up at around 8. My back was a little sore in the morning because I had slept horizontally over 6 beds and the mattresses had made a wave like floor under me.

When we had reserved our places in the hut we had opted for the breakfast included option for which we had to pay 15 francs extra per person. We had been told it was 10 francs over the phone but when we reached the hut we were told it was 15. Since we had no other place to eat breakfast we went for it.

The breakfast we were given turned out to be the most disappointing breakfast I have ever had. It was way below the standards for the French speaking Switzerland. To begin with there were no croissants or pain au chocolat, traditional breakfast items found in all cafés, bakeries and hotels. Instead we were given dried pieces of bread which seemed like leftovers from yesterday, something unheard of in this part of Switzerland as far as I’m concerned. To complement the dry bread we were given cheese, butter and some jelly all in a limited quantity so that we had to ask twice for more. The bread was too tough for breakfast bread and the cheese given along seemed more suited for lunch. Bottom line, we only ate a little bit, just enough to calm down our hunger. Honestly, you can get better breakfast than this for 5 francs in the city.

On Huts
I guess the breakfast and dinner is from where most of the money is made in the mountain huts. There’s also the sale of other items such as water and candy bars in some huts which are sold at extortionate prices. I’ve heard of water being sold at the rate of 10 francs for a bottle of 1.5 liter.

Though they might sound ridiculous most of the times these prices can be justified. For example the price of a nights stay in a hut is very reasonable. They charge usually around 30 to 40 francs per night. Most huts have very difficult access and their supplies either come in through helicopter drops or through a cable car. Therefore, the high prices for the food which has to be fetched can be justified.

For the hut where we stayed none of the above limitations apply as it’s linked to a road. I’ve only had to stay in one other mountain hut besides the one in this trip. The other one was a real mountain hut and compared to this one was luxurious. Roomy beds with only 8 double beds per room, every room and hall had light bulbs installed and the toilets were spic and span. This all might seem pretty standard or even cheap but after the chicken den hut experience it’s all luxury :-).

The chicken den hut like all others was an experience to have had. If it did any good, it thought me to appreciate the basic things we take for granted. I think I should try camping in a rainy and windy weather once to appreciate the chicken den’s luxury.

Epilogue
The rest of the trip went on without any unexpected surprises or events. Needless to say we enjoyed ourselves as expected and an account of that would be as boring as any ordinary account of my everyday life.

Legal Disclaimer (or something like that. If nothing it makes the post look more professional): Some accounts might have been slightly modified and due to translations (which not everyone might agree with) some dialog's might be questionable.

Copyright © 2008 Kazim Rehman

Photos from Creux du Van

2008-11-19T21:44:00.004+01:00

Walking along Creux du Van

panoramic view

The view from Creux du Van
Creux du Van

Thyon – Dixence Trip

2008-09-05T21:37:00.007+02:00

It was on a Wednesday that I had first proposed the trip to Farhan. It was one of those propositions that you make casually because you don’t think that it’ll be accepted. I had this trip already planned out before with 2 friends and initially both of them were prepared to come. However, both told me later that they finally couldn’t because their girlfriends were too tired and didn’t want to go on a two day hike. Given that it was a trip for the weekend and it was already Wednesday, it was a short delay and I didn’t seriously expect any positive replies. All I did was leave a message on Farhan’s “facebook wall”. The message I wrote was:

“free this weekend? how about a trip to lac dixence the biggest and highest dam in switzerland with an overnight stay at a mountain hut?”

The answer I got from him was:

“i was gona msg u for a trip .. was feeling really jealous seeing ur pics on orkut :P..saturday sunday both free.. full in mood .. i just hope weather remains fine..”

I had seen some of the photos that Farhan took. He took them like a pro. Equipped with one of those fancy SLR cameras and having more than one lens at his disposable I could see why he would say something like that. For him this was probably an opportunity for photography. What I did not understand was what the 2 dots he added just about everywhere in his message were for.

Now that there was a volunteer I sent him links to all the details and planned an early morning train which Farhan would have to take at 7:40 whereas the one I was going to take was going to be at 6:40. It seemed to be a very early train for him but I told him that this would give us more time to take breaks and take pictures. He also asked me if the hike was going to be difficult. I told him that I personally thought that it was a difficult hike.

As planned the first day was to consist of a 5 hour hike without that big of a height difference. There was going to be a steady climb of about 300 meters at the last part. However, the second day was going to be tough. If I remember it right there was going to be a climb of 800 meters followed by a descent of 600 meters. Once again the hiking time was going to be 5 hours.

***

On Saturday we got to Thyon on time and found ourselves in the middle of a mist. We could hardly see anything further than 5 meters. After a few minutes of wandering around in the mist we finally spotted the hiking signposts. On a normal day it probably wouldn’t have taken a second to spot them. As we set off on the indicated direction I told myself to be attentive and to look for arrows and signs to stay on the right path.

There wasn’t much need to be concerned as within 10 minutes we had gained height and were out of the mist. A further 5 minutes up and the view we had was that of a magical kingdom floating in the skies. All we saw were peaks sitting on the clouds. It was as if the peaks belonged to them and would fly away with the clouds carrying with them all the plants, trees and the animals that might inhibit them. If that was true we were part of another magical kingdom because from the other side we were on the mountains that were also floating on the clouds.

It didn’t take long for some of the higher clouds to start clearing up. All of a sudden a blurry image began forming just below us. It was almost as if a mage standing besides us was using some kind of a spell to uncover a hidden entity, something which had been lost for hundreds of years. The image slowly started to solidify and we could distinguish what seemed to be a hidden village surrounded by clouds on all sides except one which was linked to the rising mountain we were on. That village was in fact a town. It was Thyon.

***

Not long after the mysterious appearance of Thyon a group of mostly middle aged citizens crossed us. As is the custom among hikers, greetings were exchanged. I was asked to take their first group photo of the trip. In the discussion that followed we found out that we had the same destination. Both our parties were going to the same hut, Prafleuri. While we continued to take some pictures the group bid us farewell till evening when hopefully we would meet again.

After 30 minutes of our hike Farhan was already happy to have come. He had claimed that it was the best place that he had been to so far in Switzerland. We discussed about our other hikes and Farhan told me about the times he went hiking in the Karakoram Range of Pakistan. I was impressed because that’s the second highest range of mountains after the Himalayas. There’s also the fact that hiking trips over there are not hiking trips, they are treks. Most treks last a week, that’s the amount of effort that is needed to reach significant places such as lakes, glaciers or good view points. Having heard that I was sure he wasn’t going to have any problems with this hike. After all I had already told him that I classed this hike as difficult and he was still ready to come after that.

Farhan being a fan of photography, we would have to stop every 10 to 15 minutes. There were always streams, rivers, small waterfalls, view points coming along and Farhan had to take photos. A few with the normal lens and some with the wide angle lens. I also like to take photos but the difference between us was that when I wanted to take a picture it was done in 15 seconds whereas when Farhan had to take a picture it took minutes.

As he had explained to me:

“Sometimes you have to wait for hours and days so you can take a good photograph.”

At another moment he said:

“The sun should have been on that side and then the pictures would come out better.”

Decidedly he was crazy about photography. I’m sure the sun never went to the side of the sky he was pointing at. If someone was to wait for that they would probably have to wait for hundreds of years.

***

A time came when I handed Farhan the small pocket camera I was carrying and asked him to take a photo of me. For him the pocket camera must have been a toy. He took it, tried to take something and then said it wasn’t coming out right and he would take one with his camera. That said, he put down the camera clumsily on a rock from where it fell, flipped and rolled at least 3 times before it came to a stop. For a small moment he seemed concerned but the moment the camera stopped moving he picked up his camera as if nothing had happened and took a picture. Initially I thought that’s very unthoughtful of him but if the camera is turned off a few rolls would at worse only scratch the body. I walked over to pick up the camera and saw that the lens was out and the camera was on. At that moment I was somewhat angry. I thought to myself:

“What the heck? It’s not a SLR but it’s still a camera and earlier he was fretting about a smudge on his camera’s captor. And here, he doesn’t even give a damn if he let the camera fall in among pebbles, grass and dirt.”

The fall could have damaged the lens tube rendering the camera useless. If fortunately, nothing like that happened the lens had gotten dirty.

***

By and by we came across a patch of land inhabited by what I would class as mountain goats. The goat territory we walked into was the most colorful one I had seen so far for this animal. Not only were there goats of all sizes but also of all styles. It almost looked like they were running a multicultural society.

There were the rock star goats, standing on top of the ruins of a small room which served as their stage. They stood and observed the crowd below with pleasure. These goats had long hair which hid their eyes and covered most of their cheeks.

There were the hippy goats that seemed to be saying no to racism. They were literally split into 2 parts. Half of their body was black and the other half white. They also bore the most relaxed and chilled out expressions of all. Their faces said “Peace man! You do what you like and I’ll do what I like.”

There were the drugged. These goats were sniffing and licking the ruined walls endlessly away as if the walls contained traces of marijuana in them and they just had to have some.

There were the deprived ones, huddled between two lanes of ruined walls, keeping their faces down to the ground looking for food. They occupied the most densely populated area at the back edge of the goat territory.

There were also the gangsters. These goats had an attitude problem. They would butt just about anything including the walls of the ruins. One of them even got angry at Farhan’s continuous photographing and went after his camera. Farhan actually talked to that goat:

“What do you want?”

But the goat didn’t want any negotiations and certainly no talks. The goat probably thought Farhan was a spy sent from the rival gang, sent to observe and study them. The goat let out a grunt and continued attacking Farhan. I didn’t want to get into a fight with a goat so I stayed clear of all the action. Who knows, if I had decided to chip in, the implicit one on one deal would have been over and it would have been an all out gang war. Given we were 2 we would have certainly been at a disadvantage.

After repeated attacks Farhan had to back up and we moved on our journey.

***

7 hours after we had set off from Thyon we were still not at our destination of the day. In fact we had just reached the starting point of the 300 meters ascent. Farhan was already half dead. From this point I could see a glimpse of Prafleuri hut. Indeed it seemed very high up and far away from our reach at this point but it was only an hour’s hike away. I pointed Prafleuri out to Farhan but since he has a week eye sight he couldn’t distinguish it from the boulders it appeared to be standing on. It was later that I learned that Farhan had thought that Prafleuri hut was at half the height it actually was. It was all the better because if he had really seen the actual hut he might have decided to stay put and sleep it out in the open.

Given his state and knowing that my knee problem is more sensitive to downhill hikes I offered my hiking sticks to Farhan hoping that would help him out a little. I also told him to put the camera away in his backpack to which he had replied:

“Right now I feel like throwing this heavy camera away, it’s quite a burden.”

For a photographer to say something like that was surprising. It was then that I realized that he must be at his limits. Initially I had thought he was just slow and stopped too often to take photos. I thought the situation over. It was 5 pm. The last bus from the bottom of the dam would leave at 6:15 pm. According to the sign posts the hike was an hour long from our position. Given our current speed where it took us 7 hours to do a 4 hour hike there was no way we would make it in time for the bus. Another option would have been to take the funicular going down towards the bus stop from the dam but the dam was also an hour’s hike away. The only option that we had left was to continue on to Prafleuri and come back down the next day. It was obvious to me that tomorrow’s hike would have to be cancelled. That hike was the difficult one and the one we were doing today was pretty standard material.

“I think we should forget about tomorrow’s hike and tomorrow we’ll just come back down towards the dam and take the funicular down.” I told Farhan.

“That’s a good idea.” It didn’t take Farhan a second to agree.

As Farhan later wrote on his facebook album of the trip:

“Trip that nearly got me killed...... note to self never go on a hike other than easy level”

And on orkut:

“trip that nearly got me killed.. note to self never attempt mid or difficult level hike :P”

***

Slow and steady, actually more slow than steady we marched towards Prafleuri. The track to Prafleuri was a narrow track along a steep slope. Further down, the track became red signs on boulders and we hopped from one boulder to the next. All the markings were fresh bright and I was getting the idea that the original track had either been swept away by a landslide or had been considered too dangerous and wiped out. Later we would find that the track indicated on last year’s brochure was on the mountain opposite us across the river.

2 hours later we found ourselves in front of a small but marvelous waterfall coming out of a crag. Within 15 minutes I had toured the fall as much as I could from both sides of the fall and from lower and higher up. Then started the wait for Farhan to finish his photo shoot. 15 more minutes were to pass when I observed Farhan taking his own photos with the timer. I got up and backtracked so I could help him with that. In total it probably took us an hour to move on from there.

It was 8 pm when we finally reached the bottom of the hill Prafleuri stood on. The signpost over there said Prafleuri was 5 minutes away. Looking up at Prafleuri I believed it. Farhan also looked up and laughed.

“That’s not 5 minutes that’s half an hour.” He said.

Given that our hour 5 hour hike had turned out to be a 10 hour one and it still wasn’t finished I believed him too.

While we were there 2 girls came down, said hello and asked us right out if we were all right. At that moment I thought that they were part of the hut staff and were probably worried about us being so late. Maybe it was a scouting party. I had heard that in mountain huts if expected guests don’t come then people are sent out to look for you, including helicopters if there’s a real reason for concern. They also indicated us the direction to Prafleuri and told us that they would see us there. Later I would find out that they were visitors like us and either they were really nice or maybe they just thought that Farhan was cute. We didn’t cross them again that evening.

I went up ahead, reached Prafleuri in 5 minutes, presented myself, paid for the beds and signed the required papers. Farhan was right. It took him 30 minutes to come up.

At the hut’s terrace we met one of the women from the middle aged citizen’s group that we had crossed in the morning. It turned out that they had beaten us to the place by a startling 2 hours and 30 minutes. It’s funny because the track they had taken had more ups and downs then the one we took so they must have had to cover a bigger height difference than us.

***

The next day I woke up early with some of the other hikers. I had time to get ready, have breakfast and even watched numerous groups heading out. Finally I went to the room and asked Farhan if he was ready to get up yet. We ended up being the last group to leave the hut that day.

The hike started with a nice climb. On the way Farhan asked me to take something out of his backpack for him. It was then that I realized that he didn’t have my bottle. Once again I thought how thoughtless of him. He didn’t forget his bottle but forgot the one that I had lent him on his insistence. He had wanted to refill it with the tap water yesterday and drink from it before we went to sleep. Now I had no possibility to refill at a water stream. Luckily I had bought a big bottle of juice as preparation for the hike which I had only opened in the morning.

Farhan still had the hiking sticks fot the uphill and I told him that I would need them for the descent because if I didn’t use them then I was sure to get a knee pain that would last at least 2 weeks. I headed up making sure that we were both visible to each other. Once I reached the climax of the climb I still had some time at hand. Just for fun and to kill time I went up one mountain on the right, came back down then seeing that I had more time went up the mountain on the left. All the time making sure we were both in each other’s vision.

While I was exploring around Farhan had finally finished the initial climb. While I made my way down, and it took me time because I had climbed pretty high I saw Farhan continuing on the downhill with the sticks. That sight had annoyed me. I had already explained to him twice that I would need the sticks for the descent and if he wanted to go forward he could have at least left the sticks on the ground so I could pick them up and catch up to him later.

***

The rest of our hiking trip went more or less well. I had caught up to Farhan and had retrieved the hiking sticks. He had told me that when I was out exploring he hadn’t seen me and had thought that I had continued onwards so that’s why he hadn’t stopped before.

We walked down to the dam and Farhan took the cable car down while I walked that part also. Amazingly we got to the bottom at the same time. In front of us was a hotel. In swiss standards it was huge, something which you would only find in the big cities. Yet here it was standing tall in the middle of nowhere. Seeing a hotel at this location was a surprise for me. For one half of the hotel had for a view an ugly dam wall and the other half, let’s just say nothing worth describing. As for the place we were in, it was half a town with public buses coming only in summer. Building a hotel in this location seemed like a huge blunder to me. If it was at dam's level with views to the peaks and the lake it could have made sense but at this place it didn’t make any.

The hotel only added another mystery to my unsolved mysteries list.

***

At the end I had become frustrated a few more times due to Farhan’s comportment and handling of things. However, I realized it wasn’t that Farhan was evil or deliberately acting and doing things to unnerve you. He never even realized what his actions had done. I came to the conclusion that he’s just a careless person. Once I had come to that conclusion I had lost any type of grudge that I might have started to build.

In fact, after this trip we went on another one and since I was already well aware of his personality nothing felt out of place. It was as if I was with just another friend.

Copyright © 2008 Kazim Rehman

2008-09-05T21:26:00.003+02:00

The hotel with the ugly dam wall background

Farhan going down with the sticks in hand

The white rock star goat. The drug addict munching on the wall to the left

Peace dude. Look for the gangster goat behind.

The appearing of Thyon with the floating peaks in the background

Trift Trip 26-07-08

2008-08-22T21:12:00.005+02:00

It was when the cable car had started moving that Jasky started to act strangely. He crouched down and almost sat on the floor of the cabin, keeping his gaze well below the window. It occurred to me then that Jasky might have the fear of heights. There was only one simple way to find out and that was to interrogate him:

“Jasky, what are you doing crouching down like that?”

“I’m afraid of heights.” He replied.

The answer had come quicker than expected but there was no way out now. I was surprised that he hadn’t told me this earlier because in the planning process of the trip I had mentioned that we might be taking a cable car up and the climax of the trip was a shaky pedestrian suspension bridge over a canyon. I decided to bring that up later. Right now there were more urgent matters:

“Are you going to be ok?” I asked.

“I might throw up.” Jasky said casually as if that was a normal thing to do when you got on cable cars.

The good thing was that for the other travelers we were talking in a foreign language. Actually, I was talking to Jasky in Urdu and he was talking to me in Hindi. Therefore, we were talking in foreign languages and not just one language. The good part about it was that we didn’t create a panic in the cable car. Fortunately, no one knew we had one guy in there that might throw up at anyone at any moment. They probably thought Jasky was doing some sort of Yoga crouching down like that.

By that time our cabin had gone past the first set of poles and was now plunging down before going up again towards the next set of poles. That’s when I made a very unthoughtful and completely stupid comment.

“You better not look up now.” I said while taking a photo at the same time.

“Why?” he asked.

I had realized by now that I shouldn’t have said anything but it seemed to be too late and the truth.had to be told. There was also the fact that most of the time it was impossible for me to lie. The best I can usually do is waver from the subject or say something that might suggest otherwise without it being false. This time none of that happened.

“We are in the middle of two cliffs” I blurted out.

“Oh, shit” in a faint voice was all that I heard from Jasky.

Jasky seemed to have panicked a little at that moment and I even think that he had started to sweat. A few moments were to pass by before Jasky asked me:

“Are we almost there?”

“No, we have only done half-way.”

Now that I look back at it, decidedly I wasn’t any good at consoling. If I had made it sound more optimistic I might have helped him out a little. For instance I could have said:

“Yes, we have already gone half way.”

It’s still the truth but it sounds a lot better

Note to self: Never work in dealing with human psychological crisis.
It’s a good thing that I never wanted to be a doctor. I can only imagine the destruction and havoc that I would have brought upon people’s lives with my comments. I can already imagine a patient asking me if he was going to live. I’m sure I would have replied something like:

“Well to tell you the truth there aren’t many chances. 4 out of 5 people in this case would probably die in a week. But, you seem weaker than most people so maybe you’ll die in less.”

***

As we neared our stop I saw a small oval opening in the river flowing below us which closed itself within ten meters. That opening had formed a lovely miniature emerald green lake in the river. It had seemed so beautiful that once again I couldn’t keep it to myself.

“There’s an amazing sight below us” I told Jasky.

Jasky attempted to look briskly but didn’t take a look for more than a millisecond. He hurriedly crouched down again and thought it over. Finally he decided to give me an order.

“Take some photos!”

“That’s what I’m trying to do but the angel is anything but perfect for the camera.” I had replied.

Soon afterwards we got to terminal without any incidences.

***

It was on our way to the Trift Bridge, known as Triftbrücke among the locals that we crossed a swiss-german man. It was funny because he asked us if we were Pakistanis. That must have been the first time in all my 9 years of stay here in Switzerland when someone took me for a Pakistani. People would usually ask me if I was an Indian. I had a slight idea why all of a sudden there was this change of perception. The guy continued to talk in swiss-german with Jasky for a while and when he was off I had asked Jasky if people usually thought that he was a Pakistani. His answer was affirmative and my theory had begun to solidify. Jasky was a Sikh by belief. He looked like one to. He had an uncut beard and wore something which is similar to a turban on his head which he calls a “Patka”. The situation was almost ironic. Here, there was this Indian who was instantly taken to be a Pakistani and I’m supposing a Muslim too because of the beard and a turban. On the other hand I, a Pakistani was constantly taken for an Indian because I neither had a turban on my head nor a full beard.

Such occasions just showed the stereotype image which has been induced upon the populations by the world media.

***

As the steep climb came Jasky started to have trouble breathing. It was then that I remembered that the last time I went hiking with Jasky we had the same problem and it turned out that he was somewhat asthmatic. However, he had suggested that if he had the time to prepare for the trip he would have brought some medicine or something which could have solved the problem. Given my knowledge of anything which has to do with health, disease and medicine I had no reason not to believe him. Now, almost a year later it had seemed that it was more or less the same problem. Unlike the last time Jasky had more than ample time to be ready for this trip and when I hesitated on canceling due to uncertain weather conditions it was Jasky who had insisted that we go on anyway. I was beginning to wonder now if one could really control asthma with medicines but at the same time I knew that Jasky played hockey regularly in a club. Somewhat confused at this point I decided to try to make things a little clearer for myself.

“You ok?” I asked.

“I’m out of breath.” He replied.

That was quite visible and didn’t make anything clearer so I continued.

“How come?”

“I haven’t done enough sports this year.”

“Dude you go to your Hockey trainings and matches regularly. Compared to you I don’t even do sports for weeks and sometimes months besides the seasonal hiking.” I told Jasky.

This time around his answer changed.

“Yes but when we play hockey we aren’t this high up.”

It all seemed to make sense now. We had less oxygen at this height and even though I really don’t know much about what asthma is I do know that it has something to do with breathing. So maybe asthma combined with height was taking its toll on Jasky.

“So does this always happen when you go to the mountains?” I asked.

“Yes.”

That had cleared one mystery.

***

Jasky wasn’t pleased with all this upward hiking and it didn’t take him long to take the matter up with me.

“I don’t like this hike. The track is too steep” Jasky complained.

“I want a refund.” He laid a claim.

I hadn’t even started to organize paid tours and already I was getting refund claims.

I wondered if I had reached the sum of thousand complaints in organizing hikes yet. I also pondered if there was a hike which I had organized where people hadn’t complained. It wasn’t as if there were never any praises. There were usually both. A lot of people would appreciate the places I would choose. Some even claimed that they had no idea that there were such beautiful places to see in this country till I took them on a hike. However, the complaints always trickled. Too long, too steep, too hot, no water sources, wrong day, too expensive, there was always some reason. Ironically most of the complaints are on things over which I’ve absolutely no control.

I’ve tried to improve the planning in informing with as much details as I can get my hands on and that’s no easy task either. I’ve already included, approximate hiking times, things to bring, height differences to cover, weather conditions but all to no avail. Either I’m a bad organizer or its human nature to complain. After seeing no improvements I’ll go with the second option.

There wasn’t anything to refund to Jasky but I was still thinking the situation out. To refund or not to refund? Finally, I went up with the latter option.

“No refunds!” I told Jasky.

***

Further along the way Jasky asked:

“Do you know first aid?”

“Huh?”

“Do you know how to do first aid?” Jasky insisted.

“Not really.” I replied.

“Do you have a driver’s license?” He asked further.

“Yes.” I replied.

I could see where this was going but I decided to wait it out.

“Did you get it here in Switzerlnad or Pakistan?” Jasky continued

“Here.”

“How did you pass it without doing the first aid?” Jasky questioned me again.

“Weelllllllllll you know, I did do that but it’s been quite a while and you tend to forget things.”

Jasky let out one of those sound which if they could be translated would probably give something like: “What the heck?”

But since it was a sound and there was no approved translation it left me the luxury of completely ignoring it. However, Jasky wasn’t done yet.

“What would you do if someone just fainted here?” Jasky kept up the questioning.

“I’d call the ambulance.” I gave the basic answer.

“Ambulances don’t come up on hiking tracks.” Jasky informed me if as if I was a 5 year old who was lacking the basic logical reasoning skills.

“I’ll call a helicopter then.” I answered just as childishly.

“Helicopters take time to arrive. What if you don’t have that time?” The questioning continued.
By now I was pretty sure that Jasky was concerned about himself. Had the need arose I most probably would have done a CPR nevertheless I wasn’t ready to admit that even in dire circumstances I was ready to put my lips on another man’s face.

“I’d shout for help then.” I told him.

After that Jasky didn’t ask me any further questions on the topic. I think he was reassured by the fact that on that day we had crossed a lot of people and if the need did come for me to shout then there would definitely be someone more competent than me around to help. There was also the fact that right across us was a cliff and any shout would reverberate and go further.

***

Trift glacier is very significant for those who try to render visible the effects of global warming. It actually is quite amazing when you look at a picture of this place from 1948. Where there is a lake today there used to be no sign of one. It was just a glacier. If you were to get your hands on a picture from 2000 you would see that a lake had formed and pieces of the glacier were floating on it. In 2008 the glacier was completely out of the lake and didn’t even look like a glacier anymore. It’s amazing to see how much a landscape can naturally change in 60 years.

***

The hike to see the Trift glacier turned out to be a short hike. It probably took us 2 hours to get to a point from where the glacier and the suspension bridge were visible. That’s where Jasky decided to wait it out. There was no way that he was even going to go close to the bridge. I however wasn’t going to miss out on a chance to walk on a wobbly suspension bridge over a canyon which gave way to a magnificent view of a glacier and its lake. I actually ended up crossing it and exploring the mountain on the other side. After an exploration of half an hour I headed back. After another half hour I was back and found Jasky with his boots off and just being lazy on a big slab of rock.

“Jasky we came here to hike not to get tanned. It’s not a beach!” I tried to stir him up.

“You were gone for hours.” He replied calmly.

I should have known it wouldn’t have any effect on him. Jasky is one of those guys who stay calm all the time. Even at moments when he claims to be stressed out he seems to be as disturbed as a still lake.

“We best get going. There are some dark clouds heading this way.” I pointed out.

Unfortunately we couldn’t beat the clouds. Five minutes after we had headed out the drops found us. It didn’t take those drops long to bring in the army. Within fifteen minutes it was pouring down.

“I guess we should take the cable car to go down instead of hiking all the way.” I suggested.

“No, I’m not getting back on that thing.” Jasky was more terrified of the cable car than I had initially thought.

“Ok, but in rain rocks tend to get more slippery and therefore hiking is somewhat more
dangerous.” I informed Jasky of the consequences.

It didn’t change his mind a bit. We hiked under the downpour for at least an hour before things calmed down somewhat. Up till the upper cable car station there were people in front of us and behind us but the moment we went past that station no one was to be seen. In fact during the 2 hours that it probably took us to get down after passing the cable car station there was only one group consisting of 2 people that we crossed. Personally I didn’t mind the hike at all except the initial part. Whereas we always expected the path to go down for the first half hour it was either flat or it went up. There was a time when we had wondered if somehow we had ended up on a wrong track. Logic told me that wasn’t possible and that’s what I told Jasky every time so we stayed on the track. But whenever the track headed up a bit, doubts did start lurking.

***

By the time we got down to the bus stop we were both wet. We both had jackets which I think should have protected us from the rain but somehow our clothes underneath were damp and I’m sure it wasn’t due to sweat because we were cold too.

When we looked at the timings of the bus we found ourselves in the second worst situation you can get into at a bus stop after a hike. The next bus was going to be in more than an hour’s time…

Legal Disclaimer (or something like that. if nothing it makes the post look more professional):
Some accounts might have been slightly modified and due to translations (which not everyone might agree with) some dialog's might be questionable.

Copyright © 2008 Kazim Rehman

2008-08-22T21:04:00.002+02:00

Mont Tendre Trip

2006-01-02T17:48:00.000+01:00

Planning
I had started to plan this trip a week before the actual date. To keep my expenditures to a minimum I had sent SMS’s and left scraps on Orkut. As the week advanced the weather predictions got worse and more and more people gave negative responses. Among the excuses I got were:

“I’ve family coming over from Italy.”

“I’m on a Europe tour in Estonia.”

“I’m not coming.”

“Have work on Saturday.”

“There’s an aviation thing here this Saturday.”

“Do you know who Allain is?”

There were also two no replies. I also had a chance to discuss this with Adrien via MSN messenger:

Adrien: “Hey! How’s it going?”

Me: “Hello, good and you?”

Adrien: “About that hiking thing you mentioned earlier, what are the details?”

Me: “All right, we go to a mountain pass and from there hike up to Mt Tendre. That’s the highest mountain in the region.”

Adrien: “And how’s the weather?”

Me: “It’s predicted to rain.”

Adrien: “Ahan….. well I wanted to tell you I can’t come.”

Me: “…..ok no problem.”

I wondered why he asked me the details if he wasn’t going to come anyway.

After five days I had convinced only one person. She was the first person I had asked, her name was Kristina. A to be nationalized soon Swiss who came from Croatia at an early age. She was my classmate.

Kristina had taken the liberty to ask other people as well. She must certainly be a better sales person than me because she had convinced two of her friends to come along, among them one with a car to take them all to the place.

To confirm the trip Kristina gave me a call on Friday evening:

Me: “Hello.”

Kristina: “Hey! It’s me Kristina.”

Me: “It’s about the hike. Right?”

Kristina: “Yeah.”

Me: “You know it’s predicted to rain?”

Kristina: “Ahan, but we’re still motivated to go.”

Me: “Cool, I’m always motivated to go.”

I then told her where to go and roughly when to be there. Afterwards I went checking for the train timings myself. I found out from my home it would take long and I’d have to wait a long time in between to get to the place. I called Kristina.

Kristina: “Hello.”

Me: “It’s me. Are you still three?”

Kristina: “Yup.”

Me: “Could you people pick me up, if I come to Morges?”

Kristina: “Sure, it’s on the way.”

Me: “Ok that’s done. You might want to bring along some sandwiches.”

Kristina: “We have those prepared. Bringing a jacket is a good idea to.”

Me: “True. See you tomorrow then.”

Kristina: “Bye.”

All this felt awkward. I was the one who had proposed the trip and had decided the destination but Kristina seemed to be the one who was arranging everything.

Getting There
As planned we met up at Morges. The car they had was Habib’s Mercedes A class. Habib wasn’t a classmate but he was a section mate at university. On the front passenger seat was Kristina who was waving her hands and on the back was Patrick sleeping. I didn’t know Patrick so I was introduced to him after which he fell back to sleep. Soon we were off.

Me: “Hey did anyone bring a camera?”

Kristina: “Yes. I did.”

Me: “Great.”

Habib: “So what are the directions?”

Me: “I thought you people knew how to get there.”

Kristina: “Just follow the road, it’ll lead somewhere.”

To improvise I took out my panoramic map of the French Switzerland and took a look at it. I couldn’t see much outside from the back seat. I passed the map to Kristina.

Me: “Here. Take the map you can see better.”

Habib: “What you doing?”

Me: “I’m giving her the map.”

Habib: “What’s wrong with you? Girls can’t read a map.”

Kristina: “This is the macho type.” She said turned towards me.

Me: “Well……. I thought this one being in an engineering uni, she could.”

Habib: “She’s still a girl!”

Me: “You got a point there.”

Kristina: “Hey! What do you people mean, I can’t read a map?”

Habib: “You can’t! I’m sorry to inform you that.”

Kristina: “I can!”

Habib: “Can’t!”

Kristina: “Can!”

Me: “Hey! Hey! Stop fighting or I’ll ground you both!”

Habib: “Ok. Go ahead and give the directions, we’ll see.” He said to Kristina.

On the road there were enough directions pointing to the region where we were going so there wasn’t much need of navigation. Along the way we came to an instance where the road split up in two. Habib opted for the left one. A few seconds later Habib seemed hesitant.

Habib: “I think we should have taken a right back there.”

Kristina: “Yeah. You should have taken the other one.”

Habib: “See! I told you girls can’t read maps.”

Kristina: “I wasn’t even navigating!”

Habib: “You were supposed too.”

Kristina: “He can’t even follow road signs.”

Soon enough we had reached the point of depart of our hike. We took our things and took a start.

Land of the Cows
The path we were on was surrounded by rocks and trees. The sky above us was cloudy. Habib seemed to have gotten younger all of a sudden. He started acting like a twelve year old. He went hoping from stone to stone saying that he couldn’t touch the ground because there was a river of lava flowing. Next he broke a branch to make a stick and thwarted Patrick with it saying it was a sword and he had to defend himself. What followed was a stick war between which seemed to be half swordsmen and half samurais, both done very clumsily.

By and by we seemed to have entered a cow territory. The path we were on had cows lying down on each side. They were all gnawing and looking at us as if strange beings had just landed. The scene somehow reminded me of the Oz books I used to read when I was a kid. In those stories animals talked and some lived like humans. True enough we weren’t on a yellow brick road but we sure were on a yellow dirt road.

The cows seemed to be analyzing us. I was wondering when the king cow was going to be presented. We had moved halfway into their territory and they kept gnawing and eyeing us as if an honest company had walked into a pack of straw chewing, coin flipping thieves.

This thought in turn reminded me off the funny clip that a friend had sent me once. The clip was named matrix cow. Basically it was a battle scene between a martial arts student and a martial arts cow. This thought was scary. Here we were right in the middle, surrounded all around by cows and I was thinking of cows doing martial arts. It didn’t take me long to realize that if such was the case our two amateur swordsman/samurai stood no chance with their puny sticks against these five hundred kilo beasts. We were at the cow’s mercy.

As I looked further down I saw some bulls as well. Bad had just gone worse. Must be the Special Forces I thought. Not only did they look heavier but mean too. Certainly I didn’t want one of those running after me. I’m sure those bulls lifted boulders for exercise and ate lions for dinner. I mean how can grass provide enough material for those muscles which kept on popping one on top of another? Grass was probably just a cover for the real food.

There was only one thing to do now. Act like we were invincible and they were unimpressive, not be bothered with animals. We moved on, talking as usual and looking here and there. The cows kept their gaze towards us. In a while we were out of the cow territory. No events had taken place. Either our bluff had worked and the cows didn’t want to take any risks or they didn’t think us to be up to the mark to pose them a threat and hence worthless to be bothered with. Whatever the case was we were out of the area and were headed towards our destination the summit of Mt. Tendre.

Reaching the Summit
The party remained motivated and the journey continued on. Every time we saw a summit we thought that was it but no there was always another bigger summit behind the present one. According to the posts we had one hour and thirty minutes of hike left. The clouds were closer now. At one time we were walking in them. This was yet another scary moment. This was the exact scene seen in the movies situated in the middle ages. Usually when the troops are making their way through the woods and fog hits them followed by sounds of metal and horse hooves. Before they know it the troops are ambushed.

Me: “You don’t suppose that any wars had been fought here do you?” I asked Kristina.

Kristina: “I don’t know but it seems very unlikely all the way up here.

That was comforting. I wasn’t expecting any middle age armies coming up at us in these times but I couldn’t have said the same for a ghost army.

By and by it had started to drizzle. Now we could see the metallic pyramid which indicated the destined summit. That sight rendered us with more energy. We increased our pace and in fifteen minutes we were there. The moment the summit had been reached everyone started collapsing and hitting the ground. The last climb was indeed steep. I took the moment, borrowed Kristina’s camera and took a few snapshots. Within five minutes of our reaching the place it had started to pour down. We got under the pyramid but it was full of holes and the water came down in a more organized manner.

What followed was a hasty departure. Soon enough I had synchronized trickles of water falling from both ends of my cap. Habib went back to acting like a child and went jumping into puddles.

“And this guy is supposed to be the same age as me?” I thought to myself.

The rain had basically already ended our trip. We walked back more or less quietly and upon reaching the car went straight our own ways.

Disclaimer: Some accounts have been slightly modified and dialog's added to make the tales more interesting. Besides, I had to translate :-)

Copyright © 2006 Kazim Rehman

On the way up

Mid-way

At the top

Ovronnaz Trip

2005-09-14T20:40:00.000+02:00

Saturday morning, I was standing at the train station when my mobile started vibrating and making a racket. I stood up brought it out, took a look at the display and read Basma on it. The moment I was about to take the call the phone calmed itself. This certainly meant that she had arrived and could see me. Right I was. She soon came into view and we greeted each other with the usual Salams.

“I need to buy the ticket. What’s the destination again?” She questioned me.

“Ovronnaz, it’s a small town in the canton of Valais.” I gave her more information than she had asked for.

“Aren’t you gonna take the day pass?” I continued.

“No. I think it’ll be cheaper for me if I take the normal ticket. I’ve got the half-price card.” She explained.

She bought her ticket and asked me when Adrien was coming. I gave Adrien a call and found out that he was on his way in a bus and would arrive shortly. We waited and when there were only a few minutes left we moved towards the platform. I called Adrien again.

Adrien: “Yeah! I’m still in the bus but we’re almost here.”

Me: “There’s only five minutes left before the departure!”

Adrien: “I think I’ll make it if I run. You guys get to the platform and what platform is it?”

Me: “It’s 6. All right we’ll be close to a door and jump on when we see you running into the train.”

I hung up.

“Well, he’s gonna come running.” I told Basma.

We went up to the platform, stood next to the door of one wagon and looked out towards the other end of the train hoping to spot Adrien soon.

“One more minute left.” I said out loud.

I was now watching the second hand of the suspended clock.

“Swoosh, slam.” A noise came all of a sudden.

The doors of the train had been shut close and there we saw Adrien on the platform twenty meters away.

“Hey! He shut the doors 15 seconds early.” I said angrily.

“There goes the train.” Basma concluded.

“So close yet so far.” I replied.

Ten seconds more would have been more than enough to catch the train. Adrien came up to us panting.

“Sorry.” He apologized.

That’s ok. We’ll take the next one.” Basma asserted him.

“According to the timings I printed, the next one is in two hours.” I told them.

“But a train circulates on this route every hour.” Basma argued.

“True, but the bus we needed to take from Martigny doesn’t run every hour.” I explained.

“We could go somewhere else instead. How about Lac de Joux” I suggested.

“I’ve already bought my ticket.” Basma reminded me.

“Oh yeah. We’re going to Ovronnaz then.” I stuck to the original destination.

Adrien on his side had come up with the master plan.

“We can take the next direct train to Lausanne. It reaches Lausanne five minutes before the one we just missed. If the direct one is on time then we can switch at Lausanne.” He told us.

He seemed to be very well informed. It was a seductive plan. We could still save ourselves two hours. We went for it.

On the train I showed them the hiking routes which I had planned. Adrien made us listen to a few African tunes. Some of them sounded catchy. The closer we got to Lausanne the slower the train seemed to move and the more anxious we got. When we had reached Lausanne Adrien informed us that we only had three minutes left to find and hop on the next train. It seemed tough. We got up and got ready for the sprint. The moment the doors opened and we saw an opening in the human jungle we sped. I was in the lead. Upon sighting the train I ran up the platform and the moment I had reached the platform I heard it again.

“Swoosh, slam.”

I took a look at the clock and turned around.

“You can stop running. We missed it.” I yelled out.

When everyone was up I spoke again.

“It left ten seconds early!” I was furious on having missed it yet again by so little. I couldn’t see why the conductor was so pressed. If he had to go to the toilets they were present in the train as well.

Once again we searched for other plans. There were none to be found. We moved on to the next thing in the agenda. We had two hours to spend. How and where were we to do that?

After a few arguments and having checked with the train people for further details we came to the conclusion that we should go check out Martigny.

At Martigny the first thing we did was go to the tourism office. There was a girl sitting at the desk. I went to the other side looking at the various brochures on display. Basma and Adrien followed suit and went to the same side.

“Good day.” The tourism girl finally spoke.

I turned around walked to her and answered politely, stopped a while and continued again.

“We were heading towards Ovronnaz and were wondering if you would have any information on what we could do over there?” I asked

“I don’t have many details on that, but let me take a look.”

Soon enough she had produced a pamphlet showing the major hike routes, followed by a 50% off coupon for the only chairlift in town. We bid the tourism girl goodbye and went off wasting some time in Martigny. From Martigny we took a bus to a midpoint town, where we waited again for the bus to Ovronnaz.

At Ovronnaz we got off at the wrong stop and had to walk some more. By the time we got to the chairlift we realized that it was going to shutdown in ninety minutes. This was bad news. It had taken us more than three hours to get here and we wouldn’t even be able to stay up for two hours. The original plan was for a three hour thirty minute hike. The back up plan was for one hour thirty minutes. None of those could be taken as the times were approximated and it could take more or less time.

After a discussion we decided to go up anyway because otherwise we would have traveled all this way for nothing. We went to buy tickets at the booth.

“Do you give any reductions to holders of Swiss pass and half-price cards?” I asked the vendor.

“No sorry. We are a private company.” The vendor told us with a smile.

We took out our fifty percent off coupons and presented it to the vendor.

“Where did you get these?” The vendor asked us. His smile had faded into a small frown and his voice seemed rougher all of a sudden.

“At the tourism office in Martigny” We informed him.

“Six francs per person!” He replied without adding please or smiling.

We thanked him anyway, paid and took the chairlift up. On the way I noticed that Adrien looked pale. I realized then that Adrien was always reluctant in going somewhere whenever it was mentioned that a cable car would be used. This time I had forgotten to mention that.

“You ok?” I asked him.

“I don’t like heights!” He gave a quick short answer.

“Oops… I had forgotten that you didn’t like heights.” That was the only thing I could think of saying.

Adrien remained crisped and didn’t talk till we had reached the top. I’m sure he was glad to have touched the ground again.

Up there we just walked around a little, took a few pictures and headed back for chairlift to start the return journey. It wasn’t even a proper hike. It was more like a stroll in the mountains.

Disclaimer: Some accounts have been slightly modified and dialog's added to make the tales more interesting. Besides, I had to translate :-)

Copyright © 2005 Kazim Rehman

2005-09-14T20:37:00.000+02:00

Taken from the bus on the way to Ovronnaz

2005-09-14T20:36:00.000+02:00

View of Ovronnaz from Jorasse

2005-09-14T20:34:00.000+02:00

Track indications

2005-09-14T20:30:00.000+02:00

Chair lift terminal

Gorges de l'Areuse Trip 23-07-2005

2005-08-14T17:53:00.000+02:00

The Planning
I started planning this trip the day I saw a picture of the place in a brochure. The picture was that of a river flowing in the shadows of two enormous cliffs. To tell the truth it wasn't the most impressive of pictures I had seen. What made me want to visit this place was the fact that I had never been to such a landmark and that this wasn't a landmark which one would expect to see in Switz. Switzerland is more of a lake behind which one can see mountains (often lush green) kind of a place.

Once the decision was made I had to see if anyone else might want to join in this one day trip, as I had envisaged it to be. Fortunately I got hold of two people, both of them former classmates. One of them was Adrien a guy from Benin and the second a Pakistani girl named Basma. After many change of plans it was decided finally to go on a Sunday and due to Adrien's availability to take the train around noon.

Sunday Noon
Fortunately everyone was on time at the train station. We took the train as planned and got comfortably to Neuchatel city. It was from here that we took a regional train to Noiraigue a small town in the canton of Neuchatel. We all agreed that the regional train here was cleaner and more chic compared to the regional trains circulating in the cantons of Geneva and Vaud. It had polished wooden panels and walls instead of plastic or metallic ones. It actually looked like one of those old luxury trains. It was just a lot quieter than those old trains.

The Hike
Noiraigue was the starting point of our hike. According to the brochure the hike was to last only two hours and fifteen minutes. I had already printed out the directions and the train timings for the return trip as well for the arrival. So far everything was going according to plan.

As soon as we got off at the Noiraigue station we sighted the famous yellow hiking posts. We took the direction indicated by the sign post with 'Gorges de l'Areuse written on it. After five minutes we came to a point in the village where we hesitated to take a right or a left. Along came a six year old chap on his bicycle making "vroom, vroom" noises and going in circles around us. The boy's style reminded me off those American movies where a gang of bikers surrounds it victims and keeps on closing in and studying them. I was wondering where the rest of the gang was and what attack plan did they have. I almost laughed out loud looking at the force. Just then a little girl came running towards us from 20 meters.

"Oh great…" I thought. "…one midget heroine to go along with the midget villain. Did she just escape from the biker boys custody and are we gonna have to save her?"

I was still churning up all sorts of impossible situations when the adorable girl stopped right in front of us and asked:

"Are you people lost? Can I help you?"

"What's this? Inversion of roles? Is she going to save us?" I thought somewhat disappointed.

"Which way to Gorges de L'Areuse," Basma asked?

"Go down the road, take a left on to the road next to the train tracks and keep walking straight." the girl answered.

We all bid her our thanks and moved on. We were aware that the girl had already given us a good impression of this area.

"Did you understand what she said?" Basma asked me in Urdu.

"Yeah! Go back fifty meters to the train station. Run around in circles till the next train comes. Get on it and go home." I told her.

"Whaaaaaat?"

"She said........ go straight and take a left........" I told her. "...She was speaking in French!"

"I know but she spoke to fast" complained Basma.

Twenty minutes into the journey and we entered Gorges de L'Areuse. It was as I had expected it to be. A calm narrow river was flowing surrounded by massive natural walls. The river flew very smoothly almost as if the water was that of a small lake. Amazingly the color of this river wasn't comparable to any others I had seen. The surrounding environment had arranged itself to give this river a shiny emerald green color, which shined as if it was polished from above. It was worth coming here indeed. The path that we followed was made for hikers and it was situated next to one cliff or the other and situated a few meters above the water. Sometimes the path was even dug into the cliffs.

A few minutes had passed by when we came into another spectacular scene. This one however wasn't completely natural, even though it was in perfect harmony with nature. It was same as before but there was one fundamental difference. It was but a simple ancient bridge which stood before us. The fact that it was made out of stone and that time had been working on it for ages made it just as smooth as the boulders in the river and the surrounding cliffs. It stood in between the two cliffs as if it was acting as a buffer and not letting them get into a brawl. Though this human intervention was endorsed by nature and went perfectly along with its surroundings. We stayed around the area for a good twenty minutes taking photo shots here and there and then moved on. As we continued we came out of Gorges de L'Areuse and left it behind.

We had already passed through a few towns. It had drizzled for a few minutes in between but luckily the rain stopped soon afterwards. Meanwhile Basma had started complaining that we were going too slowly. Adrien was walking in a relaxed mood so he was usually behind. Personally, I was of the view that when hiking in group one should keep their pace to the slowest in the group so as not to force them into feeling like running a marathon. After all it isn't to suffer that one takes up hiking.

By now we were walking on a road and it passed by right next to that same river we had been crossing and following all day long. More than the suggested two hours and fifteen minutes had passed by and the destination didn't seem any closer according to the signposts than when we had started. Basma once again was of the view for the nth time that we weren't walking fast enough. Finally I had decided to take up the matter. I went up to Adrien and asked:

"How about going a lil faster?"

"Sure. No problem." he answered.

From someone who hadn't been on any hikes as I had understood and was saying a few days before that two hours and fifteen minutes was way too much and considering that we had already been walking for over three hours this was an unexpected, no resistance success.

"Ok, you lead then!" I gave him the go.

"All right, but you people are gonna have to keep up!"

"No problem." I answered.

As Adrien took the lead we crossed yet another bridge and were back on off-road. Initially we moving at a moderate pace but as soon as the track took height Adrien sped up. Normally people slow down when climbing but this was Adrien. I ended up jumping and half jogging from boulder to boulder. This was fun. I was beginning to wonder now if this was in the plan all along. Walking deliberately slow to take the lead and than taking us on a rollercoaster ride through the track. In the meantime we were back into the some cliffs. These one seemed even bigger and savage but not as breathtaking as the Gorges de L'Areuse. Three minutes on and I had already lost the directions and train timings sheets I had while brushing past a safety railing. Where they had fallen it would be impossible and dangerous to go so I moved on quickly to stay right behind Adrien but with hesitation. Luckily I knew the name of our end point destination of this hike. Two more minutes on and I realized that the 3rd person was no where to be seen. On this I told Adrien to stop, which he did after another fifteen meters. A good moment was to pass before Basma came around walking calmly. When she came up to us this is what she had to say:

"I'm sorry but you people are jerks."

"Huh... did she just get kidnapped by aliens and sent back with angry thoughts directed at us to see how humans handle these situations?" was the thought which came to my mind. "Those UFO’s must be pretty well made to be able to come down these cliffs."

"Just when there's a place to observe and take photos you people start running." She continued.

"Ok, maybe it wasn’t the aliens." I still couldn’t figure out the problem here.

Personally I was dumbfounded. First of all it was her who wanted to go faster. Secondly she could have just shouted at us to stop anytime if she wanted to stop or slow down. Thirdly she didn't have to get angry. She could have said the same thing in a more diplomatic fashion. To top it all off she added afterwards:

"I'll come at my own speed, you guys can continue running."

Whatever happened to the concept of group and team?

Adrien took up the argument: "I wasn't running! If you call that running that you haven't seen me running."

That led to a short stalemate conversation.

"Ok, we'll follow you then." I attempted to bring the situation down.

"Just move!"

That wasn't taken well either. From that I understood she was too angry for a reason which I simply couldn't see. I suppose it's the same reason for which I can't understand girls. Without any warning temper meters go red. It was clear that saying anything else wouldn't help and would be a waste of time. I smiled told Adrien that she was angry and took the lead.

We moved on taking photos here and there. Fortunately in a few minutes the tense atmosphere had moved on. In forty-five minutes we were out of the cliffs, into Noiraigue (our destination) and at the train station waiting for the train to start the ride back to our homes.

The hike which was supposed to last two hours and fifteen minutes ended up to be more than a four hour hike.

Moral of the story: Don't trust everything written in brochures.

Disclaimer: Some accounts have been slightly modified and dialog's added to make the tales more interesting (That’s why the day one of these people in my accounts end up reading my blogs they’ll declare war against me). Besides, I had to translate :-)

Copyright © 2005 Kazim Rehman

THE Bridge

2005-08-14T17:44:00.000+02:00

Photo taken by Basma and put up without permission.

Voyage to Schwarzsee

2005-01-07T13:24:00.000+01:00

4th January 2005.....

6:30 AM

Beep, beep, beep.

It was my alarm clock trying to get my attention.

“Why do these things have to be so cruel and wake you just when you don't want to be awakened?” I asked myself.

I turned the alarm off and went back to sleep only to wake up with a start ten minutes later.

“I've got to get ready and catch the 7:40 regional train.” was the thought which sent my sleep back to slumber land.

My next thought was:

“Oh man, why does Achraf have to go this early?”

It was sad indeed, getting out of bed at such a time in the middle of Christmas-New Year holidays. If it was a school day I would have had no problem waking up even at six but this, this wasn't right. Slowly I got up and gathered that which I decided to wear and moved towards the bathroom.

Half an hour later I was freshened up and ready for the day. The plan of the day was to go to a certain place named Schwarzsee. That unfortunately meant that I was going to be in the German side of Switzerland. The part which as far as beauty is concerned is lovely but where I'm never at ease. First of all even with my two years of the German language I can't understand a word of Swiss German. Second it's a place which is not as welcoming towards foreigners as is the French side of Switzerland. With my skin color it can be seen from far that I'm not a local and well some people go as far as to associate it with a potential terrorist. So from time to time I get those weird looks which are watching you for the slightest unnatural behavior. Wonder how it would be like if one day I'd go with a grown beard and a traditional Pakistani dress.

Literally translated Schwarzsee gives black lake. Two days earlier Achraf had come over for a few hours to decide today’s destination along with the other minor details. Being January, the middle of winter there weren't many choices for people like us who don't know how to ski. After a little looking around the closest and the most interesting thing we came up with was the black lake. Being at 1050 meters above sea we figured by this time it would be frozen and there seemed to be a path we could take to contour the lake.

Back in my room I took a quick glance at the clock and realized I had half an hour left to take my breakfast. That was more than I needed to eat. I unhooked my mobile phone and the camera from there adapters and moved towards the kitchen. Once I entered the kitchen I did have a problem looking for a suitable breakfast.

“No waffles in the cupboard. Don't feel like eating cereal. What else is left? Hmm... What’s that in the pot on the stove?” To my surprise it was a dish called gajar ka halwa. Better breakfast than expected.

7:30 AM

I left my house 10 minutes before the trains scheduled arrival at the station. Normally when going to school I leave 5 minutes before but then I usually end up running to catch it. It's not that I've ever missed the train but I didn't feel like running today.

7:41 AM

The train arrived one minute late. Being in Switzerland people started complaining. Yup, that's Switzerland everything has to be perfect. When the train stopped it seemed already pretty much filled. That's when it became evident that even though those studying in the canton of Vaud were still on vacations their counterparts in Geneva were already going back to school. That meant that I would have to stand up until we reached Geneva. That's exactly what happened. Not a good start.

7:56 AM

The train reached the station and just about everyone including me got off. As he had said he would Achraf was waiting for me at the station. Achraf my classmate is about as tall as me and comes from Morocco. We greeted each other and walked to the platform from where we were to take the train to Fribourg. The train came on time and we left the station at 8:10. The ride was to take one hour and a half. Meanwhile we discussed on various topics. School is one thing which always comes up among us people going to EPFL. It's taken such an amount of time that we can't avoid coming to that subject. Another thing which came up was that we should have brought playing cards with us. From time to time there was also a good view of Lake Geneva and the surrounding mountains. One thing was certain the amount of snow on the ground had increased on the way. From non-existent in Geneva to snow covered villages in the canton of Fribourg. Before we knew it we were at our destination. Here we were supposed to look for a bus station and take a bus from there half an hour later. The bus station was just behind us but we went out, looked for a tourism office and were sent back to the same spot. That used up the half an hour extra we had pretty well.

10:00 AM

We left the station in the bus headed to the black lake. The journey as I had checked on the Internet was to take 50 minutes. The ride was rather slow and the stops even though not so frequent were draggingly long. A lot of students got on from different stops with snowboards in there hands. That gave us the idea that like us they were on vacations as well. Soon we realized that my friend and I came closer to all the senior citizens than our counterparts of this region. We were the only youngsters who didn't come armed with snowboards. We reached the place in time but as we had expected it to be the last stop which it wasn't we missed the stop. However, having demanded very quickly the bus driver dropped us off making a special stop 100 meters away. We gave him a big thank you and had a better look of the place.

10:55 AM

For one thing it was white all around. The not so obvious part was finding the lake. Once again we were looking too far. It was dead in front of us. Not so amazingly it wasn't black but it was white. It was the not so circular patch of snow which touched the chair-lift station on the left and the right end was hidden behind trees further down. That was a surprise. Not only was the lake frozen but it had about an inch of snow on it. As planned we started walking on the track near the frozen lake. It was my friend’s first trip to such a place and it was the first time he had seen a frozen lake. I had already seen one once but it was covered with a sheet of ice and not ice and snow so it was easier to tell. On the way I was looking for one of those yellow sign posts which you tend to find on hiking paths all over Switzerland. We did reach one of those after a couple of minutes and found out that we were on the lake tour trail. That part we already knew. About 15 minutes and three signposts later we reached a place with a lot more signposts. Now this was more helpful. The more signposts the better I always say. From there we took a detour and started towards a small waterfall in the region.

“Let's go.” said Achraf.

“All right. Let's.” I replied.

The moment we started to advance a dog started barking like a wolf.

“Then again let's go back.” I came out quickly.

“Yeah, the sign did say 15 minutes. That's far. Let's go back.” Achraf took the same stance as me.

Then we looked at each other and cried:

“Hell no!”

As we marched on the slippery track with less snow and more ice the dog kept on warning us. Finally the dog came into our vision. I had half expected a 20kg bulldog running towards us. Achraf had expected a tall lean mean German shepherd. On the contrary it was a measly little dog who just wanted to look bad. One thing is sure, the dog failed miserably to look bad, however it did sound like a wolf. He must have been working all last year on his bark. Now he just needed to lift more weights and grow half a meter. He was standing on the porch of what I presumed was his masters house. We kept on advancing and finally seeing we weren't backing off he did what I thought the Wizard of Oz did when he was found a humbug. He dog lost his voice.

“The moment we have our back towards him, he's gonna come runnin and bite us”, Achraf told me what he had in his mind all of a sudden.

That sounded scary.

“What if the dog had also practiced the sneaking up from back and biting his prey move?” I thought.

This idea sent a little shiver down my spine.

“Nah, its Switzerland. The dogs are well trained or they don't get there license.” I finally spoke.

“You know you won't even hear him coming.” I added later.

“What? It's not a tiger that would come silently and Grrrrr Swoosh would bring you down before you know what happened.” Achraf replied.

“No. That would be a leopard or a panther. Tigers are heavy and clumsier. And it would be more likely a Caaash instead of a Grrrr.........”

And so continued our debate on the sounds made and attacks inflicted by tigers. The topic changed slightly when Achraf told me a small account in his life.

“Once, in Morocco I was talking to my friend and this cat came running and bumped into my friend’s leg.”

“That's informative.” I thought.

He continued.

“The cat then looked up and had an expression on its face saying: Huh? What are you doing in my way? Then it ran away. My friend had a blue mark on his leg after that”

“I didn't know you could read the expressions on a cats face. You know that's amazing.” I made my conclusion of his story.

“You know what I meant.” he replied.

Fifteen Minutes later after joking around, we reached the waterfall or what was left of it. Apparently the waterfall had met the same fate as the black lake. Besides being white it was also frozen. Unlike the lake, the waterfall still had signs of water trickling. The ice formed great big pillars of ice varying in all shapes and sizes. It did leave a frozen trace of the normal course of the waterfall.

Achraf was quite happy to witness such a site. He expressed it by saying wow and damn. Earlier on he was arguing with me that it was impossible for falling water to be frozen in the air like that. He didn't want to believe me when I told him that ice formed a shell above the water and the water kept on flowing underneath if not above the ice. That's what I had figured out happened in observing half frozen waterfalls with chunks of ice sheets above it falling.

After taking a few photos and then a few risks to take better close up photos which didn't come out well even after all that work, we took another path followed it for a while then seeing no end point we went back towards the black lake. Once again on our way back the dog was barking at people coming from the other side. Once again he had no luck. Poor dog must have been quite a disappointing day. No one took his warnings seriously. When we passed by him again he didn't even growl or yelp.

12:30 PM

We came back on to the lake tour trail. From here we continued our lake contour. By now the sun was at a better angle for the rays to hit the lake and some of the nearby mountains, making everything more pleasant. After another hour of walking and having taken a few photos en route we had reached the ski station. People wearing colorful clothes could be seen sliding down the mountain in various ways. Meanwhile, quiet a few individuals had started to walk on the lake. Not only that, but the Para gliders were also using the lake as a landing field. The lake had life under and above it now. Slightly tired and hungry we sat down on a dry rock to eat what we had prepared for lunch. Achraf took out an apple and two oranges. I brought out a bag of chips. It turned out to be more of a snack than a lunch. Most people would say that bringing such things on such a tour isn't cunning at all. But that's not all we brought. Besides that in our survival kit we both had four energy bars. I also had a bottle of water where Achraf had a bottle of Schweppes and orange juice.

2:00 PM

Having eaten and rested a while we decided to take our turn at walking on the lake. We followed more or less the same straight path laid out by those that had preceded us.

That's when Achraf asked me the question which I'm sure had been disturbing him since the day we planned the trip.

“Why do they call it the black lake?”

How was a guy like me who had found out about its existence two days ago to answer that question?

“Have you seen how it looks in summer?” he added.

“Yeah, I've seen that.” I replied.

“Is it black? Did you come here in summer?” he continued bombarding me with questions.

“No and no.” I said calmly.

“Oh, you saw a picture then?”

“Ahan, the one on the brochure we picked up at tourism office.” I said almost mockingly.

“Oh yeah. But why do u think it's called the black lake?”

Having no satisfactory answer and being asked again I told him:

“Maybe if you swim to the bottom of it, having less light there it would look black. Or maybe the person who named it first discovered it in the middle of the night and was too tired to consider that lakes don't look the same at different hours..... And when he woke up next morning it was too late too change names.”

Achraf certainly didn't look convinced. I thought I had found excellent reasons for the lake to have such a name.

“You know, you could have just said you didn't know.” Achraf reproached.

“Yeah.... do you want a picture taken here?” was my simple reply.

“How many more pictures can you take?” he asked.

“Don't know. Don't care. It's a digital camera man. We'll just delete a few photos or change sticks if it's full. Normally at five mega pixels it takes around fifty to sixty photos.”

That was the advantage of these digital cameras. You could keep on pressing and clicking till you were tired. No need to worry about paying to get your photos developed or to consider changing roles like with the older classic ones.

After having taken a few pictures we went back towards land and continued towards the bus stop we had missed earlier on. We had seen the two main attractions of the region, the lake and the small waterfall. The only thing left on the agenda was the ice palace. The only reason I wanted to go there was because it had a cool name. In German it gave Eispalast. So far we hadn't found one signpost pointing towards that direction. Having reached the bus stop we had decided to take the next bus back. That was when looking at the signposts there we say:

Eispalast 45 min

“How about it Achraf, wanna go?”

“45 minutes to go and 45 to return that makes one and a half hours. No I'm too tired, maybe some other time.”

I was somewhat disappointed but that's the way it was. Thirty minutes later a red and white bus finally came.

3:05 PM

We got on the bus. The journey back had started.

3:54 PM

We were back at the train station. We threw a quick look at the departure times of the trains. The one going to Geneva was at 3:55.

“What time is it?” asked Achraf.

I took out my mobile to have a look.

“It's 3:55. RUN!”

“Do you even know which platform it is on?” Achraf seemed to lack trust in me.

“TWO.”

We ran up the stairs to the platform. Surely the train was there, but for how long? I ran to the closest door and pushed the button hoping the train doors hadn't been locked yet. Swoosh the train doors opened.

“Yes! We made it and saved ourselves an hour of waiting.” I cried in triumph.

We climbed up to the 2nd floor and walked through at least 3 first class wagons and a restaurant wagon before we reached the 2nd class.

“Okay, let's sum up the expenditures of this trip.” I said once seated.

“What expenditures?” Achraf looked at me dumbfound.

“Zero francs for the train ride because we have the Swiss pass. Zero francs for the bus ride because the Swiss pass covers all public transport networks. We didn't eat at a restaurant nor did we take the chair-lift up. So that sums up to be zero francs. You can't beat this.” I said with a smile.

Achraf gave a laugh and took the camera to review the pictures taken.

5:15 PM

We were in Geneva. I agreed to pass the photos to my friend tonight on the condition that he installs the program Hello. I wanted to test Hello out and the few people that I had asked before didn't seem keen on installing it. Finally we both bid farewells and parted in our separate directions.

Disclaimer: Most of the events are real and took place on my voyages with the Swiss General pass. Some accounts and personalities have been modified and dialog's added to make the tales more interesting. Besides, I had to translate :-)

Copyright © 2005 Kazim Rehman

Standing on Schwarzsee

2005-01-07T13:10:00.000+01:00

Skinny old me

First outing with AG

2005-01-06T13:42:00.000+01:00

24th December was the first day of our Christmas-New Year holidays. This year something was different. Last year I had a custom pass which covered all train voyages between Geneva and Lausanne. That also covered Versoix where I live, twelve minutes by train to Geneva. The pass also covered the first zone of Lausanne’s public transport network. I needed that to reach my university, EPFL. University being the reason I had the pass.

There’s also a pass known as Abonnement Général in French or in short AG. The AG or the Swiss General pass covers almost all the trains on the Swiss rail network and includes all the public transport networks of all the cities and towns in Switzerland. In short it’s your pass to unlimited travel without the hassle of needing to buy tickets. The Swiss pass for those under the age of twenty-five costs two hundred francs per month. Compared to the pass I had which only covered two cities sixty kilometers apart and for which I was paying one hundred eighty six francs per month, Swiss pass was a bargain. Last year I was almost certain on getting the AG. A few weeks of university made me reconsider that. With the workload we had from the university there was no way I would be able to travel freely. I was certainly right on that matter.

This year I knew I could take out some time so I had taken the Swiss pass. The only problem now was to find someone who also had the pass and would be willing to travel. My main interests were to see the mountains and to hike. I wasn’t much interested in cities or shopping or night life. In fact I didn’t have money to spend. I certainly wouldn’t want to go with someone who was a spender, an individual who would prefer to eat at restaurants or to take cable cars up the mountains instead of hiking. My mission now was not only to find someone who had an AG but also someone who didn’t have a lot money in hands.

Since the beginning of the school year I had started asking when I had the chance to my friends and classmates if they had the AG. Once I found out an AG holder I asked if the person would be interested in traveling for sightseeing and hiking. By the time the Christmas-New Year vacations had came only two had agreed. None of them was a spender. That was just the way I wanted it. The one thing we three had in common was that the three of us were foreigners and didn’t know how to ski or snowboard. I guess the rest of the students would either be sitting home or would be skiing.

In the first few days of the vacations I messaged both of them asking if they would be interested. One seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth since he didn’t give any replies. The second Adrien, a fellow from Benin agreed. After three days of agreements and postponing we finally went to Les Pléaides. That was going to be my first trip with the Swiss pass.

Now Adrien was an easy going man. When I had suggested catching a nine o clock train he bluntly refused saying it was too early. Not such a big deal, we agreed on taking the 10:56 train. But I suppose even that was too early for him. He came to the station ten minutes late. The journey finally started when we took the 11:36 train.

My initial plan was to go to Vevey and from there go to a station from which we could take a cable car to Mont Pèlerin. From there it was an hour walk to the summit. According to the directions I took, the cable car station was accessible in thirty minutes by walk from the train station of Vevey. Once in Vevey we had to find the cable car station. When we got off at Vevey the first thing I made us do was to look for the tourism office. In ten minutes of getting lost and following various on the road maps we got there only to find it closed because it was already noon. Luckily they had left brochures of the region outside the office. We each took one and started to flip through.

With the maps in the brochure, I decided it would be better to skip Mont Pèlerin and to go to Les Pléaides. Les Pléaides was higher than Mont Pèlerin and the train to Les Pléaides could be taken from the train station which we knew the directions to. That meant less work for better view.

While we were looking for the tourism office, Adrien was telling me about this report he saw on a French channel. It was something like this:

One day a man heard a great thump and clattering on his roof. He ran out immediately suspecting a burglar but instead found a big block of ice. The couple who the house belonged to preserved the ice block and both being curious had it analyzed. The results of the test told them that the block of ice was in fact a block of human urine.

This part had made me laugh out loud. But it had also got me wondering how could a block of human urine fall out of the sky like that?

As he continued his summary of the report he made it all clear. The storage compartment of an airplane flying had opened. At that height the temperature is below zero and so the couple received a block of urine as a gift from the airplane.

In a few minutes we were back in the train station. Adrien being hungry bought himself raisin bread and we got seated in the regional train to Les Pléaides. Half way along the journey we had to change trains. We had to change them because the next half of the track was steeper and slipperier. It was made for cogwheel trains. Being a cogwheel train it was slow but at least it had a good outer appearance.

When we reached our destination snow was all around. Over there it became evident having very gentle slopes this place was frequently used to teach skiing to kids. Snow was in abundant and so were the kids. There was only one track for hiking. We took that one, took a shortcut and in less than ten minutes we were back from where we started. Now Adrien as I found out later that day had never been around so much snow. Not only that but he didn’t understand on the phone the other day when I told him I planned on going to a certain mountain. In short he wasn’t prepared for snow. He had on normal sneakers with super thin soles and the rest made out of what seemed to be synthetic material. He had no warm hat, gloves or scarf. I didn’t have those either except for a warm hat. However I did have CAT boots with thick soles and thick outer material and the front region was covered with some rubber like substance.

Adrien was already ready to go back. He had suggested that we take the next train back to Vevey and go home. He did like the snow and the view but since none of us had brought a camera was disappointed and was feeling cold now. We took a look at the train timings only to find out that the next train was going to come in an hour. Having an hour I suggested we take the real path and don’t take any shortcuts to kill the time. We retook the same path.

It was after a few minutes that Adrien started complaining.

“It’s cold, my poor hands.” He complained.

“It’s not that cold.” I said.

“I don’t have gloves and I touched the snow.” He continued.

“Neither do I and I touched the snow too.” I kept my stance.

“Here I’ll do it again.” I picked up some snow, made a snowball and threw it into the bushes and quickly replaced my hands back in my pocket.

“My poor hands.” He repeated.

After three more minutes.

“I can’t feel my feet.” He restarted.

“Okay.” I replied.

“I don’t have good shoes.”

“Yeah. Just about fifty more minutes left.”

“I can’t feel my toes.”

“You told me that already.”

Just then while we were going down a couple was climbing dragging a baby cart with them.

“See we aren’t the only ones and they have it harder. Not only are they climbing but they also have the baby cart with them.”

“I’m going to die.” That was his reply.

Now we were going through trees. I was having fun sliding down as the descent wasn’t very steep but just enough to give a good slip.

“This is fun man, you should try it.” I encouraged Adrien.

“My toes.”

He had limited replies that day. I continued on slipping and sliding. In front of us coming out of the trees we saw that ahead of us the sunrays were touching the ground.

“Oh good the sun. Maybe that will warm me up.” Adrien had just found some life back.

“Yeah, just a little farther.” I replied

I kept on slipping and sliding down instead of walking and once I reached the sunny patch of land, I shouted to Adrien:

“Come on, you are almost there.”

“My poor feet.” That was his speech.

Slowly but surely Adrien made it. The weak sunshine wasn’t helpful. He finally made a decision and told me that he can’t continue like this and we should go back and wait for the train to come.

“If it’s that bad why don’t we just go down to that town below? The train stops there as well and it’s closer. Plus we won’t half to climb.”

Adrien seemed hesitant but he saw my logic and agreed upon my opinion.

“My toooeeeeees.” He continued on.

Ten more minutes and we were in the small cabin which served as a train stop.

“Okay twenty more minutes and we can take the train when it’s going up to Les Pléaides.” I informed Adrien.

“My hands.”

“Are they beautiful?” I asked.

“My toes.”

“Move them around a little to warm them up instead of sitting like a statue.” I counseled.

“Can’t feel em. Hurry up train driver!”

I in contrast to Adrien was feeling hot. I took off my jacket for a few minutes to cool down and then put it back on. Then I walked out of the cabin to have a look around. The mountains in view were crystal clear and I could distinct each tree planted on them. Each tree had a white coating on its branches and leaves. I could even distinguish further peaks. There was one with an antenna which I guessed to be Rocher de Naye. Having admired the scenery I stepped back in the cabin to join Adrien.

“My poor toes.” Adrien’s voice came to my ears.

He was either really in agony, was bugging me or was being funny. Personally I think it was all three at the same time.

We kept on waiting. Adrien kept on asking the time. Amazingly enough, the train was running late. It was its arrival time and still no sign of the train. All this time Adrien had gathered enough energy to get off the bench and now he had started pacing around. Much to Adrien’s discontent the train arrived seven minutes late.

When it finally arrived Adrien moved towards the first door, pressed a button to open it and went straight to a place near the heating. The train started to move and we went back up to Les Pléaides. Once it stopped everyone got off except us.

“Wanna get off and take a hike?” I joked.

“No way.” He gave the already expected answer.

A few more minutes and the train left Les Pléaides and so ended our short lived adventure.

Disclaimer: Most of the events are real and took place on my voyages with the Swiss General pass. Some accounts and personalities have been modified and dialog's added to make the tales more interesting. Besides, I had to translate :-)

Copyright © 2005 Kazim Rehman