Transfagarasan Highway: One Of Europe's Great Drives

Travel Article

Jeremy Clarkson, some years ago on Top Gear, called it the "Best road in the world". I may not go that far, but it is a spectacular part of Romania. The highway is nestled in the Faragas Mountains. For the majority of the year, the road is closed. It is only open from June to September.

The road was one of the few decent things done by Nicolae Ceaușescu, the ex-Romanian dictator who tried to fashion communist Romania on the model of North Korea. In the revolution of 1989, he was captured by the military when he tried to flee the country. The military rapidly conducted a trial, found Nicolae and his wife, Elena, guilty and were summarily executed, televised live.

Ten years ago, on one of our trips to Romania, we decided to do the drive, which could be called the most crooked road you will ever go on. We rented a car from Bucharest, Romania's capital and headed out to the road, about 85 kilometres long. The elevation isn't that high, climbing to just over 2000 metres, but the dizzying switchbacks necessitate the utmost concentration. As we ascended through the tree line, we were treated to spectacular views.

The autumn colours were already coming out; the highway sometimes had boulders on the side of the road, which had fallen down some of the slopes. The route was full of amazing switchbacks, and there were no guardrails in places.

It was one of those drives where you had to have your wits about you. There were a few spots to pull over and enjoy the views, but on some of them, you had a couple thousand-foot drop if you went too close. Surprisingly, we saw numerous Romanian families stopped by the side of the road enjoying a picnic in what some would consider not the safest of spots.

On the way back to Bucharest, we went to Brasov, which lies by the foothills of the mountains. They have a lovely pedestrian mall with restaurants and cafes serving delicious Romanian food.

While I wasn't born in Romania, my parents were, and before World War 2, it was called the land of milk and honey, with Bucharest referred to as the "Paris of the East". It's a beautiful country to visit with friendly people, but right now, it's precariously close to the Ukrainian conflict.

The front of my father’s house in the city of Craiova.