Elm.

This Sunday, we drove to a place called Elm which is a little over an hours drive from Zurich. I found out that that place has a kids friendly hike and made up my mind to put Antu to walk. It was also mentioned that the trail was stroller friendly so we took ours anyway. We parked at the Gondola (cable car) station and took the Gondola to go up. There was a nice play area up with trampoline, jungle gym, sand pit, swing, slide, a gold digging activity in the sand, etc.... The location was just breathtaking! The huge swing was just at the edge of the cliff and it was amazing to see the kids swing back and forth with a view to kill! One of the mountain peaks has a small hole and twice a year, when the sun sets, the light shines through this hole directly into a church, it seems! The kids had a blast in the play area but it was terribly hot. We had a sphagetti lunch at the restaurant there and started walking towards Tierliweg, the kid friendly trail.

Cows welcomed us and the noise of the cow bells were really deafening! Most of the walk was through the woods so we were nt roasted in the sun. And whenever the trees parted, the views were spectacular! The trail was too rocky to push the stroller with Antu so she was replaced with our backpack on the stroller. I guess they mean that the trail was friendly for mountain-friendly-strollers and not our "sort by price and choose the cheapest" stroller! Little Miss Antu walked the entire 1 1/2 hours without any complaint! The only reason being that there were wooden animal sculptures every 200 metres or so and that kept motivating the kids to keep walking! It was wonderful to see Ashu and Antu spotting the animals first and shouting excitedly, Ashu making me write a list of all the animals (more than 20), guessing what the next animal will be, debating if the animal was a pig or a bear(!), etc... etc... Not to mention the jokes. Like I suddenly screamed, "Look a Gorilla!" and when Ashu excitedly looked, I was pointing at her dad! She was nt thrilled, if you want to know!

I don't know whats with Hd and pushing stuff off the mountain slopes. This one time, he let his sledge go on its own and I had to hike back while he went doubles with Ashu on the second sledge! Another time, the canopy on the stroller slipped and flew down the slopes. This time, he was coming behind us with the stroller and the backpack and suddenly he says "pudi, pudi!" and what do we see? The stroller and the backpack are flying down the slope!! Thankfully, it hit a rock and stopped and he ran to get them! I was thanking the Lord that Antu was not on the stroller and at the same time rolling on the floor laughing thinking what hes going to push the next time! If ever Kamal Hassan remakes Guna, I think HD ll make a good body double for him in the last scene when he jumps off a cliff! I would love to watch that! Now thats a happy ending! Abirami, Abirami! (Sorry cant quote Guna without saying Abirami, Abirami! Can you?)

After a well deserved ice cream, we decided to go down to the car park. And thats when the adventure began. One can either take the Gondola back or rent something called Trottinett which is a Mountain Scooter and go down 5 kms. Me being me, of course I wanted to ride the Trotti while Hd and the kids took the gondola. I was riding like the wind soaking in the amazing views and wondering if I should have brought Ashu with me since the Trotti guy said we can ride with kids when I braked the front wheel instead of back and next second, I hit the gravelly ground hard on my chest. My right elbow and both my palms were totally scraped! Bloody, dusty mess I was! Shirt torn, hand bag torn! I should ve been quite a sight for sore eyes! But I managed to get up and continue the rest of the way in spite of my bloody palms. Hd who was waiting downhill armed with a camera took one look at me and was horrified! Thankfully, everything was just surface wounds and nothing deep and no broken bones. Phew.

Whats life without a little adventure, huh? So what if I could nt hold the tooth brush the next day or that I had an important school meeting to attend the next morning and shaking hands with a few people was just cruel? It was totally worth it! :)