Zermatt

By train for the last stage, whichever way you start. Zermatt excludes petrol and diesel cars entirely — the stated reason is to keep the air clear enough to see the mountain — so the road stops at Täsch, the next village down the Mattertal, where a large terminal car park sits beside the station. From there a frequent shuttle train covers the remaining climb. If you are coming without a car, which is simpler, trains run up the valley from Visp and Brig, both on the main Swiss network, so the journey from Zurich or Geneva airport is one or two changes with everything at platform level. Inside the village you walk; small electric taxis and electric buses cover the rest, horse-drawn carriages still work for some hotels, and most hotels will send a shuttle to the station if you tell them which train you are on.

Often enough that no honest guide will promise you a sighting, and this is the single most important thing to plan around. It is a very high, very isolated pyramid that makes its own weather, and it can be entirely invisible from the village for a day or several days at a stretch while the valley below is perfectly pleasant. The railway operator itself describes the peak as visible from the Gornergrat on a clear day, which is the accurate way to put it. Mornings are more often clear than afternoons, so an early ascent is a better bet than a late one. The practical answer is not to chase forecasts but to build in margin: book two or three nights rather than one, keep a second mountain day in reserve, and treat a clear morning as something to act on immediately rather than something to schedule.

They are two genuinely different days and most visitors should choose rather than do both. The Gornergrat is a rack railway that has climbed from the village since 1898 to an open ridge at a little over three thousand metres; you arrive on rock, in the open air, surrounded by a great many four-thousand-metre peaks with the Gorner Glacier below and the Matterhorn opposite. It is the panorama. The Matterhorn Glacier Paradise is a cable-car ride towards the Klein Matterhorn, ending near three thousand nine hundred metres at the highest point in Europe you can reach by cable car; you arrive on snow, it is markedly colder, there is an ice palace cut into the glacier and a viewing platform, and there is skiable snow into the summer. It is the altitude. If you want the classic view of the mountain, take the railway. If you want to stand in a high glacial world, take the cable car. Sunnegga, the funicular, is the gentle third option for a half day.

Yes, and it is worth a deliberate half day rather than being left to fill a wet afternoon. The Hinterdorf is the surviving old quarter, a cluster of dark larch granaries and hay barns raised on stone discs to keep out mice, standing where the village was before the climbers arrived. The Matterhorn Museum is built underground as a reconstructed village and its central exhibit is the broken rope from the 1865 first ascent, on which four of the seven men died on the way down; it explains the character of the town better than any viewpoint. Beside the parish church is the mountaineers’ cemetery, a working graveyard and a long, sobering record of people who did not come back. Add to that a main street that is genuinely pleasant to walk because nothing is driving through it, and an evening meal of raclette or dried Valais beef, and the village holds its own.

It does, more than the numbers suggest, because of how fast you climb rather than how high the village is. Zermatt sits at just over sixteen hundred metres, which most people feel only as slightly quicker breathing on the stairs. The issue is that within an hour of arriving you can be standing above three thousand metres, and from the glacier lifts close to three thousand nine hundred — a change most travellers arriving from Indian coastal cities have never made in a single morning. Headache, breathlessness and poor sleep on the first night are common and usually mild. The sensible pattern is to arrive and stay low on the first day, keep the highest ascent for the second or third, drink considerably more water than feels necessary, go easy on alcohol the first evening, and come straight back down if anyone feels genuinely unwell rather than pressing on. Anyone with a heart or lung condition, and anyone travelling with young children or elderly parents, should take medical advice before booking the highest lift.

The distinction catches people out, so it is worth understanding before buying anything. The journey to the village runs on the ordinary Swiss rail network and on the branch line up the Mattertal, and national rail passes cover that part well — including the shuttle from Täsch. What they generally do not cover in full are the mountain ascents once you are here. The Gornergrat railway and the cable cars towards the Klein Matterhorn are operated by separate mountain-railway companies, and passes typically give a reduction on them rather than free travel. Zermatt also sells its own local mountain passes covering the lift systems, which are a different product again. Because the terms of all of these change from season to season, the reliable approach is to decide which ascents you actually want, price those specific tickets against the pass options for your dates, and buy accordingly — rather than assuming that one pass covers the entire trip from the airport to the glacier.