Slow Train Coming

Manek S. Kohli explores two of .switzerland’s most iconic resort towns, St. Moritz and Andermatt, one train ride at a time.

- Manek S. Kohli

Summer of 1999: I am a child, merely four, on a train to Amritsar. An old boombox fills the compartment with ‘Dholna’ from Dil Toh Paagal Hai. As the Shatabdi Express coasts through bucolic Punjab, I watch the sunset over mustard fields for the very first time… Summer of 2018: I’m 23 now, on the

Bernina Express from Tirano to St. Moritz, Switzerland. The panoramic windows blend in with the roof and further beautify the Alps’ vistas. I walk across to the adjoining open carriage; here, I can scent the snowbells skirting the tracks. The sun is kind, the sounds are mellifluous, and so I never head back to the plush indoors where bubbly flows and patrons relish Engadin walnut cakes, among other delicacies...

Poets and writers have long stared into the ocean horizon and dreamt of endless worlds, just as I have watched train tracks disappear behind hills. I harbor love for everything railways—whether four or (now) twenty-four, narrow or broad gauge, steam engine or Shinkansen. So when an opportunity to explore the Swiss countryside aboard two of Europe’s most celebrated tourist trains came my way, I could barely contain myself.