train – David Kotz

Box Hill circuit

A circuitous ramble over and around Box Hill in the Surrey downs.

Four weeks after arriving in London for a year-long sabbatical, I was itching to get outdoors – out in the hills, forests, and meadows, after weeks of city life. Don’t get me wrong – I am truly enjoying the chance to explore London, and to adapt to city living. But I am a country mouse, at heart, and needed to be out where I could climb hills, take in broad vistas, and listen to the wind in the trees. After some online snooping, I settled on this eight-mile circular walk around Box Hill, just an hour’s train journey south of London. Read on!

Box Hill and Westhumble train station is tiny, unstaffed, but cute.

Grindelwald – Jungfraujoch

A morning visit to the highest train station in Europe – and a stroll across the snowfields at 12,000′.

On our fourth day in Grindelwald we took two hikes. We spent the morning visiting Jungfraujoch, which (despite its intensely touristy nature) is an incredible place to visit. It is the highest train station in Europe, serving a structure that perches on a pinnacle at 3571m (11,716′) above sea level, adjacent to the snowfields surrounding the 4000m Alpine mountains of Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau. In this post I share a few impressions – and a gallery of photos of our walk across the snowfield to the hut at Mönchsjochütte, on an astonishingly gorgeous day.

People stream out across the snowfield from Jungfraujoch (on the rocky pinnacle).

Trains – and luggage

Read the rules carefully.

When I visited IIT Madras we took the train from Bangalore to Chennai. Before we left I checked the luggage regulations. I was struck by some of the rules, notably,

dead poultry are not allowed as luggage.
live poultry, on the other hand, are ok. The fee: Rs30 (60 cents).
elephants are ok, too; Rs1500 ($30).
horses Rs750 ($15).

This post was transferred from MobileMe to WordPress in 2020, with an effort to retain the content as close to the original as possible; I recognize that some comments may now seem dated or some links may now be broken.