With painted churches, forests and bears, Romania's new hiking trail is heavenly
“If you want to be sure you end up in heaven, you have to climb that hill on your knees,” Raluca says, gesturing over my shoulder. It’s not the tallest peak in the world, but I decide, on balance, to stick to the trail. On foot.
And there’s plenty of trail to tackle. Completed in 2022, the Via Transilvanica is Romania’s first long-distance hiking route, running 870 miles from Putna to Drobeta-Turnu Severin, with a 125-mile extension to Brasov. This spring, Intrepid Travel became the first tour operator to offer tours along the northern section, a 10-day trip in a group of up to 12 hikers.
Getting to our start point in Bucovina region involves a drive of several hours from the country’s second city, Cluj-Napoca. The road is flanked by fields and forested mountains, houses in pastel shades and carved wood, churches – some domed in the Orthodox style – and telegraph poles topped with stork nests.
“If you don’t see a stork nest in a village, it means it was affected by agriculture and the biodiversity is not very good any more,” Raluca Kocsis, our Intrepid guide, tells us. Destroying the nests is considered bad luck, she adds.
Bucovina is a place where old wisdom, tradition and religion hold strong. Among the many places of worship are eight Unesco-listed painted churches, decorated inside and out with colourful frescoes depicting Biblical tales, Jesus’s family tree, the Orthodox calendar and – in one case – the siege of Constantinople.
A pair of these churches bookend one section of the Via Transilvanica, at Sucevita and Moldovita monasteries, which – the Romanians having no word for convent – house nuns rather than monks. I marvel at the scale and detail of the paintings, which cover practically all available wall space on the 16th-century churches, though in some places they’ve been worn away by the weather.
Between the painted churches, we walk through a forest of vertiginous conifers, cloaked in a mist so thick I can almost taste it. We’re accompanied by Iulian Gabor, who, as part of local NGO Tasuleasa Social, is one of the people behind the creation of the Via.
He and his colleagues cleared and connected existing trails to create the long-distance route, adding carved stone kilometre markers and painting the orange Transilvanica logo on trees to keep hikers on track. As we walk, I hear him making a mental note of which markings need refreshing and where the track ought to be diverted to smoother terrain.
We stop for lunch at one of the semi-formal guesthouses that have sprung up along the route. Iulian tells us this is what the project is all about: providing livelihoods in communities where opportunities are scarce. “We need something that can tell people this is a place to stay and live,” he says.
When we arrive at Popas la Cosma, a couple of South African through-hikers (walking the whole trail) are just leaving, having stopped to escape the rain. Once they’ve gone, father and son Cosma and Constantin Craciuneac bring out a light lunch spread, entertaining us with magic tricks and backgammon as we eat at a sheltered wooden table in front of their family home and its sprawling wildflower meadow. In the yard, Cosma’s wife, Ioana, is hard at work making homemade cheese over a fire.
Last year, the Via attracted 120,000 walkers, but over the course of three days, we saw just one other pair besides the South Africans and one solo through-hiker – an American nearing the end of her journey, who tells us she recently spotted a bear.
Romania has Europe’s largest bear population outside Russia, but Raluca assures us we won’t see one; the noise of our group will scare the shy creatures away. So, we make do with spotting minuscule snakes and lizards.
A farmer in a horse-drawn cart stops to chat with our guides, while another pair on a quadbike tells us they’re searching for a lost lamb. In the village of Fundu Moldovei, we witness a raucous wedding celebration: men on horseback in white shirts and traditional embroidered waistcoats whooping, hollering, and jingling bells, followed by a carriage carrying a band, including a (somewhat less traditional) saxophonist.
Apart from a grey and misty first day, we’re blessed with clear skies, and our gently undulating hikes are accompanied by the chatter of chiffchaffs and chaffinches, cuckoo calls and the occasional plink-plonk of cowbells. The crest of each hill presents an opportunity to inhale the crisp air and take in the vast views across mountains and valleys patched with forest.
One of the best lookouts turns out to be at Cabana Gigi Ursu, a trailside home-restaurant, where food is served overlooking the peaks. It’s run by Geta Ursu, whose 14-year-old grandson, Andrei, brings out deliciously fluffy bread and sweet cheese-filled buns he has baked. Andrei and his 16-year-old sister help their grandmother at weekends and during the summer holidays, Geta tells me. “I give them some money, but not much,” she says, laughing.
At certain stops, we whip out our Via Transilvanica “passports”, which we stamp to mark our progress. At the end of our brief time on the trail, I find I’ve barely filled one page with colourful images of conifers, squirrels and churches. But that’s all the more reason to return.
Intrepid Travel’s 10-day Hiking in Romania: Via Transilvanica Trail group tour is available May-September from £1,616pp, including accommodation, ground transport, services of a local leader, guided hikes and some meals and other activities, but excluding flights.
Wizz Air and Ryanair fly from the UK to Cluj-Napoca.