A Year Aside: THE "DÉSALPE" - DESCENT FROM THE MOUNTAIN PASTURES

In mid-september, we went to a very typical, Swiss, traditional event, called Desalpe.

"Désalpe" is the best-known of all traditional mountain festivities. After more than four months of grazing in alpine pastures, cows make their way down to the plain.

But that is not all. The cows don't just come down the mountain. They dress up. They do a parade. The farmers take pride in their herds and they come down, one herd at a time, crowned with flowers in a joyful clanging of bells. The whole village (and a bunch of tourists like us) assemble to watch the procession, as well as traditional dances, orchestras called "fanfare", there is raclette and other traditional foods galore, all of it watered down with the lovely white wine from the Valais. Different areas of Switzerland participate in this tradition, but we choose to drive a little further to go into the mountains, which means there was also amazing scenery.

After the parade, there was a break for people to eat, and in the afternoon, we watched for the first time, a "combat de reines", which is basically a cows fight. The cows are numbered and entered two at a time into a ring, where they are encouraged to confront each other. Some of them, not the least bit interested, get disqualified pretty quickly, while the most feisty charge their adversary with the strength and determination of a bull. The competition runs for a couple of hours, into the finals, where the winner is crown queen of the fight. We didn't stay to watch the whole thing, as we wanted to take the lift up the mountain and hike down before dark, but we saw the first round, which was full of suspense!

Enjoy the pictures!