Lost in the Carpathians

It was Michal, Robert and I who left our hometown one early summer morning for a hiking tour in the Carpathians. All we had was a tent and three heavy backpacks with clothes and some food. We planned our route through the Parang and Sureanu mountains. Our destination was set near the 2000 years old ruins of Sarmisegetusa Regia, the former capital of Dacia (today the heart of Romania).

We were young, adventurous and fearless. We felt free and alive. Our journey started on fog and rain, continued with a sunset and clear blue sky on top of the mountain and took us in a “Lords of the Rings” scenario when meeting the philosopher Sheppard and having a blasting descent.
But the real adventure started only in the 4th day when hiking towards our end point. It was a hot day and we slowed down the pace after passing through several alps. At a crossing road, we lost the trail. The twenty years old rusty plates were misleading us. We analyzed the map and decided to turn right. After a while, we walked in a marsh forest and started to question ourselves if we were on a wrong path. We started to feel tired, our confidence was getting lower and the tension among us was rising. When finally reaching a forest back road, we still did not know where we were. The evening was getting closer and we felt lost in the middle of nowhere and we did not even want to think of going back through that forest. After some disputes, we continued the road and got our luck back when we met some people working at the small river nearby. We found out we were 30 km from civilization, that being a little “ghost town” where not even the railway station was open in the middle of the night. We were dead tired, grumpy and tensed but we were about to live the nicest evening of all: the workers' head engineer was very kind to offer us a place to sleep and a free ride the next morning. He was a one of kind character: his resemblance with Alan Alda was incredible! The guy had his bag full of jokes and was a marvelous storyteller. We set around a fire and discovered his impressive personality through dozens of life lessons.

The workers wagon was warm but the air was unbreathable and it looked like the linings did not see the washing machine for ages. We slowly fell asleep and woke up next morning in the same position. Feeling physically and mentally tired, we left the mountains in the back of the tip lorry, offered by the generous engineer.