Adventure in Romania

The Romanian mountains and hiking in them were a standing challenge for us. The Slovak tourist, accustomed to the luxury of clear markings in the Slovak or Austrian mountains, goes eastwards with respect. We didn't find a lot of blogs or information, we were basically inspired by a single article we found on the topic of Romanian tourism in the Bucegi hills. And that was pretty much our itinerary.

My boyfriend and I went to Romania by car. If you can pack yourself in one backpack for 2 weeks and want to experience more adrenaline, you can also travel by train, which will take you to Romania from Bratislava or Košice. If you wish to visit as many places as possible, be flexible and not to have to bother with moving around, best travel by car. We had no bad experience when it comes to stealing, so go for it.

Here I will describe our "pilgrimage" through the Bucegi Mountains. You can google the location, the highest altitude and similar facts, so I won't bore you with that.

1. day: Busteni – Omu

Our adventure began right from the start, when parking. Since we chose a weekend for the starting day of our hike, we had some trouble with finding a parking space that would be free, or at least cheap. We drove to the town of Busteni (not far from Brasov), where we tried in vain to park by the cable car station, where the hiking trail begins. So we drove maybe a kilometer from the starting point, where we stuck it under a bridge. The fear of theft, as it turned out, remained only fear, and we found the car in the condition in which we left it there.

From the parking lot, we walked to the starting point of the hike, where we planned to take the cable car ride to Babele, up above Busteni. Here, however, we came across another complication, which was an endless number of people waiting in line for the tickets. Thankfully the locals, as it turned out, did not sleep on their laurels and where the cable car can't keep up, there is a room for their own business. A nice young man will make a contact with you explain the greatness of his offer in fairly good English. Around the corner, the minibuses are ready to serve nervous tourists and collect the money. But no need to worry, they act like a well-organized mafia :D but their price is only slightly higher than the price of a cable car. They will transport you in comfortable minibuses six at a time and you are up on the plateau in about an hour. However, it's not possible to drive directly to Babele by car, so it's necessary to walk for about half an hour. On this trip, expect a lot of sneaker and flip-flop tourists who take the cable car to Babele just to have nice photos on Instagram.

Here we already came across one of the specifics of the Romanian mountains. It's necessary to prepare for it. During hiking in this mountainous country, you will often come across herds of more or less free-ranging sheep. Unless you have to, don't go through the center of the herd or cross the path of the sheep. Sheepdogs move freely in and around the herds. They protect it and secure a path for it, so that anyone who stands in the way of the sheep or crosses their path is a potential enemy. Therefore, if you see a herd moving in your direction, or you are in danger of meeting it, you should avoid it if possible. It can happen that you come across a dog on a hiking trail or that it moves outside the herd. It is probably looking for food. It seems that shepherds do not feed them much and the dogs look for food themselves, or stay near the cottages. If you come across a dog, I recommend staying calm and before that equip yourself with a stick, to which they most often react and run away. It is still true that they just protect the herd and are mostly ignore the people if they are not a threat. Be sure not to rely on shepherds to save you, they just don't care. Unfortunately, we fully understood all of this only later, but I'll get to that.

After reaching Babele, we continued towards Omu, the highest peak of Bucegi and at the same time the end point of our first day route. We walked later in the afternoon, the sun shifted to the west and endless pastures were bathed in its radiance. Even the crowd of Instagram tourists was considerably less noticeable and only a few real adventurers remained on the road. Aware of the good time we were making, we enjoyed the trip and the views. According to the itinerary blog, which we followed, there should have been a transmitter on top of Omu. A mistake! We let ourselves be fooled and camped in the wrong place. It seemed strange that there was only a menacing, crumbling and kind of scary looking building next to the transmitter ,which you would expect to find in one of the former USSR republics. According to the description, there should have been a mountain hut. We gathered the last pieces of courage and knocked on a typically shabby Romanian house. There was noone except for us and the factory buzz of electrical wiring from the transmitter. No one responded after knocking, so we decided to enter. Another mistake. The dogs ran out to meet us, but fortunately also a no less frightened lady, who obviously didn't expect any visit, followed them. Of course, English was of no use to us, so we didn't even find out that we were actually in the wrong place. We decided it was nothing special to be a bit disoriented in Romanian mountains. We pitched our tent near the transmitter, the mountains became slowly shrouded in darkness, the sounds of the footsteps of the last tourists were already gone, and far and wide, we were the only ones left. That we enjoyed, but had no idea that at night, we would experience the greatest shock of our lives.

First of all, you shouldn't leave leftovers in your tent, especially camping in the middle of nowhere. The tempting smell of canned fish lured a Romanian beast from its den straight toward our abandoned tent. I was had never been as afraid as when the tent started swaying in the middle of the night in the middle of the mountains, because a wild animal wanted to take it down and get to our garbage. I thought it was our end, when the beast had to have heard us whispering and gave up its plan. I haven't slept till morning. With the first rays of the sun, we found only a slightly torn tent with holes from the animal's teeth or claws. There are no bears living in Bucegi, so it must have been a fox or something similar.

However, that was not the end of adrenaline rushes for that day. After a hearty breakfast, a huge sheep herd began to move in our direction. Although we learned from the blog that the herd was not to be toyed with, we somewhat underestimated the situation. The result was a couple of big sheepdogs running towards us. We didn't care at first. The vanguard wasn't very loud or aggressive, we stayed calm and so did they. They laid down next to us with a clear message that we should move. Those were the big ones on the picture below. After a couple of minutes, the smaller dogs approached and they didn't look calm at all. And so, we quickly packed the rest of our stuff and set out on a rapid retreat. And good thing too probably. We ran away from the herd to let them know that we weren't a threat, which the dogs understood and left us alone.

So do not underestimate these aspects of the Romanian mountains and you will enjoy a beautiful holiday. :-)

2. day False Omu – Real Omu – Hut

And how was the mystery of Omu solved? The next day, after walking about an hour, we came across not only the real Omu peak, but also the mountain hut, where we could have slept. Well, if we couldn't spend the night here, at least we bought a good tea and vegetable soup to have something warn in our stomachs. They speak English at the hut and will be happy to advise you, should you need it. The hut can also be seen from the mentioned hill with a transmitter, that is, from the "fake Omu", only you probably have to look for it to spot it. :D

After we ate, we joined the groups, which, unlike us, successfully came to the hut in the evening and now set out on their next hike. However, unlike them, we had made some unforgettable memories and the adventure left a good feeling. :-) We set out for our final destination, which was an area with huts in the middle of the national park, that this plateau is. Vision of a comfortable sleep on the bed kept us going. Along the way, we met a lot of lonely dogs, some of them looked like bears from the distance . However, as I mentioned, none of them noticed us and stayed away. We avoided the herds and enjoyed the beautiful views, for which Bucegi certainly does not have to be ashamed.

On the way, we tried to make a reservation via e-mail at the Cabana Padina hut. The reservation eventually turned out to be "lost somewhere in cyberspace", as the lady at the counter could not find it... But as true Romanians, locals also improvised here, when the owner's daughter with excellent English offered us a place in another nearby hut - specifically the hut of the mountain rescue service. We had to wait a while, but we were in no hurry. The next day, we headed back to Babele, so we walked up again, not too far though. We had some good luck at last and we caught the ride down by the cable car, which took us back to Busteni.