Impressions From Zermatt-Matterhorn (Satis Shroff)
Sunrise at the Gornergrat 3089 m above sea level and a hearty Continental breakfast in the 3100m high Kulmhotel Gornergrat. What a delightful and unforgettable experience with the panorama of the Alps right in front of you. For people who’ve been to the Himalayas, it’s like breakfast at Lukla or Namche Bazaar. Albeit, with the exception that the Swiss do pamper you with the very best from their kitchen and cellar.
Zermatt-Matterhorn is a hamlet located in the Swiss Alps. The world famous Glacier Express brings you directly to this holiday resort. Zermatt is a charming mountain hamlet at the foot of the Gornergrat peak, which is flanked to the west by Hohtali (high valley), Rote Nase (red Nose), Steckhorn and the 4634m high Dafourspitze. Whereas the names of the major peaks in the Himalayas have been named after Gods and Goddesses, in the Alps they bear their names according to their looks. To the Swiss the peaks appear like horns (Matterhorn, Breithorn), pointed summits (Parrotspitze, Dafourspitze), a thumb (pollus) or a comb (Liskamm) with their respective glaciers (gletspuchhare peak,cher): upper and lower Theodul glacier, Breithorn glacier, Zwillinggletscher (the Twin glacier), Grenzgletscher, Gornergletscher and the famous Rhone glacier, where the Swiss have built an icy tunnel and sell souvenirs. It sure is uncanny to walk inside a glacier, but the Swiss have everything under control for the delights of the visitors. The Rhone glacier is just as delightful with waterdrops pattering on your hear from the icicles.
The Matterhorn glacier paradise, is also known as the Small Matterhorn and beyond the Theodul pass looms the 4478m Matterhorn, aloof from the other peaks, in all its majesty. A modern cable cabin brings you right to the top.
A pang of nostalgia always overcomes me when I see the Matterhorn, because it reminds me of the Machapuchhare peak, the fish-tailed one, in Pokhara (Central Nepal) where we used to go on geological and botanical excursions during my student days in Catmandu. I also think of the friendly and brave Gurung people who live in the upper reaches of the Annapurna mountains and the boat-rides on the placid waters of the Phewa lake.
I remember having painted the Matterhorn from a Swiss calendar during my school days in the foothills of the Himalayas. We even had a huge Swiss nun with a broad infectious smile who ran the school infirmary and who’s name was Sister Felix. It was a strict school run by the Christian Brothers of Ireland and Sister Felix had a heart for us small boys with our small injuries. She was a great solace to us in the English boarding school which the Irish Brothers ruled with typical school rules, arrogant prefects, tidiness inspections, benders for the offenders and all. I still see her sympathetic face, the strains of her blonde hair climbing out of her bonnet, speaking English with a soft Swiss accent. She was our Florence Nightingale amid the skirmishes between the school-kids and the teachers, for in those days punishment was severe, and not like today where the parents sue the teachers for their so-called brutality, and the kids threaten brazenly with their respective lawyers in case a teacher loses control over himself or herself.
From Zermatt you take Europe’s highest open-air cog train past the picturesque viaduct at Findelbach (1774m), Rifflealp along a serpentine route, reminiscent of the loop after Ghoom along the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, up to Rotenboden, which means ‘red soil.’
Since the new Lötschberg-basis tunnel is open to traffic, you can drive from Zürich, Basle and Bern and gain an hour.
On the right side you see the Riffel lake and the breathtaking Gorner glacier. Below you are people trekking or walking with their nordic walking gear along the Heidi landscape. Some are panting on their mountain bikes, overwhelmed by the glacier landscape that unfolds in front of your eyes. What’s wonderful about the Zermatt-Matterhorn is that it’s open all the year round. You can get off the cog-train at any station along the route and jump in again when you’ve had enough of walking in the Alpine world. I walked all the way to Interlaken with Karin and enjoyed the Swiss countryside, especially the flora and fauna.
It was easy going from the Gornetgrat, past Rotenboden to the Riffelsee, a picturesque lake and to Riffelberg from where you could see the Furg glacier and above it the Theodul Pass with the Massif of the 4478m Matterhorn with its jagged peak. In the towns below you get souvenirs centred around the Matterhorn massif: chocolates, blue stones shaped like the mountain, T-shirts with the Matterhorn icon, letter-openers, cakes, mugs, cigarette lighters, aprons too. You descend to Riffelberg, past Riffelalp, and after you’ve reachered Findelback with its waters gushing under the picturesque viaduct, you arrive at the village of Zermatt, which has always functioned as a town where the experienced climbers of Zermatt have looked for and people who hire them to climb the peaks that are draped in misty curtains on rainy days. When you think of the Matterhorn you can’t help thinking about Edward Whymper, who scaled the peak with a climbing party on July 14, 1865.
On the day of the Matterhorn disaster, the British climbers began their descent after having climbed the mountain. Above the shoulder of Matterhorn, the most dangerous part of the mountain a slip occurred and the rope broke. The climbers Hudson, Hadow, Lord Francis Douglas and Croz fell down the north face of Matterhorn. The following day, the exhausted and sad survivors reached Zermatt. The Swiss Hotel-owner Seiler asked Whymper what had happened up in the mountain.
Whymper’s laconic answer was: ‘The Taugwalders and I have returned.’
Europe was shocked by the disaster and even Queen Victoria asked whether such a perilous pastime could not be stopped by law. But ever since man has started climbing mountains, the mountaineers have been paying a heavy toll for their ‘deadly pursuits’ in the higher regions for their egoistic endeavours, be it alone or in teams, sans oxygen and sans amphetamines. The graveyard adjacent to Zermatt’s English church and the Swiss graveyards are replete with people who died while climbing. A couplet from Romeo and Julia reminds us of Edward Broome, a prominent member of the Alpine Club:
‘Night’s candles are burnt out
And jocund day stands tiptoe
On the misty mountain tops.’
The highest elevation of the Gornergrat is 3089m. It’s like being on the top of the world with a panorama that comprises 29 four-thousand metre peaks as far as your eyes can see. It is when you have reached such a great height where the mountains meet the sky, and when you realise how small and insignificant you are in the presence of the gigantic massifs before you that you have thoughts about your very existence and ask yourself about your ‘sein oder nicht sein’ (to be or not to be). It is in these dizzy, rarefied heights that you ask yourself questions about yourself and philosophise about your own life like other thinkers have done in the past. When you have gone through this process of self-examination, you have the choice to carry on the way you’ve chosen or to change within and start leading a new, conscious life. Aware of yourself and others, modern life without its automatic behavioural patterns.
The observation platform for visitors is at a height of 3130m and for those who feel a wave of sanctity suddenly sweep across their hearts in this splendid place, there’s the Berhhard von Aosta chapel. Further below the Gornergrat lies Rotenboden at an elevation of 2815m, which is the starting point of the trail to Riffelsee, a lake where you can observe a gorgeous reflection of the Matterhorn. You take the Monte Rosa Hut trail and when you go past the Gorner glacier, you are rewarded with an excellent view of the 4634m Dufourspitze.
The Gornergrat Bahn is Switzerland’s first electric cog railway and is celebrating its 111 birthday. All eight trains of the Glacier Express to Zermatt have panorama wagons. Since it’s summer, and the Swiss are perfectly organised, there’s even a folklore group with Swiss brass and alp-horns to greet you. In Europe they say we Germans do things with German thoroughness. I’d even go even further to say that the Helvetians do it even better.
Generations have seen the film ‘The Sound of Music’ with Julie Andrews and have been moved by the song ‘Edelweiss.’ There’s even a 110 year old, Edelweiss hut built at a height of 1961m and which was in the past frequented by the likes of writer Emile Zola, Albert Schweitzer of Lamberene fame and the climber Edward Whymper.
You don’t expect haute cuisine up in the Swiss Alps, do you? Gault-Millau classified the hospitality up here as ‘comfortable, hearty and inviting.’ I can only second it. On July 4, 2009 there was a Zermatt Marathon, a race in which you climb 1853m. Quite a feat but not to be recommended for complacent couch potatoes. If you like the Alpine folklore, there’s even a Folklore Festival on August 9, 2009 with big parades comprising 1200 participants from the entire Alpine region. If you feel that climbing up to the Matterhorn is not enough for your ego, then you can take part in the Matterhorn race. You’ll be traversing 12,49km and have to overcome an elevation of 980 metres. The Zermatt festival takes place between September 4-20,2009 and the Chamber Music with ensembles and solists of the Berliner Philharmonic orchestra will bring you western classics. If you like Swiss and other Alpine costumes then you can visit the Trachtenfest on September 5-6, 2009. For ladies it might be fun to be a part of the crowd by donning dirndel costumes with Alpine flower-hats to go with them. You can buy excellent traditional dirndels and trachten costumes in Zürich, Basle, München and Zermatt itself. With the exception of the Gornergrat, children under 9 can travel all mountain trains free of charge. Ain’t that grand?
More information for your Swiss holiday? Google, Yahoo or Bing: www.zermatt.ch. Grüezi miteinander.
About the Author:
Satis Shroff is a prolific writer and teaches Creative Writing at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. http://www.zfs.uni-freiburg.de/zfs/dozent/lehrbeauftragte4/index_html/#shroff.
He is based in Freiburg (poems, fiction, non-fiction) and also writes on ecological, ethno-medical, culture-ethnological themes. He has studied Zoology and Botany in Nepal, Medicine and Social Sciences in Germany and Creative Writing in Freiburg and the United Kingdom. He describes himself as a mediator between western and eastern cultures and sees his future as a writer and poet. Since literature is one of the most important means of cross-cultural learning, he is dedicated to promoting and creating awareness for Creative Writing and transcultural togetherness in his writings, and in preserving an attitude of Miteinander in this world. He lectures in Basle (Switzerland) and in Germany at the Akademie für medizinische Berufe (University Klinikum Freiburg) and the Zentrum für Schlüsselqualifikationen (University of Freiburg where he is a Lehrbeauftragter for Creative Writing). Satis Shroff was awarded the German Academic Exchange Prize.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Impressions From Zermatt-Matterhorn II (Satis Shroff)
IMPRESSIONS FROM ZERMATT-MATTERHORN II (Satis Shroff)
As you go along the Riffelberg trail to Riffelalp in Switzerland, you’re following Mark Twain’s footsteps. He describes the trail in his book ‘Climbing the Riffelberg.’ Riffelalp has the highest ram in Europe, and when you reach the top you can see a breathtaking panorama of 29 four-thousand-metre peaks, including the Matterhorn. There are a few places in this world which leaves you breathless for you are overwhelmed and awed by the sheer beauty of what you behold. I had the same feeling when I gazed at the Khumbu Himalayas, and beyond the Roof of the World.
A feeling of humbleness and joy overcomes you. The thrill of having been there, seen, smelt and felt the greatness and magnificence of the lofty peaks rising sovereign above the thin milky mists ascending languidly from the vales and spurs below. You have eyes only for the glaciers and peaks.
When you descend to the Riffelsee, a picturesque lake, you cherish the sight of the Matterhorn with its jagged, majestic peak and you see the reflection in the Riffelsee’s turquoise water. Flanking it are 29 other peaks: all four thousand metres above sea level.
The Riffel lake is a nature reserve, a wonderful place with huge stones that have tumbled down from the slopes above, right down to the small lake. You can meditate on the many big rocks around the placid, blue lake and when you turn your eyes to the sky you are blessed by the great Matterhorn massif. Around the lake you find botanical specimens like: the floating bur-reed (Sparganium augustifolium), marsch horse-tails (Equisetum palustre), hair-leafed buttercup (Rananculus trichophyllus), small pond weed (Potamogenton berchtoldii), three bearded rush (Juncus triglumis), the surrounding fields and meadows are full of Scheucher’s cotton-grass (Euphorbium scheuchzeri) and the Sledge Darner (Aeshna juncea). You can’t help being fascinated by the pine and larch forests, moraine lakes, alpine vegetation, glacial moraines and the scree gather below. What I love to see are the tarns, glacial lakes that have been left behind when the glacier recedes.
Along the trail you come across people doing nordic walking, training their entire bodies. You can do intensive training of your upper extremities because you swing your arms in the process, and not only your legs. According to the American Medical Association, trekking along the countryside, be it in the high Himalayas or the Alps and Dolomites, is one of the best ways of improving your health. Yes, you can do something about your Musculus brachialis, deltoideus, triceps, latissimus dorsi, your gastrocnemius and other muscles.
Below the hotel Kulm Gornergrat I talked with a burly, friendly guy who spoke English softly and was selling his art, but when Japanese tourists came by he switched over to the tongue of Nippon. His name was Mathew Fletcher and was from York and had started painting local street scenes in his home town before coming to Switzerland in 1991. Mathew said: ‘I’m trying to capture the beauty of the alpine landscape.’ He has exhibited his work in Zermatt and other parts of Switzerland.
‘I did the Everest trek on November 11, 1993,’ he said with a twinkle in his eyes.
He went on to say: ‘I’ve been to Patagonia, painted in Tahiti, came back to Europe and fell in love with the Matterhorn (sic).’ He draws his works with a pencil first, then paints it with a fine squirrel-hair brush, using water colours.. You can’t miss Mathew Fletcher when you go to Zermatt-Gornergrat. I found his collection of drawings excellent and gave him a tip how he could digitalise his pics and upload them as an art book in one of the increasing number of publish-on-demand sites in the internet. We departed with a namaste, which means ‘I greet the godliness in you’ in Nepalese.
Zermatt is a fascinating place. You see Europeans, Americans, Japanese and Indians (with and without turbans) either trekking to the observatory hill on the Gornergrat, taking the cog-train to the summit or the cabin-gondola to Little Matterhorn which is the best alternative that money can buy. The visitors are old, young and very young and you can see them whezing, puffing, snorting and sweating up and down the many Swiss trails, stopping to take shots of peaks like: Cima de Jazzi, Gorner glacier, Nordend, Dafourspitze, Ludwigshöhe, Liskamm, Grenzgletscher, Zwillingsgletscher, Castor, Pollux, Schwärzegletscher, Breithorn, Theodul glacier and the Matterhorn.
After a hearty breakfast comprising Himalaya tea, cooked beans, scrambled eggs, Bircher müsli and croissants with cheese and crisp speck, you say goodbye to Zermatt (1605m above sea level). A friendly, overweight blonde Dutch lady tells you: ‘We didn’t see anything up at the Little Matterhorn. The rising mists and the thick, grey clouds veiled everything.’
It was bad luck. You hear this also in Darjeeling when visitors from the plains of India book jeeps to view the sunrise from Tiger Hill. Instead of the Kanchenjunga range they just see the heavy monsoon clouds that bring rain that is so good for the tea growing on the slopes of Gorkhaland. That’s hard luck for the tourists.
After a day’s trekking and a good Swiss dinner with rosti or raclette and a Swiss wine, you can go over to the wellness phase of a sauna or enter a hot bubbling whirlpool. I’m fond of the whirlpool for the tired and cramped legs, because the muscles of your lower extremities that have been slogging all day also need to be given a treat with an underwater massage followed by a cold shower.
Since there were a lot of Japanese visitors in the hotel it was a tranquil and serene atmosphere in the sauna and whirlpool, for the people of Nippon don’t frequent saunas and whirlpools when they’re abroad. I remember we had a young Japanese visitor from Kyoto named Takashi who used to play soccer at the local German club in Zähringen. After the match all players went under the shower but not our young man from Nippon. He had inhibitions about undressing in the cabin in front of all the German lads and walking around naked. The Japanese just don’t do such things in public. He’d come home and take a long shower. We in Germany would say: ‘Der ist so verklemmt!’ He’s so shy and inhibited. On the other hand two Indians came to the sauna in their street clothes and shoes. An unpardonable thing to do. A young blonde lady from Dresden named Romy, with whom I had a long chat after the sauna, told me, ‘The US Americans are even worse. They march into the sauna in their dirty trekking boots!’
‘Oh really?’ I said and couldn’t help emitting a chuckle.
Zermatt is like an old western town and you can walk from one end of the shopping street to the other. And that was it. Since it’s August 1, 2009 which is Switzerland’s National Celebration Day, all Swiss huts, houses and buildings have the scarlet flags with a white cross on their window-sills, balconies and terraces between the equally scarlet geraniums. Flags in all sizes flutter everywhere, even on peaks and cliffs. The Swiss love their Heimat and are extremely patriotic.
I remember a Swiss lady in Freiburg named Heidi who was married to a Swabian who lamented that she was surrounded by the dominant German culture. She was a rather garrulous person from the Romand speaking area of Vna but became awfully depressed as time went by. However, on the Swiss National Day she’d hang out all the flags of the Swiss cantons and invite us to a champagne and raclette evening. You never saw her elated throughout the year. Some have a longing for religious festivals like Christmas or Tihar (Diwali) and others have just a feeling of sadness and nostalgia. Heimweh or Fernweh, as we are wont to say in Germany.
In Zermatt I ran into a Hippie couple. He reminded me of John Lennon and she a Cheshire cat with all those wrinkles akin to whiskers on her pale face. A pair round spectacles nestled on the bridge of her nose, and she scurried around her make-shift tent with wares from overseas for they were globe-trotters who’d settled down in Zermatt and were catering to the delights of customers who needed woollies in the higher reaches of the Zermatt-Matterhorn treks. They had a lot of souvenirs from Nepal: Buddhist prayer flags and statues of meditating Boddhisatvas, Indian textiles that the Hippie generations have worn, accessories that even find buyers among the current generation. Bollywood has become an expression of chic from the Land of the Maharajas. I’m amazed and delighted to see my German and Swiss students in Freiburg and Basle draped in Benarasi brocades and golden sandals with gemstones imparting and air of royalty from the Orient. Blondes and brunettes with pierced noses and diamond studs, multiple gold ethno ear-rings like the ones worn by the ladies of Rajasthan and Kirtipur. Ethno jewellery and tattoos in strategic areas of the human anatomy are ‘in,’ you know.
You can’t go to the hotels, shops and do a bit of sightseeing without missing overseeing the ads in Japanese in Zermatt. Even the TV in the hotels have programmes in Japanese. It’s amazing how flexible the Swiss are in Zermatt and have adapted to the demands of the tourism market: the Japanese bring a sizeable amount of income and even the shops have Swiss and Japanese saleswomen. If a Japanese buys an item in the shop the Swiss are quick to warp it as a present in special Nipponese paper. The visitors from Japan go around in groups with their own Japanese guides cum translators. It reminded me of the Junior Year Abroad students from the US colleges who bring their own text-books and teachers to Germany, and keep to themselves instead of getting to know the German students and people in general, and listening to native German speakers in the streets and the professors at the university, and earning their credits in German universities.
The train ride from Zermatt downwards to Visp via Täsch is wonderful, past a milky Matter-Visp river, with spurs guarded by pine trees, children playing golf, myriads of traditional dark wooden Swiss huts and piles of stones from the mountains. Alpine flowers sway in the wind along the way. Suddenly the mist clears to reveal a rugged peak.
From Herbreggen you can see the walking route painted on yellow boards with black letters indicating how long it takes for you to get to different destinatinations, and not in kilometres. The cliffs become visible when the misty veils disappear.: jagged silhouettes of the pines trees along the ridge.
The train goes along serpentine tracks, through tunnels and reaches St. Niklaus (1130m). The railway station was built in 1890. There are cute wooden houses bearing names like: Chalet Frieden (peace), Haus Elch. The chalets are small houses with diagonal laid flate stones, like the ones you find in the Gurung villages on your way to Jomsom.
After St. Niklaus you see mixed forests and tunnels galore. Since there’s only one track, your train has to wait and let another go by, which again is filled with Nipponese visitors clicking away frantically with their digital cameras for power point and slide projections in the winters months in Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku or Kuyushu.
Your red train proceeds and below you flows the turbulent, white Matter-Vispa river. The train tracks follow the right bank of the river, getting broader as you go over bridges. A great feat of engineering which was done with the help of guest-workers from Italy. You see evidence of landslides: huge and small rocks and waterfalls gushing down from the mountains. At Kalpetran, where there’s a Luftseilbahn (ropeway car) the train ‘stops on request.’ If you forget to press the red ‘Halt’ button, the red train with its big windows goes merrily to Stalden.
The wooden houses have pretty little windows decorated. with red geraniums. Since the houses are built on the slopes, the Swiss families have to battle against the torrential rains in summer, and snow and ice in the long winter months. Most people have additional stone and wooden walls along the slopes where they live, to control the wrath of the elements to some extent. You see small wooden huts being overshadowed by big houses with beton fundaments and wooden architecture above.
You arrive in Stalden-Saas, a tourist place with lots of chalets to rent. At the railway station you see young people relishing their warm soups, an ‘Il Buffeto’ sign of a pizzaria, decorated with more geraniums. There are vineyards along the slope. The people in the Alps, especially the older generation, are very conscious about God and written on a wooden board are the words:
Gott beschütze dieses Haus
Und all die gehen ein und aus.
God protect this house,
And all those who go in and out.
The Matter-Vispa changes its bed for a moment and flows again to the right. It’s swollen now and the water has turned grey with stones becoming rare. More vineyards appear along the slopes to the right. A cement factory appears with rich green meadows.
You reach Visp, a much bigger Swiss town with intercity railway connections. The houses are built atop the surrounding hills and almost on every slope. You change trains and board a comfortable double-decker intercity. It’s 2pm and the train is speeding towards north Switzerland. One tunnel alone is 20 minutes long. The Swiss do keep you often in the dark. A train conductor comes along the aisle and admonishes a bearded guy with a Jewish cap.
‘We call it trick number 17,’ he says to the passenger, ‘travelling without a ticket.’ But he’s kind and doesn’t throw him out. The passenger pays and that’s the end of the matter. Not so in Germany. The conductor ordered a school-kid who didn’t have a ticket to get off the train in the middle of nowhere. Poor fellow. In German trams Schwarzfahrer, as commuters sans tickets are called, are obliged not only to pay the fare but also a fine of 40 euros. An expensive ride.
In the lovely town of Bern you take the fast Swiss train to Basle. It’s 3pm and the sky is still clouded and misty below. It has rained and the streets are wet, with the vapour rising. There are men in orange vests moving around the platforms busy as bees, transporting luggage from hotels. An elderly trio in their seventies push a Kofferkuli towards platform no. 8. There are a lot of blondes and brunettes dressed and looking like Shakira and Britney Spears commuting to their homes. The styling is top and they all have that cover-girl look. You see Swiss blokes in shorts, sneakers and T-shirts walking down the aisle with ears plugged to their respective MP 3s.
The river in Bern has a greenish-blue colour as it snakes out of the town. Cute little two-storied houses appear as you speed by. An attractive woman in her forties, wearing tight blue jeans, glittering slippers and elegant features watches your truly as I scribble my microstories on my pad. She must be wondering what I’m writing. She has a hand resting casually on her thigh and the other is on the seat as she gazes at fellow passengers. A young blonde mother with her small son take opposite her and pack out their chicken nuggets with dips. She closes her eyes after a sigh. The smell of ketchup and sweet spicy dip floats in the compartment.
Outside it’s green again and the hamlets in the outskirts of Bern fleet by as pine trees begin appearing. Ah, pine trees have been following me since my schooldays in the foothills of the Himalayas and in the Black Forest where I live. It’s such an exhilarating experience to walk along pine forests. The smell of the green in the forest is a spiritual experience because it bears the smell of incense or Weihrauch, which not only the shaman-healers of Nepal and other parts of the world use but also catholic priests in the church.
The blonde woman with a city bag has her eyes still closed, oblivious of the mother opposite her who’s talking over her mobile, amidst the monotonous noise of the speeding train. A wonderful holiday in coming to an end: with trekking during the day and sauna and whirlpool baths in the evenings till 9pm. How lovely it has been, candle-light dinners, promenading in Zermatt, enjoying life without a care. Zermatt is worth the four-star hotel tab. You bet I’ll go there again.
As you go along the Riffelberg trail to Riffelalp in Switzerland, you’re following Mark Twain’s footsteps. He describes the trail in his book ‘Climbing the Riffelberg.’ Riffelalp has the highest ram in Europe, and when you reach the top you can see a breathtaking panorama of 29 four-thousand-metre peaks, including the Matterhorn. There are a few places in this world which leaves you breathless for you are overwhelmed and awed by the sheer beauty of what you behold. I had the same feeling when I gazed at the Khumbu Himalayas, and beyond the Roof of the World.
A feeling of humbleness and joy overcomes you. The thrill of having been there, seen, smelt and felt the greatness and magnificence of the lofty peaks rising sovereign above the thin milky mists ascending languidly from the vales and spurs below. You have eyes only for the glaciers and peaks.
When you descend to the Riffelsee, a picturesque lake, you cherish the sight of the Matterhorn with its jagged, majestic peak and you see the reflection in the Riffelsee’s turquoise water. Flanking it are 29 other peaks: all four thousand metres above sea level.
The Riffel lake is a nature reserve, a wonderful place with huge stones that have tumbled down from the slopes above, right down to the small lake. You can meditate on the many big rocks around the placid, blue lake and when you turn your eyes to the sky you are blessed by the great Matterhorn massif. Around the lake you find botanical specimens like: the floating bur-reed (Sparganium augustifolium), marsch horse-tails (Equisetum palustre), hair-leafed buttercup (Rananculus trichophyllus), small pond weed (Potamogenton berchtoldii), three bearded rush (Juncus triglumis), the surrounding fields and meadows are full of Scheucher’s cotton-grass (Euphorbium scheuchzeri) and the Sledge Darner (Aeshna juncea). You can’t help being fascinated by the pine and larch forests, moraine lakes, alpine vegetation, glacial moraines and the scree gather below. What I love to see are the tarns, glacial lakes that have been left behind when the glacier recedes.
Along the trail you come across people doing nordic walking, training their entire bodies. You can do intensive training of your upper extremities because you swing your arms in the process, and not only your legs. According to the American Medical Association, trekking along the countryside, be it in the high Himalayas or the Alps and Dolomites, is one of the best ways of improving your health. Yes, you can do something about your Musculus brachialis, deltoideus, triceps, latissimus dorsi, your gastrocnemius and other muscles.
Below the hotel Kulm Gornergrat I talked with a burly, friendly guy who spoke English softly and was selling his art, but when Japanese tourists came by he switched over to the tongue of Nippon. His name was Mathew Fletcher and was from York and had started painting local street scenes in his home town before coming to Switzerland in 1991. Mathew said: ‘I’m trying to capture the beauty of the alpine landscape.’ He has exhibited his work in Zermatt and other parts of Switzerland.
‘I did the Everest trek on November 11, 1993,’ he said with a twinkle in his eyes.
He went on to say: ‘I’ve been to Patagonia, painted in Tahiti, came back to Europe and fell in love with the Matterhorn (sic).’ He draws his works with a pencil first, then paints it with a fine squirrel-hair brush, using water colours.. You can’t miss Mathew Fletcher when you go to Zermatt-Gornergrat. I found his collection of drawings excellent and gave him a tip how he could digitalise his pics and upload them as an art book in one of the increasing number of publish-on-demand sites in the internet. We departed with a namaste, which means ‘I greet the godliness in you’ in Nepalese.
Zermatt is a fascinating place. You see Europeans, Americans, Japanese and Indians (with and without turbans) either trekking to the observatory hill on the Gornergrat, taking the cog-train to the summit or the cabin-gondola to Little Matterhorn which is the best alternative that money can buy. The visitors are old, young and very young and you can see them whezing, puffing, snorting and sweating up and down the many Swiss trails, stopping to take shots of peaks like: Cima de Jazzi, Gorner glacier, Nordend, Dafourspitze, Ludwigshöhe, Liskamm, Grenzgletscher, Zwillingsgletscher, Castor, Pollux, Schwärzegletscher, Breithorn, Theodul glacier and the Matterhorn.
After a hearty breakfast comprising Himalaya tea, cooked beans, scrambled eggs, Bircher müsli and croissants with cheese and crisp speck, you say goodbye to Zermatt (1605m above sea level). A friendly, overweight blonde Dutch lady tells you: ‘We didn’t see anything up at the Little Matterhorn. The rising mists and the thick, grey clouds veiled everything.’
It was bad luck. You hear this also in Darjeeling when visitors from the plains of India book jeeps to view the sunrise from Tiger Hill. Instead of the Kanchenjunga range they just see the heavy monsoon clouds that bring rain that is so good for the tea growing on the slopes of Gorkhaland. That’s hard luck for the tourists.
After a day’s trekking and a good Swiss dinner with rosti or raclette and a Swiss wine, you can go over to the wellness phase of a sauna or enter a hot bubbling whirlpool. I’m fond of the whirlpool for the tired and cramped legs, because the muscles of your lower extremities that have been slogging all day also need to be given a treat with an underwater massage followed by a cold shower.
Since there were a lot of Japanese visitors in the hotel it was a tranquil and serene atmosphere in the sauna and whirlpool, for the people of Nippon don’t frequent saunas and whirlpools when they’re abroad. I remember we had a young Japanese visitor from Kyoto named Takashi who used to play soccer at the local German club in Zähringen. After the match all players went under the shower but not our young man from Nippon. He had inhibitions about undressing in the cabin in front of all the German lads and walking around naked. The Japanese just don’t do such things in public. He’d come home and take a long shower. We in Germany would say: ‘Der ist so verklemmt!’ He’s so shy and inhibited. On the other hand two Indians came to the sauna in their street clothes and shoes. An unpardonable thing to do. A young blonde lady from Dresden named Romy, with whom I had a long chat after the sauna, told me, ‘The US Americans are even worse. They march into the sauna in their dirty trekking boots!’
‘Oh really?’ I said and couldn’t help emitting a chuckle.
Zermatt is like an old western town and you can walk from one end of the shopping street to the other. And that was it. Since it’s August 1, 2009 which is Switzerland’s National Celebration Day, all Swiss huts, houses and buildings have the scarlet flags with a white cross on their window-sills, balconies and terraces between the equally scarlet geraniums. Flags in all sizes flutter everywhere, even on peaks and cliffs. The Swiss love their Heimat and are extremely patriotic.
I remember a Swiss lady in Freiburg named Heidi who was married to a Swabian who lamented that she was surrounded by the dominant German culture. She was a rather garrulous person from the Romand speaking area of Vna but became awfully depressed as time went by. However, on the Swiss National Day she’d hang out all the flags of the Swiss cantons and invite us to a champagne and raclette evening. You never saw her elated throughout the year. Some have a longing for religious festivals like Christmas or Tihar (Diwali) and others have just a feeling of sadness and nostalgia. Heimweh or Fernweh, as we are wont to say in Germany.
In Zermatt I ran into a Hippie couple. He reminded me of John Lennon and she a Cheshire cat with all those wrinkles akin to whiskers on her pale face. A pair round spectacles nestled on the bridge of her nose, and she scurried around her make-shift tent with wares from overseas for they were globe-trotters who’d settled down in Zermatt and were catering to the delights of customers who needed woollies in the higher reaches of the Zermatt-Matterhorn treks. They had a lot of souvenirs from Nepal: Buddhist prayer flags and statues of meditating Boddhisatvas, Indian textiles that the Hippie generations have worn, accessories that even find buyers among the current generation. Bollywood has become an expression of chic from the Land of the Maharajas. I’m amazed and delighted to see my German and Swiss students in Freiburg and Basle draped in Benarasi brocades and golden sandals with gemstones imparting and air of royalty from the Orient. Blondes and brunettes with pierced noses and diamond studs, multiple gold ethno ear-rings like the ones worn by the ladies of Rajasthan and Kirtipur. Ethno jewellery and tattoos in strategic areas of the human anatomy are ‘in,’ you know.
You can’t go to the hotels, shops and do a bit of sightseeing without missing overseeing the ads in Japanese in Zermatt. Even the TV in the hotels have programmes in Japanese. It’s amazing how flexible the Swiss are in Zermatt and have adapted to the demands of the tourism market: the Japanese bring a sizeable amount of income and even the shops have Swiss and Japanese saleswomen. If a Japanese buys an item in the shop the Swiss are quick to warp it as a present in special Nipponese paper. The visitors from Japan go around in groups with their own Japanese guides cum translators. It reminded me of the Junior Year Abroad students from the US colleges who bring their own text-books and teachers to Germany, and keep to themselves instead of getting to know the German students and people in general, and listening to native German speakers in the streets and the professors at the university, and earning their credits in German universities.
The train ride from Zermatt downwards to Visp via Täsch is wonderful, past a milky Matter-Visp river, with spurs guarded by pine trees, children playing golf, myriads of traditional dark wooden Swiss huts and piles of stones from the mountains. Alpine flowers sway in the wind along the way. Suddenly the mist clears to reveal a rugged peak.
From Herbreggen you can see the walking route painted on yellow boards with black letters indicating how long it takes for you to get to different destinatinations, and not in kilometres. The cliffs become visible when the misty veils disappear.: jagged silhouettes of the pines trees along the ridge.
The train goes along serpentine tracks, through tunnels and reaches St. Niklaus (1130m). The railway station was built in 1890. There are cute wooden houses bearing names like: Chalet Frieden (peace), Haus Elch. The chalets are small houses with diagonal laid flate stones, like the ones you find in the Gurung villages on your way to Jomsom.
After St. Niklaus you see mixed forests and tunnels galore. Since there’s only one track, your train has to wait and let another go by, which again is filled with Nipponese visitors clicking away frantically with their digital cameras for power point and slide projections in the winters months in Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku or Kuyushu.
Your red train proceeds and below you flows the turbulent, white Matter-Vispa river. The train tracks follow the right bank of the river, getting broader as you go over bridges. A great feat of engineering which was done with the help of guest-workers from Italy. You see evidence of landslides: huge and small rocks and waterfalls gushing down from the mountains. At Kalpetran, where there’s a Luftseilbahn (ropeway car) the train ‘stops on request.’ If you forget to press the red ‘Halt’ button, the red train with its big windows goes merrily to Stalden.
The wooden houses have pretty little windows decorated. with red geraniums. Since the houses are built on the slopes, the Swiss families have to battle against the torrential rains in summer, and snow and ice in the long winter months. Most people have additional stone and wooden walls along the slopes where they live, to control the wrath of the elements to some extent. You see small wooden huts being overshadowed by big houses with beton fundaments and wooden architecture above.
You arrive in Stalden-Saas, a tourist place with lots of chalets to rent. At the railway station you see young people relishing their warm soups, an ‘Il Buffeto’ sign of a pizzaria, decorated with more geraniums. There are vineyards along the slope. The people in the Alps, especially the older generation, are very conscious about God and written on a wooden board are the words:
Gott beschütze dieses Haus
Und all die gehen ein und aus.
God protect this house,
And all those who go in and out.
The Matter-Vispa changes its bed for a moment and flows again to the right. It’s swollen now and the water has turned grey with stones becoming rare. More vineyards appear along the slopes to the right. A cement factory appears with rich green meadows.
You reach Visp, a much bigger Swiss town with intercity railway connections. The houses are built atop the surrounding hills and almost on every slope. You change trains and board a comfortable double-decker intercity. It’s 2pm and the train is speeding towards north Switzerland. One tunnel alone is 20 minutes long. The Swiss do keep you often in the dark. A train conductor comes along the aisle and admonishes a bearded guy with a Jewish cap.
‘We call it trick number 17,’ he says to the passenger, ‘travelling without a ticket.’ But he’s kind and doesn’t throw him out. The passenger pays and that’s the end of the matter. Not so in Germany. The conductor ordered a school-kid who didn’t have a ticket to get off the train in the middle of nowhere. Poor fellow. In German trams Schwarzfahrer, as commuters sans tickets are called, are obliged not only to pay the fare but also a fine of 40 euros. An expensive ride.
In the lovely town of Bern you take the fast Swiss train to Basle. It’s 3pm and the sky is still clouded and misty below. It has rained and the streets are wet, with the vapour rising. There are men in orange vests moving around the platforms busy as bees, transporting luggage from hotels. An elderly trio in their seventies push a Kofferkuli towards platform no. 8. There are a lot of blondes and brunettes dressed and looking like Shakira and Britney Spears commuting to their homes. The styling is top and they all have that cover-girl look. You see Swiss blokes in shorts, sneakers and T-shirts walking down the aisle with ears plugged to their respective MP 3s.
The river in Bern has a greenish-blue colour as it snakes out of the town. Cute little two-storied houses appear as you speed by. An attractive woman in her forties, wearing tight blue jeans, glittering slippers and elegant features watches your truly as I scribble my microstories on my pad. She must be wondering what I’m writing. She has a hand resting casually on her thigh and the other is on the seat as she gazes at fellow passengers. A young blonde mother with her small son take opposite her and pack out their chicken nuggets with dips. She closes her eyes after a sigh. The smell of ketchup and sweet spicy dip floats in the compartment.
Outside it’s green again and the hamlets in the outskirts of Bern fleet by as pine trees begin appearing. Ah, pine trees have been following me since my schooldays in the foothills of the Himalayas and in the Black Forest where I live. It’s such an exhilarating experience to walk along pine forests. The smell of the green in the forest is a spiritual experience because it bears the smell of incense or Weihrauch, which not only the shaman-healers of Nepal and other parts of the world use but also catholic priests in the church.
The blonde woman with a city bag has her eyes still closed, oblivious of the mother opposite her who’s talking over her mobile, amidst the monotonous noise of the speeding train. A wonderful holiday in coming to an end: with trekking during the day and sauna and whirlpool baths in the evenings till 9pm. How lovely it has been, candle-light dinners, promenading in Zermatt, enjoying life without a care. Zermatt is worth the four-star hotel tab. You bet I’ll go there again.
Impressions From Zermatt-Matterhorn II (Satis Shroff)
IMPRESSIONS FROM ZERMATT-MATTERHORN II (Satis Shroff)
As you go along the Riffelberg trail to Riffelalp in Switzerland, you’re following Mark Twain’s footsteps. He describes the trail in his book ‘Climbing the Riffelberg.’ Riffelalp has the highest ram in Europe, and when you reach the top you can see a breathtaking panorama of 29 four-thousand-metre peaks, including the Matterhorn. There are a few places in this world which leaves you breathless for you are overwhelmed and awed by the sheer beauty of what you behold. I had the same feeling when I gazed at the Khumbu Himalayas, and beyond the Roof of the World.
A feeling of humbleness and joy overcomes you. The thrill of having been there, seen, smelt and felt the greatness and magnificence of the lofty peaks rising sovereign above the thin milky mists ascending languidly from the vales and spurs below. You have eyes only for the glaciers and peaks.
When you descend to the Riffelsee, a picturesque lake, you cherish the sight of the Matterhorn with its jagged, majestic peak and you see the reflection in the Riffelsee’s turquoise water. Flanking it are 29 other peaks: all four thousand metres above sea level.
The Riffel lake is a nature reserve, a wonderful place with huge stones that have tumbled down from the slopes above, right down to the small lake. You can meditate on the many big rocks around the placid, blue lake and when you turn your eyes to the sky you are blessed by the great Matterhorn massif. Around the lake you find botanical specimens like: the floating bur-reed (Sparganium augustifolium), marsch horse-tails (Equisetum palustre), hair-leafed buttercup (Rananculus trichophyllus), small pond weed (Potamogenton berchtoldii), three bearded rush (Juncus triglumis), the surrounding fields and meadows are full of Scheucher’s cotton-grass (Euphorbium scheuchzeri) and the Sledge Darner (Aeshna juncea). You can’t help being fascinated by the pine and larch forests, moraine lakes, alpine vegetation, glacial moraines and the scree gather below. What I love to see are the tarns, glacial lakes that have been left behind when the glacier recedes.
Along the trail you come across people doing nordic walking, training their entire bodies. You can do intensive training of your upper extremities because you swing your arms in the process, and not only your legs. According to the American Medical Association, trekking along the countryside, be it in the high Himalayas or the Alps and Dolomites, is one of the best ways of improving your health. Yes, you can do something about your Musculus brachialis, deltoideus, triceps, latissimus dorsi, your gastrocnemius and other muscles.
Below the hotel Kulm Gornergrat I talked with a burly, friendly guy who spoke English softly and was selling his art, but when Japanese tourists came by he switched over to the tongue of Nippon. His name was Mathew Fletcher and was from York and had started painting local street scenes in his home town before coming to Switzerland in 1991. Mathew said: ‘I’m trying to capture the beauty of the alpine landscape.’ He has exhibited his work in Zermatt and other parts of Switzerland.
‘I did the Everest trek on November 11, 1993,’ he said with a twinkle in his eyes.
He went on to say: ‘I’ve been to Patagonia, painted in Tahiti, came back to Europe and fell in love with the Matterhorn (sic).’ He draws his works with a pencil first, then paints it with a fine squirrel-hair brush, using water colours.. You can’t miss Mathew Fletcher when you go to Zermatt-Gornergrat. I found his collection of drawings excellent and gave him a tip how he could digitalise his pics and upload them as an art book in one of the increasing number of publish-on-demand sites in the internet. We departed with a namaste, which means ‘I greet the godliness in you’ in Nepalese.
Zermatt is a fascinating place. You see Europeans, Americans, Japanese and Indians (with and without turbans) either trekking to the observatory hill on the Gornergrat, taking the cog-train to the summit or the cabin-gondola to Little Matterhorn which is the best alternative that money can buy. The visitors are old, young and very young and you can see them whezing, puffing, snorting and sweating up and down the many Swiss trails, stopping to take shots of peaks like: Cima de Jazzi, Gorner glacier, Nordend, Dafourspitze, Ludwigshöhe, Liskamm, Grenzgletscher, Zwillingsgletscher, Castor, Pollux, Schwärzegletscher, Breithorn, Theodul glacier and the Matterhorn.
After a hearty breakfast comprising Himalaya tea, cooked beans, scrambled eggs, Bircher müsli and croissants with cheese and crisp speck, you say goodbye to Zermatt (1605m above sea level). A friendly, overweight blonde Dutch lady tells you: ‘We didn’t see anything up at the Little Matterhorn. The rising mists and the thick, grey clouds veiled everything.’
It was bad luck. You hear this also in Darjeeling when visitors from the plains of India book jeeps to view the sunrise from Tiger Hill. Instead of the Kanchenjunga range they just see the heavy monsoon clouds that bring rain that is so good for the tea growing on the slopes of Gorkhaland. That’s hard luck for the tourists.
After a day’s trekking and a good Swiss dinner with rosti or raclette and a Swiss wine, you can go over to the wellness phase of a sauna or enter a hot bubbling whirlpool. I’m fond of the whirlpool for the tired and cramped legs, because the muscles of your lower extremities that have been slogging all day also need to be given a treat with an underwater massage followed by a cold shower.
Since there were a lot of Japanese visitors in the hotel it was a tranquil and serene atmosphere in the sauna and whirlpool, for the people of Nippon don’t frequent saunas and whirlpools when they’re abroad. I remember we had a young Japanese visitor from Kyoto named Takashi who used to play soccer at the local German club in Zähringen. After the match all players went under the shower but not our young man from Nippon. He had inhibitions about undressing in the cabin in front of all the German lads and walking around naked. The Japanese just don’t do such things in public. He’d come home and take a long shower. We in Germany would say: ‘Der ist so verklemmt!’ He’s so shy and inhibited. On the other hand two Indians came to the sauna in their street clothes and shoes. An unpardonable thing to do. A young blonde lady from Dresden named Romy, with whom I had a long chat after the sauna, told me, ‘The US Americans are even worse. They march into the sauna in their dirty trekking boots!’
‘Oh really?’ I said and couldn’t help emitting a chuckle.
Zermatt is like an old western town and you can walk from one end of the shopping street to the other. And that was it. Since it’s August 1, 2009 which is Switzerland’s National Celebration Day, all Swiss huts, houses and buildings have the scarlet flags with a white cross on their window-sills, balconies and terraces between the equally scarlet geraniums. Flags in all sizes flutter everywhere, even on peaks and cliffs. The Swiss love their Heimat and are extremely patriotic.
I remember a Swiss lady in Freiburg named Heidi who was married to a Swabian who lamented that she was surrounded by the dominant German culture. She was a rather garrulous person from the Romand speaking area of Vna but became awfully depressed as time went by. However, on the Swiss National Day she’d hang out all the flags of the Swiss cantons and invite us to a champagne and raclette evening. You never saw her elated throughout the year. Some have a longing for religious festivals like Christmas or Tihar (Diwali) and others have just a feeling of sadness and nostalgia. Heimweh or Fernweh, as we are wont to say in Germany.
In Zermatt I ran into a Hippie couple. He reminded me of John Lennon and she a Cheshire cat with all those wrinkles akin to whiskers on her pale face. A pair round spectacles nestled on the bridge of her nose, and she scurried around her make-shift tent with wares from overseas for they were globe-trotters who’d settled down in Zermatt and were catering to the delights of customers who needed woollies in the higher reaches of the Zermatt-Matterhorn treks. They had a lot of souvenirs from Nepal: Buddhist prayer flags and statues of meditating Boddhisatvas, Indian textiles that the Hippie generations have worn, accessories that even find buyers among the current generation. Bollywood has become an expression of chic from the Land of the Maharajas. I’m amazed and delighted to see my German and Swiss students in Freiburg and Basle draped in Benarasi brocades and golden sandals with gemstones imparting and air of royalty from the Orient. Blondes and brunettes with pierced noses and diamond studs, multiple gold ethno ear-rings like the ones worn by the ladies of Rajasthan and Kirtipur. Ethno jewellery and tattoos in strategic areas of the human anatomy are ‘in,’ you know.
You can’t go to the hotels, shops and do a bit of sightseeing without missing overseeing the ads in Japanese in Zermatt. Even the TV in the hotels have programmes in Japanese. It’s amazing how flexible the Swiss are in Zermatt and have adapted to the demands of the tourism market: the Japanese bring a sizeable amount of income and even the shops have Swiss and Japanese saleswomen. If a Japanese buys an item in the shop the Swiss are quick to warp it as a present in special Nipponese paper. The visitors from Japan go around in groups with their own Japanese guides cum translators. It reminded me of the Junior Year Abroad students from the US colleges who bring their own text-books and teachers to Germany, and keep to themselves instead of getting to know the German students and people in general, and listening to native German speakers in the streets and the professors at the university, and earning their credits in German universities.
The train ride from Zermatt downwards to Visp via Täsch is wonderful, past a milky Matter-Visp river, with spurs guarded by pine trees, children playing golf, myriads of traditional dark wooden Swiss huts and piles of stones from the mountains. Alpine flowers sway in the wind along the way. Suddenly the mist clears to reveal a rugged peak.
From Herbreggen you can see the walking route painted on yellow boards with black letters indicating how long it takes for you to get to different destinatinations, and not in kilometres. The cliffs become visible when the misty veils disappear.: jagged silhouettes of the pines trees along the ridge.
The train goes along serpentine tracks, through tunnels and reaches St. Niklaus (1130m). The railway station was built in 1890. There are cute wooden houses bearing names like: Chalet Frieden (peace), Haus Elch. The chalets are small houses with diagonal laid flate stones, like the ones you find in the Gurung villages on your way to Jomsom.
After St. Niklaus you see mixed forests and tunnels galore. Since there’s only one track, your train has to wait and let another go by, which again is filled with Nipponese visitors clicking away frantically with their digital cameras for power point and slide projections in the winters months in Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku or Kuyushu.
Your red train proceeds and below you flows the turbulent, white Matter-Vispa river. The train tracks follow the right bank of the river, getting broader as you go over bridges. A great feat of engineering which was done with the help of guest-workers from Italy. You see evidence of landslides: huge and small rocks and waterfalls gushing down from the mountains. At Kalpetran, where there’s a Luftseilbahn (ropeway car) the train ‘stops on request.’ If you forget to press the red ‘Halt’ button, the red train with its big windows goes merrily to Stalden.
The wooden houses have pretty little windows decorated. with red geraniums. Since the houses are built on the slopes, the Swiss families have to battle against the torrential rains in summer, and snow and ice in the long winter months. Most people have additional stone and wooden walls along the slopes where they live, to control the wrath of the elements to some extent. You see small wooden huts being overshadowed by big houses with beton fundaments and wooden architecture above.
You arrive in Stalden-Saas, a tourist place with lots of chalets to rent. At the railway station you see young people relishing their warm soups, an ‘Il Buffeto’ sign of a pizzaria, decorated with more geraniums. There are vineyards along the slope. The people in the Alps, especially the older generation, are very conscious about God and written on a wooden board are the words:
Gott beschütze dieses Haus
Und all die gehen ein und aus.
God protect this house,
And all those who go in and out.
The Matter-Vispa changes its bed for a moment and flows again to the right. It’s swollen now and the water has turned grey with stones becoming rare. More vineyards appear along the slopes to the right. A cement factory appears with rich green meadows.
You reach Visp, a much bigger Swiss town with intercity railway connections. The houses are built atop the surrounding hills and almost on every slope. You change trains and board a comfortable double-decker intercity. It’s 2pm and the train is speeding towards north Switzerland. One tunnel alone is 20 minutes long. The Swiss do keep you often in the dark. A train conductor comes along the aisle and admonishes a bearded guy with a Jewish cap.
‘We call it trick number 17,’ he says to the passenger, ‘travelling without a ticket.’ But he’s kind and doesn’t throw him out. The passenger pays and that’s the end of the matter. Not so in Germany. The conductor ordered a school-kid who didn’t have a ticket to get off the train in the middle of nowhere. Poor fellow. In German trams Schwarzfahrer, as commuters sans tickets are called, are obliged not only to pay the fare but also a fine of 40 euros. An expensive ride.
In the lovely town of Bern you take the fast Swiss train to Basle. It’s 3pm and the sky is still clouded and misty below. It has rained and the streets are wet, with the vapour rising. There are men in orange vests moving around the platforms busy as bees, transporting luggage from hotels. An elderly trio in their seventies push a Kofferkuli towards platform no. 8. There are a lot of blondes and brunettes dressed and looking like Shakira and Britney Spears commuting to their homes. The styling is top and they all have that cover-girl look. You see Swiss blokes in shorts, sneakers and T-shirts walking down the aisle with ears plugged to their respective MP 3s.
The river in Bern has a greenish-blue colour as it snakes out of the town. Cute little two-storied houses appear as you speed by. An attractive woman in her forties, wearing tight blue jeans, glittering slippers and elegant features watches your truly as I scribble my microstories on my pad. She must be wondering what I’m writing. She has a hand resting casually on her thigh and the other is on the seat as she gazes at fellow passengers. A young blonde mother with her small son take opposite her and pack out their chicken nuggets with dips. She closes her eyes after a sigh. The smell of ketchup and sweet spicy dip floats in the compartment.
Outside it’s green again and the hamlets in the outskirts of Bern fleet by as pine trees begin appearing. Ah, pine trees have been following me since my schooldays in the foothills of the Himalayas and in the Black Forest where I live. It’s such an exhilarating experience to walk along pine forests. The smell of the green in the forest is a spiritual experience because it bears the smell of incense or Weihrauch, which not only the shaman-healers of Nepal and other parts of the world use but also catholic priests in the church.
The blonde woman with a city bag has her eyes still closed, oblivious of the mother opposite her who’s talking over her mobile, amidst the monotonous noise of the speeding train. A wonderful holiday in coming to an end: with trekking during the day and sauna and whirlpool baths in the evenings till 9pm. How lovely it has been, candle-light dinners, promenading in Zermatt, enjoying life without a care. Zermatt is worth the four-star hotel tab. You bet I’ll go there again.
As you go along the Riffelberg trail to Riffelalp in Switzerland, you’re following Mark Twain’s footsteps. He describes the trail in his book ‘Climbing the Riffelberg.’ Riffelalp has the highest ram in Europe, and when you reach the top you can see a breathtaking panorama of 29 four-thousand-metre peaks, including the Matterhorn. There are a few places in this world which leaves you breathless for you are overwhelmed and awed by the sheer beauty of what you behold. I had the same feeling when I gazed at the Khumbu Himalayas, and beyond the Roof of the World.
A feeling of humbleness and joy overcomes you. The thrill of having been there, seen, smelt and felt the greatness and magnificence of the lofty peaks rising sovereign above the thin milky mists ascending languidly from the vales and spurs below. You have eyes only for the glaciers and peaks.
When you descend to the Riffelsee, a picturesque lake, you cherish the sight of the Matterhorn with its jagged, majestic peak and you see the reflection in the Riffelsee’s turquoise water. Flanking it are 29 other peaks: all four thousand metres above sea level.
The Riffel lake is a nature reserve, a wonderful place with huge stones that have tumbled down from the slopes above, right down to the small lake. You can meditate on the many big rocks around the placid, blue lake and when you turn your eyes to the sky you are blessed by the great Matterhorn massif. Around the lake you find botanical specimens like: the floating bur-reed (Sparganium augustifolium), marsch horse-tails (Equisetum palustre), hair-leafed buttercup (Rananculus trichophyllus), small pond weed (Potamogenton berchtoldii), three bearded rush (Juncus triglumis), the surrounding fields and meadows are full of Scheucher’s cotton-grass (Euphorbium scheuchzeri) and the Sledge Darner (Aeshna juncea). You can’t help being fascinated by the pine and larch forests, moraine lakes, alpine vegetation, glacial moraines and the scree gather below. What I love to see are the tarns, glacial lakes that have been left behind when the glacier recedes.
Along the trail you come across people doing nordic walking, training their entire bodies. You can do intensive training of your upper extremities because you swing your arms in the process, and not only your legs. According to the American Medical Association, trekking along the countryside, be it in the high Himalayas or the Alps and Dolomites, is one of the best ways of improving your health. Yes, you can do something about your Musculus brachialis, deltoideus, triceps, latissimus dorsi, your gastrocnemius and other muscles.
Below the hotel Kulm Gornergrat I talked with a burly, friendly guy who spoke English softly and was selling his art, but when Japanese tourists came by he switched over to the tongue of Nippon. His name was Mathew Fletcher and was from York and had started painting local street scenes in his home town before coming to Switzerland in 1991. Mathew said: ‘I’m trying to capture the beauty of the alpine landscape.’ He has exhibited his work in Zermatt and other parts of Switzerland.
‘I did the Everest trek on November 11, 1993,’ he said with a twinkle in his eyes.
He went on to say: ‘I’ve been to Patagonia, painted in Tahiti, came back to Europe and fell in love with the Matterhorn (sic).’ He draws his works with a pencil first, then paints it with a fine squirrel-hair brush, using water colours.. You can’t miss Mathew Fletcher when you go to Zermatt-Gornergrat. I found his collection of drawings excellent and gave him a tip how he could digitalise his pics and upload them as an art book in one of the increasing number of publish-on-demand sites in the internet. We departed with a namaste, which means ‘I greet the godliness in you’ in Nepalese.
Zermatt is a fascinating place. You see Europeans, Americans, Japanese and Indians (with and without turbans) either trekking to the observatory hill on the Gornergrat, taking the cog-train to the summit or the cabin-gondola to Little Matterhorn which is the best alternative that money can buy. The visitors are old, young and very young and you can see them whezing, puffing, snorting and sweating up and down the many Swiss trails, stopping to take shots of peaks like: Cima de Jazzi, Gorner glacier, Nordend, Dafourspitze, Ludwigshöhe, Liskamm, Grenzgletscher, Zwillingsgletscher, Castor, Pollux, Schwärzegletscher, Breithorn, Theodul glacier and the Matterhorn.
After a hearty breakfast comprising Himalaya tea, cooked beans, scrambled eggs, Bircher müsli and croissants with cheese and crisp speck, you say goodbye to Zermatt (1605m above sea level). A friendly, overweight blonde Dutch lady tells you: ‘We didn’t see anything up at the Little Matterhorn. The rising mists and the thick, grey clouds veiled everything.’
It was bad luck. You hear this also in Darjeeling when visitors from the plains of India book jeeps to view the sunrise from Tiger Hill. Instead of the Kanchenjunga range they just see the heavy monsoon clouds that bring rain that is so good for the tea growing on the slopes of Gorkhaland. That’s hard luck for the tourists.
After a day’s trekking and a good Swiss dinner with rosti or raclette and a Swiss wine, you can go over to the wellness phase of a sauna or enter a hot bubbling whirlpool. I’m fond of the whirlpool for the tired and cramped legs, because the muscles of your lower extremities that have been slogging all day also need to be given a treat with an underwater massage followed by a cold shower.
Since there were a lot of Japanese visitors in the hotel it was a tranquil and serene atmosphere in the sauna and whirlpool, for the people of Nippon don’t frequent saunas and whirlpools when they’re abroad. I remember we had a young Japanese visitor from Kyoto named Takashi who used to play soccer at the local German club in Zähringen. After the match all players went under the shower but not our young man from Nippon. He had inhibitions about undressing in the cabin in front of all the German lads and walking around naked. The Japanese just don’t do such things in public. He’d come home and take a long shower. We in Germany would say: ‘Der ist so verklemmt!’ He’s so shy and inhibited. On the other hand two Indians came to the sauna in their street clothes and shoes. An unpardonable thing to do. A young blonde lady from Dresden named Romy, with whom I had a long chat after the sauna, told me, ‘The US Americans are even worse. They march into the sauna in their dirty trekking boots!’
‘Oh really?’ I said and couldn’t help emitting a chuckle.
Zermatt is like an old western town and you can walk from one end of the shopping street to the other. And that was it. Since it’s August 1, 2009 which is Switzerland’s National Celebration Day, all Swiss huts, houses and buildings have the scarlet flags with a white cross on their window-sills, balconies and terraces between the equally scarlet geraniums. Flags in all sizes flutter everywhere, even on peaks and cliffs. The Swiss love their Heimat and are extremely patriotic.
I remember a Swiss lady in Freiburg named Heidi who was married to a Swabian who lamented that she was surrounded by the dominant German culture. She was a rather garrulous person from the Romand speaking area of Vna but became awfully depressed as time went by. However, on the Swiss National Day she’d hang out all the flags of the Swiss cantons and invite us to a champagne and raclette evening. You never saw her elated throughout the year. Some have a longing for religious festivals like Christmas or Tihar (Diwali) and others have just a feeling of sadness and nostalgia. Heimweh or Fernweh, as we are wont to say in Germany.
In Zermatt I ran into a Hippie couple. He reminded me of John Lennon and she a Cheshire cat with all those wrinkles akin to whiskers on her pale face. A pair round spectacles nestled on the bridge of her nose, and she scurried around her make-shift tent with wares from overseas for they were globe-trotters who’d settled down in Zermatt and were catering to the delights of customers who needed woollies in the higher reaches of the Zermatt-Matterhorn treks. They had a lot of souvenirs from Nepal: Buddhist prayer flags and statues of meditating Boddhisatvas, Indian textiles that the Hippie generations have worn, accessories that even find buyers among the current generation. Bollywood has become an expression of chic from the Land of the Maharajas. I’m amazed and delighted to see my German and Swiss students in Freiburg and Basle draped in Benarasi brocades and golden sandals with gemstones imparting and air of royalty from the Orient. Blondes and brunettes with pierced noses and diamond studs, multiple gold ethno ear-rings like the ones worn by the ladies of Rajasthan and Kirtipur. Ethno jewellery and tattoos in strategic areas of the human anatomy are ‘in,’ you know.
You can’t go to the hotels, shops and do a bit of sightseeing without missing overseeing the ads in Japanese in Zermatt. Even the TV in the hotels have programmes in Japanese. It’s amazing how flexible the Swiss are in Zermatt and have adapted to the demands of the tourism market: the Japanese bring a sizeable amount of income and even the shops have Swiss and Japanese saleswomen. If a Japanese buys an item in the shop the Swiss are quick to warp it as a present in special Nipponese paper. The visitors from Japan go around in groups with their own Japanese guides cum translators. It reminded me of the Junior Year Abroad students from the US colleges who bring their own text-books and teachers to Germany, and keep to themselves instead of getting to know the German students and people in general, and listening to native German speakers in the streets and the professors at the university, and earning their credits in German universities.
The train ride from Zermatt downwards to Visp via Täsch is wonderful, past a milky Matter-Visp river, with spurs guarded by pine trees, children playing golf, myriads of traditional dark wooden Swiss huts and piles of stones from the mountains. Alpine flowers sway in the wind along the way. Suddenly the mist clears to reveal a rugged peak.
From Herbreggen you can see the walking route painted on yellow boards with black letters indicating how long it takes for you to get to different destinatinations, and not in kilometres. The cliffs become visible when the misty veils disappear.: jagged silhouettes of the pines trees along the ridge.
The train goes along serpentine tracks, through tunnels and reaches St. Niklaus (1130m). The railway station was built in 1890. There are cute wooden houses bearing names like: Chalet Frieden (peace), Haus Elch. The chalets are small houses with diagonal laid flate stones, like the ones you find in the Gurung villages on your way to Jomsom.
After St. Niklaus you see mixed forests and tunnels galore. Since there’s only one track, your train has to wait and let another go by, which again is filled with Nipponese visitors clicking away frantically with their digital cameras for power point and slide projections in the winters months in Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku or Kuyushu.
Your red train proceeds and below you flows the turbulent, white Matter-Vispa river. The train tracks follow the right bank of the river, getting broader as you go over bridges. A great feat of engineering which was done with the help of guest-workers from Italy. You see evidence of landslides: huge and small rocks and waterfalls gushing down from the mountains. At Kalpetran, where there’s a Luftseilbahn (ropeway car) the train ‘stops on request.’ If you forget to press the red ‘Halt’ button, the red train with its big windows goes merrily to Stalden.
The wooden houses have pretty little windows decorated. with red geraniums. Since the houses are built on the slopes, the Swiss families have to battle against the torrential rains in summer, and snow and ice in the long winter months. Most people have additional stone and wooden walls along the slopes where they live, to control the wrath of the elements to some extent. You see small wooden huts being overshadowed by big houses with beton fundaments and wooden architecture above.
You arrive in Stalden-Saas, a tourist place with lots of chalets to rent. At the railway station you see young people relishing their warm soups, an ‘Il Buffeto’ sign of a pizzaria, decorated with more geraniums. There are vineyards along the slope. The people in the Alps, especially the older generation, are very conscious about God and written on a wooden board are the words:
Gott beschütze dieses Haus
Und all die gehen ein und aus.
God protect this house,
And all those who go in and out.
The Matter-Vispa changes its bed for a moment and flows again to the right. It’s swollen now and the water has turned grey with stones becoming rare. More vineyards appear along the slopes to the right. A cement factory appears with rich green meadows.
You reach Visp, a much bigger Swiss town with intercity railway connections. The houses are built atop the surrounding hills and almost on every slope. You change trains and board a comfortable double-decker intercity. It’s 2pm and the train is speeding towards north Switzerland. One tunnel alone is 20 minutes long. The Swiss do keep you often in the dark. A train conductor comes along the aisle and admonishes a bearded guy with a Jewish cap.
‘We call it trick number 17,’ he says to the passenger, ‘travelling without a ticket.’ But he’s kind and doesn’t throw him out. The passenger pays and that’s the end of the matter. Not so in Germany. The conductor ordered a school-kid who didn’t have a ticket to get off the train in the middle of nowhere. Poor fellow. In German trams Schwarzfahrer, as commuters sans tickets are called, are obliged not only to pay the fare but also a fine of 40 euros. An expensive ride.
In the lovely town of Bern you take the fast Swiss train to Basle. It’s 3pm and the sky is still clouded and misty below. It has rained and the streets are wet, with the vapour rising. There are men in orange vests moving around the platforms busy as bees, transporting luggage from hotels. An elderly trio in their seventies push a Kofferkuli towards platform no. 8. There are a lot of blondes and brunettes dressed and looking like Shakira and Britney Spears commuting to their homes. The styling is top and they all have that cover-girl look. You see Swiss blokes in shorts, sneakers and T-shirts walking down the aisle with ears plugged to their respective MP 3s.
The river in Bern has a greenish-blue colour as it snakes out of the town. Cute little two-storied houses appear as you speed by. An attractive woman in her forties, wearing tight blue jeans, glittering slippers and elegant features watches your truly as I scribble my microstories on my pad. She must be wondering what I’m writing. She has a hand resting casually on her thigh and the other is on the seat as she gazes at fellow passengers. A young blonde mother with her small son take opposite her and pack out their chicken nuggets with dips. She closes her eyes after a sigh. The smell of ketchup and sweet spicy dip floats in the compartment.
Outside it’s green again and the hamlets in the outskirts of Bern fleet by as pine trees begin appearing. Ah, pine trees have been following me since my schooldays in the foothills of the Himalayas and in the Black Forest where I live. It’s such an exhilarating experience to walk along pine forests. The smell of the green in the forest is a spiritual experience because it bears the smell of incense or Weihrauch, which not only the shaman-healers of Nepal and other parts of the world use but also catholic priests in the church.
The blonde woman with a city bag has her eyes still closed, oblivious of the mother opposite her who’s talking over her mobile, amidst the monotonous noise of the speeding train. A wonderful holiday in coming to an end: with trekking during the day and sauna and whirlpool baths in the evenings till 9pm. How lovely it has been, candle-light dinners, promenading in Zermatt, enjoying life without a care. Zermatt is worth the four-star hotel tab. You bet I’ll go there again.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Impressions From Zermatt-Matterhorn (Satis Shroff)
Impressions From Zermatt-Matterhorn I (Satis Shroff)
Sunrise at the Gornergrat 3089 m above sea level and a hearty Continental breakfast in the 3100m high Kulmhotel Gornergrat. What a delightful and unforgettable experience with the panorama of the Alps right in front of you. For people who’ve been to the Himalayas, it’s like breakfast at Lukla or Namche Bazaar. Albeit, with the exception that the Swiss do pamper you with the very best from their kitchen and cellar.
Zermatt-Matterhorn is a hamlet located in the Swiss Alps. The world famous Glacier Express brings you directly to this holiday resort. Zermatt is a charming mountain hamlet at the foot of the Gornergrat peak, which is flanked to the west by Hohtali (high valley), Rote Nase (red Nose), Steckhorn and the 4634m high Dafourspitze. Whereas the names of the major peaks in the Himalayas have been named after Gods and Goddesses, in the Alps they bear their names according to their looks. To the Swiss the peaks appear like horns (Matterhorn, Breithorn), pointed summits (Parrotspitze, Dafourspitze), a thumb (pollus) or a comb (Liskamm) with their respective glaciers (gletspuchhare peak,cher): upper and lower Theodul glacier, Breithorn glacier, Zwillinggletscher (the Twin glacier), Grenzgletscher, Gornergletscher and the famous Rhone glacier, where the Swiss have built an icy tunnel and sell souvenirs. It sure is uncanny to walk inside a glacier, but the Swiss have everything under control for the delights of the visitors. The Rhone glacier is just as delightful with waterdrops pattering on your hear from the icicles.
The Matterhorn glacier paradise, is also known as the Small Matterhorn and beyond the Theodul pass looms the 4478m Matterhorn, aloof from the other peaks, in all its majesty. A modern cable cabin brings you right to the top.
A pang of nostalgia always overcomes me when I see the Matterhorn, because it reminds me of the Machapuchhare peak, the fish-tailed one, in Pokhara (Central Nepal) where we used to go on geological and botanical excursions during my student days in Catmandu. I also think of the friendly and brave Gurung people who live in the upper reaches of the Annapurna mountains and the boat-rides on the placid waters of the Phewa lake.
I remember having painted the Matterhorn from a Swiss calendar during my school days in the foothills of the Himalayas. We even had a huge Swiss nun with a broad infectious smile who ran the school infirmary and who’s name was Sister Felix. It was a strict school run by the Christian Brothers of Ireland and Sister Felix had a heart for us small boys with our small injuries. She was a great solace to us in the English boarding school which the Irish Brothers ruled with typical school rules, arrogant prefects, tidiness inspections, benders for the offenders and all. I still see her sympathetic face, the strains of her blonde hair climbing out of her bonnet, speaking English with a soft Swiss accent. She was our Florence Nightingale amid the skirmishes between the school-kids and the teachers, for in those days punishment was severe, and not like today where the parents sue the teachers for their so-called brutality, and the kids threaten brazenly with their respective lawyers in case a teacher loses control over himself or herself.
From Zermatt you take Europe’s highest open-air cog train past the picturesque viaduct at Findelbach (1774m), Rifflealp along a serpentine route, reminiscent of the loop after Ghoom along the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, up to Rotenboden, which means ‘red soil.’
Since the new Lötschberg-basis tunnel is open to traffic, you can drive from Zürich, Basle and Bern and gain an hour.
On the right side you see the Riffel lake and the breathtaking Gorner glacier. Below you are people trekking or walking with their nordic walking gear along the Heidi landscape. Some are panting on their mountain bikes, overwhelmed by the glacier landscape that unfolds in front of your eyes. What’s wonderful about the Zermatt-Matterhorn is that it’s open all the year round. You can get off the cog-train at any station along the route and jump in again when you’ve had enough of walking in the Alpine world. I walked all the way to Interlaken with Karin and enjoyed the Swiss countryside, especially the flora and fauna.
It was easy going from the Gornetgrat, past Rotenboden to the Riffelsee, a picturesque lake and to Riffelberg from where you could see the Furg glacier and above it the Theodul Pass with the Massif of the 4478m Matterhorn with its jagged peak. In the towns below you get souvenirs centred around the Matterhorn massif: chocolates, blue stones shaped like the mountain, T-shirts with the Matterhorn icon, letter-openers, cakes, mugs, cigarette lighters, aprons too. You descend to Riffelberg, past Riffelalp, and after you’ve reachered Findelback with its waters gushing under the picturesque viaduct, you arrive at the village of Zermatt, which has always functioned as a town where the experienced climbers of Zermatt have looked for and people who hire them to climb the peaks that are draped in misty curtains on rainy days. When you think of the Matterhorn you can’t help thinking about Edward Whymper, who scaled the peak with a climbing party on July 14, 1865.
On the day of the Matterhorn disaster, the British climbers began their descent after having climbed the mountain. Above the shoulder of Matterhorn, the most dangerous part of the mountain a slip occurred and the rope broke. The climbers Hudson, Hadow, Lord Francis Douglas and Croz fell down the north face of Matterhorn. The following day, the exhausted and sad survivors reached Zermatt. The Swiss Hotel-owner Seiler asked Whymper what had happened up in the mountain.
Whymper’s laconic answer was: ‘The Taugwalders and I have returned.’
Europe was shocked by the disaster and even Queen Victoria asked whether such a perilous pastime could not be stopped by law. But ever since man has started climbing mountains, the mountaineers have been paying a heavy toll for their ‘deadly pursuits’ in the higher regions for their egoistic endeavours, be it alone or in teams, sans oxygen and sans amphetamines. The graveyard adjacent to Zermatt’s English church and the Swiss graveyards are replete with people who died while climbing. A couplet from Romeo and Julia reminds us of Edward Broome, a prominent member of the Alpine Club:
‘Night’s candles are burnt out
And jocund day stands tiptoe
On the misty mountain tops.’
The highest elevation of the Gornergrat is 3089m. It’s like being on the top of the world with a panorama that comprises 29 four-thousand metre peaks as far as your eyes can see. It is when you have reached such a great height where the mountains meet the sky, and when you realise how small and insignificant you are in the presence of the gigantic massifs before you that you have thoughts about your very existence and ask yourself about your ‘sein oder nicht sein’ (to be or not to be). It is in these dizzy, rarefied heights that you ask yourself questions about yourself and philosophise about your own life like other thinkers have done in the past. When you have gone through this process of self-examination, you have the choice to carry on the way you’ve chosen or to change within and start leading a new, conscious life. Aware of yourself and others, modern life without its automatic behavioural patterns.
The observation platform for visitors is at a height of 3130m and for those who feel a wave of sanctity suddenly sweep across their hearts in this splendid place, there’s the Berhhard von Aosta chapel. Further below the Gornergrat lies Rotenboden at an elevation of 2815m, which is the starting point of the trail to Riffelsee, a lake where you can observe a gorgeous reflection of the Matterhorn. You take the Monte Rosa Hut trail and when you go past the Gorner glacier, you are rewarded with an excellent view of the 4634m Dufourspitze.
The Gornergrat Bahn is Switzerland’s first electric cog railway and is celebrating its 111 birthday. All eight trains of the Glacier Express to Zermatt have panorama wagons. Since it’s summer, and the Swiss are perfectly organised, there’s even a folklore group with Swiss brass and alp-horns to greet you. In Europe they say we Germans do things with German thoroughness. I’d even go even further to say that the Helvetians do it even better.
Generations have seen the film ‘The Sound of Music’ with Julie Andrews and have been moved by the song ‘Edelweiss.’ There’s even a 110 year old, Edelweiss hut built at a height of 1961m and which was in the past frequented by the likes of writer Emile Zola, Albert Schweitzer of Lamberene fame and the climber Edward Whymper.
You don’t expect haute cuisine up in the Swiss Alps, do you? Gault-Millau classified the hospitality up here as ‘comfortable, hearty and inviting.’ I can only second it. On July 4, 2009 there was a Zermatt Marathon, a race in which you climb 1853m. Quite a feat but not to be recommended for complacent couch potatoes. If you like the Alpine folklore, there’s even a Folklore Festival on August 9, 2009 with big parades comprising 1200 participants from the entire Alpine region. If you feel that climbing up to the Matterhorn is not enough for your ego, then you can take part in the Matterhorn race. You’ll be traversing 12,49km and have to overcome an elevation of 980 metres. The Zermatt festival takes place between September 4-20,2009 and the Chamber Music with ensembles and solists of the Berliner Philharmonic orchestra will bring you western classics. If you like Swiss and other Alpine costumes then you can visit the Trachtenfest on September 5-6, 2009. For ladies it might be fun to be a part of the crowd by donning dirndel costumes with Alpine flower-hats to go with them. You can buy excellent traditional dirndels and trachten costumes in Zürich, Basle, München and Zermatt itself. With the exception of the Gornergrat, children under 9 can travel all mountain trains free of charge. Ain’t that grand?
More information for your Swiss holiday? Google, Yahoo or Bing: www.zermatt.ch. Grüezi miteinander.
About the Author:
Satis Shroff is a prolific writer and teaches Creative Writing at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. http://www.zfs.uni-freiburg.de/zfs/dozent/lehrbeauftragte4/index_html/#shroff.
He is based in Freiburg (poems, fiction, non-fiction) and also writes on ecological, ethno-medical, culture-ethnological themes. He has studied Zoology and Botany in Nepal, Medicine and Social Sciences in Germany and Creative Writing in Freiburg and the United Kingdom. He describes himself as a mediator between western and eastern cultures and sees his future as a writer and poet. Since literature is one of the most important means of cross-cultural learning, he is dedicated to promoting and creating awareness for Creative Writing and transcultural togetherness in his writings, and in preserving an attitude of Miteinander in this world. He lectures in Basle (Switzerland) and in Germany at the Akademie für medizinische Berufe (University Klinikum Freiburg) and the Zentrum für Schlüsselqualifikationen (University of Freiburg where he is a Lehrbeauftragter for Creative Writing). Satis Shroff was awarded the German Academic Exchange Prize.
Sunrise at the Gornergrat 3089 m above sea level and a hearty Continental breakfast in the 3100m high Kulmhotel Gornergrat. What a delightful and unforgettable experience with the panorama of the Alps right in front of you. For people who’ve been to the Himalayas, it’s like breakfast at Lukla or Namche Bazaar. Albeit, with the exception that the Swiss do pamper you with the very best from their kitchen and cellar.
Zermatt-Matterhorn is a hamlet located in the Swiss Alps. The world famous Glacier Express brings you directly to this holiday resort. Zermatt is a charming mountain hamlet at the foot of the Gornergrat peak, which is flanked to the west by Hohtali (high valley), Rote Nase (red Nose), Steckhorn and the 4634m high Dafourspitze. Whereas the names of the major peaks in the Himalayas have been named after Gods and Goddesses, in the Alps they bear their names according to their looks. To the Swiss the peaks appear like horns (Matterhorn, Breithorn), pointed summits (Parrotspitze, Dafourspitze), a thumb (pollus) or a comb (Liskamm) with their respective glaciers (gletspuchhare peak,cher): upper and lower Theodul glacier, Breithorn glacier, Zwillinggletscher (the Twin glacier), Grenzgletscher, Gornergletscher and the famous Rhone glacier, where the Swiss have built an icy tunnel and sell souvenirs. It sure is uncanny to walk inside a glacier, but the Swiss have everything under control for the delights of the visitors. The Rhone glacier is just as delightful with waterdrops pattering on your hear from the icicles.
The Matterhorn glacier paradise, is also known as the Small Matterhorn and beyond the Theodul pass looms the 4478m Matterhorn, aloof from the other peaks, in all its majesty. A modern cable cabin brings you right to the top.
A pang of nostalgia always overcomes me when I see the Matterhorn, because it reminds me of the Machapuchhare peak, the fish-tailed one, in Pokhara (Central Nepal) where we used to go on geological and botanical excursions during my student days in Catmandu. I also think of the friendly and brave Gurung people who live in the upper reaches of the Annapurna mountains and the boat-rides on the placid waters of the Phewa lake.
I remember having painted the Matterhorn from a Swiss calendar during my school days in the foothills of the Himalayas. We even had a huge Swiss nun with a broad infectious smile who ran the school infirmary and who’s name was Sister Felix. It was a strict school run by the Christian Brothers of Ireland and Sister Felix had a heart for us small boys with our small injuries. She was a great solace to us in the English boarding school which the Irish Brothers ruled with typical school rules, arrogant prefects, tidiness inspections, benders for the offenders and all. I still see her sympathetic face, the strains of her blonde hair climbing out of her bonnet, speaking English with a soft Swiss accent. She was our Florence Nightingale amid the skirmishes between the school-kids and the teachers, for in those days punishment was severe, and not like today where the parents sue the teachers for their so-called brutality, and the kids threaten brazenly with their respective lawyers in case a teacher loses control over himself or herself.
From Zermatt you take Europe’s highest open-air cog train past the picturesque viaduct at Findelbach (1774m), Rifflealp along a serpentine route, reminiscent of the loop after Ghoom along the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, up to Rotenboden, which means ‘red soil.’
Since the new Lötschberg-basis tunnel is open to traffic, you can drive from Zürich, Basle and Bern and gain an hour.
On the right side you see the Riffel lake and the breathtaking Gorner glacier. Below you are people trekking or walking with their nordic walking gear along the Heidi landscape. Some are panting on their mountain bikes, overwhelmed by the glacier landscape that unfolds in front of your eyes. What’s wonderful about the Zermatt-Matterhorn is that it’s open all the year round. You can get off the cog-train at any station along the route and jump in again when you’ve had enough of walking in the Alpine world. I walked all the way to Interlaken with Karin and enjoyed the Swiss countryside, especially the flora and fauna.
It was easy going from the Gornetgrat, past Rotenboden to the Riffelsee, a picturesque lake and to Riffelberg from where you could see the Furg glacier and above it the Theodul Pass with the Massif of the 4478m Matterhorn with its jagged peak. In the towns below you get souvenirs centred around the Matterhorn massif: chocolates, blue stones shaped like the mountain, T-shirts with the Matterhorn icon, letter-openers, cakes, mugs, cigarette lighters, aprons too. You descend to Riffelberg, past Riffelalp, and after you’ve reachered Findelback with its waters gushing under the picturesque viaduct, you arrive at the village of Zermatt, which has always functioned as a town where the experienced climbers of Zermatt have looked for and people who hire them to climb the peaks that are draped in misty curtains on rainy days. When you think of the Matterhorn you can’t help thinking about Edward Whymper, who scaled the peak with a climbing party on July 14, 1865.
On the day of the Matterhorn disaster, the British climbers began their descent after having climbed the mountain. Above the shoulder of Matterhorn, the most dangerous part of the mountain a slip occurred and the rope broke. The climbers Hudson, Hadow, Lord Francis Douglas and Croz fell down the north face of Matterhorn. The following day, the exhausted and sad survivors reached Zermatt. The Swiss Hotel-owner Seiler asked Whymper what had happened up in the mountain.
Whymper’s laconic answer was: ‘The Taugwalders and I have returned.’
Europe was shocked by the disaster and even Queen Victoria asked whether such a perilous pastime could not be stopped by law. But ever since man has started climbing mountains, the mountaineers have been paying a heavy toll for their ‘deadly pursuits’ in the higher regions for their egoistic endeavours, be it alone or in teams, sans oxygen and sans amphetamines. The graveyard adjacent to Zermatt’s English church and the Swiss graveyards are replete with people who died while climbing. A couplet from Romeo and Julia reminds us of Edward Broome, a prominent member of the Alpine Club:
‘Night’s candles are burnt out
And jocund day stands tiptoe
On the misty mountain tops.’
The highest elevation of the Gornergrat is 3089m. It’s like being on the top of the world with a panorama that comprises 29 four-thousand metre peaks as far as your eyes can see. It is when you have reached such a great height where the mountains meet the sky, and when you realise how small and insignificant you are in the presence of the gigantic massifs before you that you have thoughts about your very existence and ask yourself about your ‘sein oder nicht sein’ (to be or not to be). It is in these dizzy, rarefied heights that you ask yourself questions about yourself and philosophise about your own life like other thinkers have done in the past. When you have gone through this process of self-examination, you have the choice to carry on the way you’ve chosen or to change within and start leading a new, conscious life. Aware of yourself and others, modern life without its automatic behavioural patterns.
The observation platform for visitors is at a height of 3130m and for those who feel a wave of sanctity suddenly sweep across their hearts in this splendid place, there’s the Berhhard von Aosta chapel. Further below the Gornergrat lies Rotenboden at an elevation of 2815m, which is the starting point of the trail to Riffelsee, a lake where you can observe a gorgeous reflection of the Matterhorn. You take the Monte Rosa Hut trail and when you go past the Gorner glacier, you are rewarded with an excellent view of the 4634m Dufourspitze.
The Gornergrat Bahn is Switzerland’s first electric cog railway and is celebrating its 111 birthday. All eight trains of the Glacier Express to Zermatt have panorama wagons. Since it’s summer, and the Swiss are perfectly organised, there’s even a folklore group with Swiss brass and alp-horns to greet you. In Europe they say we Germans do things with German thoroughness. I’d even go even further to say that the Helvetians do it even better.
Generations have seen the film ‘The Sound of Music’ with Julie Andrews and have been moved by the song ‘Edelweiss.’ There’s even a 110 year old, Edelweiss hut built at a height of 1961m and which was in the past frequented by the likes of writer Emile Zola, Albert Schweitzer of Lamberene fame and the climber Edward Whymper.
You don’t expect haute cuisine up in the Swiss Alps, do you? Gault-Millau classified the hospitality up here as ‘comfortable, hearty and inviting.’ I can only second it. On July 4, 2009 there was a Zermatt Marathon, a race in which you climb 1853m. Quite a feat but not to be recommended for complacent couch potatoes. If you like the Alpine folklore, there’s even a Folklore Festival on August 9, 2009 with big parades comprising 1200 participants from the entire Alpine region. If you feel that climbing up to the Matterhorn is not enough for your ego, then you can take part in the Matterhorn race. You’ll be traversing 12,49km and have to overcome an elevation of 980 metres. The Zermatt festival takes place between September 4-20,2009 and the Chamber Music with ensembles and solists of the Berliner Philharmonic orchestra will bring you western classics. If you like Swiss and other Alpine costumes then you can visit the Trachtenfest on September 5-6, 2009. For ladies it might be fun to be a part of the crowd by donning dirndel costumes with Alpine flower-hats to go with them. You can buy excellent traditional dirndels and trachten costumes in Zürich, Basle, München and Zermatt itself. With the exception of the Gornergrat, children under 9 can travel all mountain trains free of charge. Ain’t that grand?
More information for your Swiss holiday? Google, Yahoo or Bing: www.zermatt.ch. Grüezi miteinander.
About the Author:
Satis Shroff is a prolific writer and teaches Creative Writing at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. http://www.zfs.uni-freiburg.de/zfs/dozent/lehrbeauftragte4/index_html/#shroff.
He is based in Freiburg (poems, fiction, non-fiction) and also writes on ecological, ethno-medical, culture-ethnological themes. He has studied Zoology and Botany in Nepal, Medicine and Social Sciences in Germany and Creative Writing in Freiburg and the United Kingdom. He describes himself as a mediator between western and eastern cultures and sees his future as a writer and poet. Since literature is one of the most important means of cross-cultural learning, he is dedicated to promoting and creating awareness for Creative Writing and transcultural togetherness in his writings, and in preserving an attitude of Miteinander in this world. He lectures in Basle (Switzerland) and in Germany at the Akademie für medizinische Berufe (University Klinikum Freiburg) and the Zentrum für Schlüsselqualifikationen (University of Freiburg where he is a Lehrbeauftragter for Creative Writing). Satis Shroff was awarded the German Academic Exchange Prize.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Nepal Talk,Nightmare,Katmandu is Nepal,Bombay Brothel (Satis Shroff)
+Art+satisshroff+2009.gif)
(Nepalese mother smoking a katuwa (crude cigarette)Art by satisshroff (c) 2009
A NEPAL TALK (Satis Shroff)
A German school teacher invites me
To talk about Nepal
And to introduce a traditional dish to her German class.
The teacher, a lady in her forties,
Likes it multicultural.
She asks her pupils with foreign parents
To greet the class in outlandish tongues.
The bicultural children comply,
And the class learns to say:
‘Good morning, Bon Soir, Namaste,
In English, French and Nepali.
A class full of curious children await me.
We make momos and little hands help in turn.
In the audio-visual room the slide projector has no bulb.
An Italian Hausmeister turns up with a new one
And voila! Our adventure can begin.
I show them colour transparencies
Of Nepal, my homeland.
Temples, streets and school-children and ethnic Nepalis
From Kathmandu Valley and the hills.
Living Goddesses, potters, farmers, sadhus and priests,
Overdressed and underdressed Nepalis.
Rhinos, tigers and elephants in the subtropical flatlands.
King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya and the Royal Gurkha Guards.
After the slides we return
To the classroom to try out the momos.
The German kids relish the Nepali Maultaschen.
I tell them a story about the yeti.
Meanwhile, Frau Wolf gathers money for the ski afternoon.
Our Nepal theme is over,
What remains are the queries,
Of the innocent, well-fed and well-off children of Freiburg:
Why did you come to Germany?
Have you climbed the Everest?
What does the Yeti look like?
Is the King of Nepal rich?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MY NIGHTMARE (Satis Shroff)
When the night is not too cold
And when my bed isn’t cold
I dream of a land far away.
A land where a king rules his realm,
A land where there are still peasants without rights,
Who plough the fields that don’t belong to them.
A land where the children have to work,
And have no time for daydreams,
Where girls cut grass and sling heavy baskets on their backs.
Tiny feet treading up the steep path.
A land where the father cuts wood from sunrise till sunset,
And brings home a few rupees.
A land where the innocent children stretch their right hands,
And are rewarded with dollars.
A land where a woman gathers white, red, yellow and crimson
tablets and pills,
From the altruistic world tourists who come her way.
Most aren’t doctors or nurses,
But they distribute the pills,
With no second thoughts about the side-effects.
The Nepali woman possesses an arsenal,
Of potent pharmaceuticals.
She can’t read the finely printed instructions,
For they are in German, French, English, Czech,
Japanese, Chinese, Italian and Spanish.
What does she care, the hieroglyphs are always there.
Black alphabets appear like an Asiatic buffalo to her.
‘Kala akshar, bhaisi barabar,’
Says the Nepali woman,
For she can neither read nor write.
The very thought of her giving the bright pills and tablets
To another ill Nepali child or mother,
Torments my soul.
How ghastly this thoughtless world
Of educated trekkers, who give medical alms and play
The macabre role of physicians,
In the amphitheatre of the Himalayas.
Glossary:
kala: Schwarz
akshar: Buchstaben, Schrift
bhaisi: asiatische Büffel
barabar: gleich, vergleichbar it
___________________________________________________________________
WHEN MOTHER CLOSES HER EYES (Satis Shroff)
When mother closes her eyes,
She sees everything in its place
In the kingdom of Nepal.
She sees the highest building in Kathmandu,
The King’s Narayanhiti palace.
It looms higher than the dharara,
Swayambhu, Taleju and Pashupati,
For therein lives Vishnu,
Whom the Hindus call the unconquerable preserver.
The preserver of Nepal?
No, that was his ancestor Prithvi Narayan Shah,
A king of Gorkha.
Vishnu is the preserver of the world,
With qualities of mercy and goodness.
Vishnu is all-pervading and self existent,
Visits the Nepal’s remote districts
In a helicopter with his consort and militia.
He inaugurates building
Factories and events.
Vishnu dissolves the parliament too,
For the sake of his kingdom.
His subjects and worshippers is, of late, divided.
Have Ravana and his demons besieged his land?
When mother opens her eyes,
She sees Vishnu still slumbering on his bed of Sesha,
The serpent in the pools of Budanilkantha and Balaju.
Where is the Creator?
When will he wake up from his eternal sleep?
Only Bhairab’s destruction of the Himalayan world is to be seen.
Much blood has been shed between the decades and the centuries…
The noses and ears of the vanquished at Kirtipur,
The shot and mutilated at the Kot massacre,
The revolution in front of the Narayanhiti Palace,
When Nepalis screamed and died for democracy.
And now the corpses of the Maobadis, civilians and Nepali security men.
Hush! Sleeping Gods should not be awakened.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BOMBAY BROTHEL (Satis Shroff)
‘You’re not going to get away this time.
And you’ll never ever bring a Nepalese child
To a Bombay brothel,’ I said to myself.
I’d killed a man who’d betrayed me
And sold me to an old, cunning Indian woman,
Who ran a brothel in Bombay’s Upper Grant Road.
I still see the face of Lalita-bai,
Her greedy eyes gleaming at the sight of rich Indian customers.
I hear the eternal video-music of Bollywood.
The man I’d slain
Had promised to give me a job,
As a starlet in Bollywood.
I was young, naïve and full of dreams.
He took me to a shabby, cage-like room
And told me to wait.
Three thugs did the rest.
They robbed my virginity,
Which I’d wanted to save
For the man I’d marry one day.
They thrashed me, put me on drugs.
I had no control over my limbs,
My torso, my mind.
It was Hell on earth.
I was starring in a bad Bollywood film,
A lamb that had been sacrificed,
Not to the Hindu Gods,
But to Indian customers and pimps
From all walks of life.
What followed were five years of captivity,
Rape and molestation.
I pleaded with tears in my eyes
To the customers to help me out of my misery.
They just shook their heads and beat me,
Ravished me and threw dirty rupees at my face.
I never felt so ashamed, demeaned,
Maltreated in my young life.
One day a local doctor with a lab-report
Told Lalita-bai that I had aids.
From that day on I became an outcast.
I was beaten and bruised,
For a disease I hadn’t asked for.
I felt broken and wretched.
I returned to Nepal, my homeland.
I lived like a recluse,
Didn’t talk to anyone.
I worked in the fields,
Cut grass and gathered firewood.
I lost my weight.
I was slipping.
Till the day the man who’d ruined
My life came in search of new flesh
For Bombay’s brothels.
I asked the man to spend the night in my house.
He agreed readily.
I cooked for him, gave him a lot of raksi,
Till he sang and slept.
It was late at night.
I knew he’d go out to the toilet
After all that drinking.
I got up, took my naked khukri
And followed him stealthily.
The air was fresh outside.
A mountain breeze made the leaves
Emit a soft whispering sound.
I crouched behind a bush and waited.
He murmured drunkenly ‘Resam piri-ri.’
As he made his way back,
I was behind him.
I took a big step forwards with my right foot,
Swung the khukri blade
And hit him behind his neck.
I winced as I heard a crack,
Flesh and bone giving in.
A spurt of blood in the moonlight.
He fell with a thud in two parts.
His distorted head rolled to one side,
And his body to the other.
My heart was racing.
I couldn’t almost breathe.
I sat hunched like all women do,
Waited to catch my breath.
The minutes seemed like hours.
I got up, went to the dhara to wash my khukri.
I never felt so relieved in my life.
I buried him that night.
But I had nightmares for the rest of my life.
Glossary:
khukri: curved multipurpose knife often used in Nepali households and by Gurkha regiments as a deadly weapon.
Dhara: water-sprout in the hills.
Resam piri-ri: a popular Nepali folksong heard often along the trekking-trails of Annapurna, Langtang and Everest.
Bollywood: India’s Hollywood.
KATHMANDU IS NEPAL (Satis Shroff)
There were two young men, brothers
Who left their homes
In the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas.
The older one, for his father had barked at him,
“Go to Nepal and never come home again.”
The younger, for he couldn’t bear the beatings
At the hands of his old man
.
The older brother sobbed and stifled his sorrow and anger
For Nepal was in fact Kathmandu,
With its colleges, universities, Education Ministry,
Temples, Rana-palaces and golden pagodas
And also its share of hippies, hashish, tourists,
Rising prices and expensive rooms to rent.
The younger brother went to Dharan,
And enlisted in the British Army depot
To become a Gurkha, a soldier in King Edwards Own Gurkha Rifles.
He came home the day became a recruit,
With a bald head, as though his father had died.
He looked forward to the parades and hardships
That went under the guise of physical exercises.
He thought of stern, merciless sergeants and corporals
Of soccer games and regimental drills
A young man’s thrill of war-films and scotch and Gurkha-rum evenings.
He’d heard it all from the Gurkhas who’s returned in the Dasain festivals.
There was Kunjo Lama his maternal cousin,
Who boasted of his judo-prowess and showed photos of his British gal,
A pale blonde from Chichester in an English living-room.
It was a glorious sunset,
The clouds blazing in scarlet and orange hues,
As the young man, riding on the back of a lorry,
Sacks full of rice and salt,
Stared at the Siwaliks and Mahabharat mountains
Dwindling behind him.
As the sun set in the Himalayas,
The shadows grew longer in the vales.
The young man saw the golden moon,
Shining from a cloudy sky.
The same moon he’d seen on a poster in his uncle’s kitchen
As he ate cross-legged his dal-bhat-shikar after the hand-washing ritual.
Was the moon a metaphor?
Was it his fate to travel to Kathmandu,
Leaving behind his childhood friends and relatives in the hills,
Who were struggling for their very existence,
In the foothills of the Kanchenjunga,
Where the peaks were not summits to be scaled, with or without oxygen,
But the abodes of the Gods and Goddesses.
A realm where bhuts and prets, boksas and boksis,
Demons and dakinis prevailed.
About the Author:
Satis Shroff is a prolific writer and teaches Creative Writing at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. He is a lecturer, poet and writer and the published author of three books on www.Lulu.com: Im Schatten des Himalaya (book of poems in German), Through Nepalese Eyes (travelogue), Katmandu, Katmandu (poetry and prose anthology by Nepalese authors, edited by Satis Shroff). His lyrical works have been published in literary poetry sites: Slow Trains, International Zeitschrift, World Poetry Society (WPS), New Writing North, Muses Review, The Megaphone, Pen Himalaya, Interpoetry. He is a member of “Writers of Peace”, poets, essayists, novelists (PEN), World Poetry Society (WPS) and The Asian Writer. He is based in Freiburg (poems, fiction, non-fiction) and also writes on ecological, ethno-medical, culture-ethnological themes and lectures at the University of Freiburg. He has studied Zoology and Botany in Nepal, Medicine and Social Sciences in Germany and Creative Writing in Freiburg and the United Kingdom. He describes himself as a mediator between western and eastern cultures and sees his future as a writer and poet. Since literature is one of the most important means of cross-cultural learning, he is dedicated to promoting and creating awareness for Creative Writing and transcultural togetherness in his writings, and in preserving an attitude of Miteinander in this world. He lectures in Basle (Switzerland) and in Germany at the Akademie für medizinische Berufe (University Klinikum Freiburg) and the Zentrum für Schlüsselqualifikationen (University of Freiburg where he is a Lehrbeauftragter for Creative Writing). Satis Shroff was awarded the German Academic Exchange Prize.
Lyrik: The Professor's Wife, Times Change,A Sighing Blonde (Satis Shroff)
THE PROFESSOR’S WIFE (Satis Shroff)
My husband is mad
Er spinnt
Er ist verrückt!
Says Frau Fleckenstein, my landlady
As she staggers down the steps.
She arrests her swaying
With a hiccup
And says: ‘Entschuldigen Sie’
And throws up her misery,
Discontent, melancholy and agony.
The pent-up emotions
Of a forty year married life.
Her husband is a high-brow, an honourable man
A professor with a young mistress.
And she has her bottles:
Red wine, white wine
Burgunder, Tokay and Ruländer
Schnaps, Whiskey,
Kirschwasser and Feuerwasser
The harder the better.
She defends herself
She offends herself
With bitterness and eagerness.
Her looks are gone
Once her asset, now a liability.
A leathery skin, and bags under the eyes
Her hair unkempt, and a pot belly.
A bad liver and a surplus of spleen
A fairy turned a grumbler.
Tension charges the air
Pots and pans flying everywhere
Fury and frustration
Tumult and verbal terror
Rage and rancour
Of a marriage gone asunder.
And what remains is a facade
Of a professor and his spouse
Grown grey and 'grausam'
Faces that say: Guten Tag
When it's cloudy, stormy, hurricane.
To forgive and forget
That's human folly.
I'll bear my grudges, says milady.
And my landlord is indeed a lord
A lord over his wealth, wife and wretched life
A merciless, remorseless, pitiless existence
In the winter of their lives.
Too old to divorce
And too young to die.
What remains is only the lie...
Glossary:
Entschuldigen Sie: excuse me
Guten Tag: good day
grausam: horrible
___________________________________________________________________
A SIGHING BLONDE PRINCESS (Satis Shroff)
She had short, golden hair
Tied neatly behind
With a blue satin-scarf.
And yet I saw her
Wearing a diadem
And a flowing satin gown
Like a princess.
A meek, submissive smile
A movement of her blonde hair
Akin to a Bolshoi ballerina
In moments of embarrassment and coyness.
Her blue Allemanic eyes, sweet and honest
They knew no intrigue,
Neither treachery nor rebellion.
"I was brought up to obey," she whispered.
Pure bliss and love sublime.
A book you could read
Plain and straight
And not in-between the lines.
An openness, and yet
She's resolute and seeks
Perhaps stability
Or security?
A neglected childhood
With pain and punishment.
A legacy of the Black Forest
Nevertheless, she remained
Soft and tender, submissive and sincere.
Not demanding and aggressive
Ever alert and never omissive.
Murmurs and sighs filled the air.
Love became stormy and frantic.
Sweat and aphrodisiac mingled,
To create a moment of magic,
To recede in moans and whispers
And a thousand kisses.
Brought to reality
By the rays of the dying sun
And the sudden noise
Of birds coming home to roost.
A tranquillity after the tumult
Within our passionate souls.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Holy Cows,the Soul,Longing for a Day (Satis Shroff)
+satisshroff.jpg)
THE HOLY COWS OF KATHMANDU (Satis Shroff)
Holy cow! The mayor of Kathmandu
Has done it.
Since ancient times a taboo
The free, nonchalant cows
Of Kathmandu were rounded up
In a rodeo by the Nepalese police.
Was it Nandi, Shiva's bull?
Or holy cows?
"They're cattle still," said the mayor.
"Straying cattle are not wanted".
Eighty-eight holy cows
Were auctioned
Not at Sotheby's
But in Kathmandu.
The auction yielded 64,460 rupees
Said the mayor of Kathmandu.
Cows that were a nuisance
To pedestrians and tourists at Thamel.
Cows that provided dung
And four other products:
Milk, yoghurt, butter and urine
For many a hearth.
Cows that gave urine
That the Hindus collected.
Cows that were sacred
And worshipped as the cow-mother.
Cows that were donated
And set free by Brahmins and Chettris
To set themselves free from sins.
Cows that marked the Gaijatra,
An eight-day homage to the dead.
It was a king, according to legend,
Who ordered cows to be set free
By families in mourning
In the streets of Kathmandu,
Patan and Bhaktapur.
To share the bereaved pain of
The death of a beloved prince
And a sad mother and queen.
The children disguised themselves
As grotesque cows and motley figures
And danced to Nepalese music
To make the queen laugh,
And forget her tears.
Even today the bereaved
Families drive their cows
Through the streets of Kathmandu
On the day of Gaijatra:
The festival of the cows.
Despite the ecological control
On the cows of Kathmandu,
Lalitpur and Bhaktapur.
From ancient times
Kings, noblemen, pedestrians
Cyclists, pull-carts, cars,
Scooters and rickshaws,
The traffic snaked around the holy cows.
The umwelt-conscious mayor
Has made up his mind:
The cattle are obstructing the traffic
Long-haired Nepalese youth need a crew-cut
Horse-pulled carts and rickshaws must go.
They worsen sanitation
And environmental problems.
But the carpets and cars must stay.
Elephant-rides remain for the tourists
After all, we've developed
A yen for dollars, francs and marks.
Kathmandu is catching up
With the rest of the world.
Glossary:
Gaijatra: cow-festival in Kathmandu
Umwelt: German word for environment
Braahmins, Chettris: high castes in Hinduism
WHEN THE SOUL LEAVES (Satis Shroff)
Like Shakespeare said, 'All the world's a stage'
And we've played many different roles in our lives
In various places and scenarios.
As we grow old and ripe, our knowledge of the world grows.
We hold what we cannot see, smell, taste and touch in our memories.
We only have to walk down memory lane
To find the countless faces, places, sights and sounds that we have stored,
To be recalled and retrieved through association
In conversations with others
Or when we contemplate alone.
Why should elderly people be scared of social terror and ageing?
Ageing is a biological phenomenon.
We should be glad that we have lived useful lives,
Filled with good experiences.
The wonderful children that we have created,
The very gems of our genes,
Each so individual in their personalities.
The house we lived in and filled
With love, laughter, songs and music.
The parents and grand-parents, friends and relatives
We have had the time to share with.
But we should be able to assert our exit from this earthly existence
In the manner that we desire,
And not leave it in the hands
Of an intensive life-extension unit.
Let us dwell on common experiences and encounters
That we can take with us,
When the soul leaves the body
And races towards space and becomes unified
With the ever expanding, timeless cosmos.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LONGING FOR A DAY (Satis Shroff)
She was only ten years old one wintry night,
When her father seized her,
Warmed and satisfied himself
With her growing, glowing, shivering body.
He said in his smelly, hoarse, drunken voice:
'You are mine.
You belong to me.
I'm taking only what's mine.'
She whined, shook and cried, to no avail.
She had no word for it, this nefarious deed.
She told her Mom with tears in her eyes, but she only said,
'Hush, my daughter. This is taboo.
You shouldn't talk about it.
Never tell it to anyone,
For everyone will shun and curse us,
And leave us to starve.'
Despite what my Mom said,
This was my tragic story and it clung to me.
I had to let it out.
Nine months later, I, who was still small, got a child.
The splitting image of my Dad.
Shortly thereafter my Mom died of grief and shame.
Now I was alone with my wretched father.
My son was my solace.
His winning smile help me ease my pain.
He knew not what evil existed in this world,
And that he was created illegally.
I had hope in my helplessness.
I could perhaps mould him to an avenger
Of his mother's disgrace and shame.
I'm waiting for that day.
___________________________________________________________________
Der Verlust des Sohnes einer Mutter (Satis Shroff)
Der Gurkha[1] mit einem gefährlichen Khukuri[2]
Aber kein Feind in Sicht,
Arbeitet für den UNO, und wird erschossen
für Einsätze, die er nicht begreift.
Befehl ist Hukum[3], Hukum ist sein Leben
Johnny Gurkha[4] stirbt noch unter fremdem Himmel.
Er fragt nie warum
Die Politik ist nicht seine Stärke.
Er hat gegen alle gekämpft:
Türken, Tibeter, Italiener, und Inder
Deutsche, Japaner, Chinesen,
Vietnamesen und Argentinier[5].
Loyal bis ans Ende,
Er trauert keinem Verlust nach.
Der Verlust des Sohnes einer Mutter,
Von den Bergen Nepals.
Ihr Großvater starb in Birmas Dschungel
Für die glorreichen Engländer.
Ihr Mann fiel in Mesopotamien,
Sie weiß nicht gegen wen,
Keiner hat es ihr gesagt.
Ihr Bruder ist in Frankreich gefallen,
Gegen die teutonische Reichsarmee.
Sie betet Shiva[6] von den Schneegipfeln an
Für Frieden auf Erden, und ihres Sohnes Wohlbefinden.
Ihr einzige Freude, ihre letzte Hoffnung,
Während sie den Terrassenacker auf einem schroffen Hang bestellt.
Ein Sohn, der ihr half,
Ihre Tränen zu wischen
Und den Schmerz in ihrem mütterlichen Herz zu lindern.
Eine arme Mutter, die mit den Jahreszeiten lebt,
Jahr ein und Jahr aus, hinunter in die Täler schaut
Mit Sehnsucht auf ihren Soldatensohn.
Ein Gurkha ist endlich unterwegs
Man hört es über den Bergen mit einem Geschrei.
Es ist ein Offizier von seiner Batallion.
Ein Brief mit Siegel und ein Pokergesicht
„Ihren Sohn starb im Dienst“, sagt er lakonisch
„Er kämpfte für den Frieden des Landes
Und für die Vereinigten Nationen“.
Eine Welt bricht zusammen
Und kommt zu einem Ende.
Ein Kloß im Hals der Nepali Mutter.
Nicht ein Wort kann sie herausbringen.
Weg ist ihr Sohn, ihr kostbares Juwel.
Ihr einzige Versicherung und ihr Sonnenschein.
In den unfruchtbaren, kargen Bergen,
Und mit ihm ihre Träume
Ein spartanisches Leben, das den Tod bringt.
Glossar:
Gurkha: Nepali Söldner die in der Nepali, indischen und britischen Eliteeinheiten dienen. Sie entstammen vornehmlich den Gurung und Magar, aus dem Westen Nepals sowie den Kirati-Gruppen, den Rai und den Limbu. Auch Tamang, Thakali und Chettris zählen zu ihnen.
Khukuri: Krummes vielzweck Nepali Messer, das nicht nur für rituelle Zwecke gebraucht wird, sondern auch im Nahkampf. „Ayo Gurkhali!“ lautet der furchterregende Schlachtruf der wendigen Gurkhas, die einen legendären Ruf wegen ihrer Geschicklichkeit, sich im Dschungel zu behaupten, geniessen.
Hukum: bedeutet Befehl von Oben (vom König oder der Obrigkeit)
Johnny Gurkha: Eine Bezeichnung für die Nepalis die in Englands Gurkha Einheiten (z.B. King Edward’s Own Gurkha Rifles) dienen. Sie leisten auch heute noch ihren Eid auf die britische Königin und ziehen u. a. vor dem Buckingham Palast als Ehrenwache auf. Britische Gurkhas dienten in Malaysia, Indonesien (Borneo), Hongkong, Brunei, Zypern und neuerdings auch in Kosovo.
Argentinier: 1982 waren die Gurkhas auf dem Falkland Inseln gegen Argentinier eingesetzt worden.
Shiva: Gott der Zerstörung in Hinduismus
___________________________________________________________________
About the Author:
Satis Shroff is a prolific writer and teaches Creative Writing at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. He is a lecturer, poet and writer and the published author of three books on www.Lulu.com: Im Schatten des Himalaya (book of poems in German), Through Nepalese Eyes (travelogue), Katmandu, Katmandu (poetry and prose anthology by Nepalese authors, edited by Satis Shroff). His lyrical works have been published in literary poetry sites: Slow Trains, International Zeitschrift, World Poetry Society (WPS), New Writing North, Muses Review, The Megaphone, Pen Himalaya, Interpoetry. He is a member of “Writers of Peace”, poets, essayists, novelists (PEN), World Poetry Society (WPS) and The Asian Writer. He is based in Freiburg (poems, fiction, non-fiction) and also writes on ecological, ethno-medical, culture-ethnological themes and lectures at the University of Freiburg. He has studied Zoology and Botany in Nepal, Medicine and Social Sciences in Germany and Creative Writing in Freiburg and the United Kingdom. He describes himself as a mediator between western and eastern cultures and sees his future as a writer and poet. Since literature is one of the most important means of cross-cultural learning, he is dedicated to promoting and creating awareness for Creative Writing and transcultural togetherness in his writings, and in preserving an attitude of Miteinander in this world. He lectures in Basle (Switzerland) and in Germany at the Akademie für medizinische Berufe (University Klinikum Freiburg) and the Zentrum für Schlüsselqualifikationen (University of Freiburg where he is a Lehrbeauftragter for Creative Writing). Satis Shroff was awarded the German Academic Exchange Prize.
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