Thoughtsome: Switzerland

It seems so silly to write about a Switzerland trip, as countless tourists from innumerable countries have travelled there. Millions of articles and photographs have been published. And yet when we reached there and started absorbing the visual delights , we were left not only thrilled but also annoyed. The reason for the annoyance started when we started comparing with the great natural beauty of our own country, and the difference in “display”. Switzerland was so clean, so underpopulated, so regulated, so orderly. We are dirtying our treasures, the mad and constant crowd rush is overpowering, the systems are so disorganised that many times it borders on the mad and chaotic. Switzerland surrounds you with its beauty, India overwhelms like a ballooning canvas hitting your face.

Lucerne, Mt.Titlis, Jangfrauschol, Zurich, Rhine Falls were stunning, but after a few days one yearned for the comfortable.mad rush of Kolkata. Call it inertia of the stationary, or the fear of adjustments in the elderly age, we all breathed a collective sigh of relief as we scurried home to our homes and families.

I looked at it like a photo trip, my mind and spirit assuaged by the plethora of pictures framed by the bus window or a camera viewfinder. Rolling verdant greens on one side with the traditional chalets on a niche beside the tall pine trees, lonely inviting paths winding past gurgling brooks, the tinkling of the cowbells reverberating off the omnipresent craggy mountains and gorges, the clear blue sky with an incessant passage of fluffy white clouds(we were blessed with good weather), and the snow and the glaciers shooting little arrows of reflected sunlight which blinded us, the lazy yachts with ballooning sails framed on the distant peaks, the crystal clear waters of the lakes, the wonderfully maintained tourist attractions like the Ice Palace and the maddeningly clean trains and buses and roads---all were drunk in by our parched eyes.