The old ways still linger in Romania’s Southern Carpathian mountains, where bears and wolves wander the forests and slow-paced villages stud the hills.
Spring has reached central Romania. The little dwelling is half-hidden by pear blossom and lilac trees. A well can be seen in the garden, sunlight patches the long grass and the wolf-prowled hills beyond. The house has a neat timber balcony and a frieze of blue flowers at the eaves, but the plasterwork is crumbling. For over seven decades, this was the home of anti-communist activist Elisabeta Rizea, who died in 2003, aged 91.
This sense of pride in the land, and through it a way of giving travellers reasons to come calling, is encountered a lot in the Southern Carpathians. I’m here as part of a week-long stay, hopping between the historical regions of Wallachia and Transylvania. The landscapes are savagely handsome, with snow-capped summits rising above rumpled highlands.
At the same time, it’s tapping into ecotourism by offering travel experiences in and around the proposed national park, from cabins for wildlife-spotting in the mountains to an equestrian trail-riding centre and an organic farm. It’s also working to attract visitors to Nucsoara. The village has recently seen the opening of Caezu, a guesthouse with a red-brick fireplace, homemade soups and potent plum brandy.
Rewilding Europe is expecting the second generation of free-roaming European bison, the largest land mammal on the continent, to be born in the wild in the coming year. Christoph takes me to a blustery hilltop, where peaks crest around us like ocean waves. “The Fagaras Mountains contain some of Europe’s last remaining expanses of old-growth forest,” he says, as a lesser spotted eagle glides imperiously overhead. “But back then, there was so much deforestation happening.
The cabin sits at an altitude of around 1,860 metres and is many miles from the nearest settlement. I’m expecting a fairly basic bothy, but the wooden structure is a neat, crescent shape and has a turf roof, two bunk beds and floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto a cloudless panorama of spruce, snow and alpine meadow. Radu produces cold bottles — Ursus, a Romanian beer whose logo is a bear — and we clamber onto the roof to revel in our seclusion.
“Bear,” comes the 6.15am whisper. The blinds don’t get closed in a wildlife hide; you wake, and the outdoors is right in front of you. The dawn sun is golden, burnishing the grass in syrupy light. The day is already alive with birdsong. And centre-stage, around 10 metres away, is a burly European brown bear, raw and real. Its fur is almost blonde. We watch it for 20 minutes, staying breathlessly still as it shuffles across the clearing on heavy paws, using its claws to dig for grubs and insects.
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