Stretching for 90km and reaching heights of over 2,000 metres, the Transfagarasan highway is the main road through the Fagaras mountains in Romania. It is known for being labelled as the best driving road in the world by the climate change denier and opinionated bag of gristle Jeremy Clarkson. Of course this would have been in one of his absurd supercars which likely cost more than the annual income of an entire Romanian town, in a 26 year old motorhome carrying all my worldly possessions the concept of what is a good road is rather different. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for taking the scenic route, getting stuck in the middle of a herd of sheep or having to drive at 5 mph on the rougher sections because otherwise the food cupboard will fly open and we’ll have a floor covered in cumin (again) is all part of the fun. It’s just a different experience, that’s all I’m saying.

Disappointingly for fans of “the best road…. In the world!” it is only fully open for around 3 months during the summer as the rest of the year the highest section is impassable (can a road really be the best in the world if you can’t use it for 9 months of the year??). We drove the north section in 2022 up to cascadea balea after which point the road was closed. We had some amazing views and the walk to the waterfall was stunning but sadly no bears were spotted that time around. We did however meet a cat called Ragnor who was out for a fairly adventurous walk with his owners. Tuna chose to sleep in the van.

A misty view of the cable cars over Cascada Balea

Cascada Balea itself

The Transfagarasan highway further up, this may be one reason it was still closed!

This year again we were too early in the year to drive the full length of the road so we decided to tackle the southern end. We had heard that bears are often spotted actually on the road itself so as we set off up the road we were feeling hopeful, although also thinking it wouldn't really be that easy, would it? Our previous attempts to see bears in the wild had been challenging at best so surely it was too much to hope to just be able to watch them casually wandering past from the comfort of the motorhome…

We saw eight. Eight bears just out for a stroll doing their own thing. One was a mother bear with 2 cubs, the rest were all separate individuals. None of them seemed bothered by the vehicles. Several were sitting nonchalantly by the side of the road munching away on the vegetation, a few actually walked towards us as we slowed to a crawl to drive past, perhaps hoping for a food handout which apparently a lot of tourists provide and is likely the reason they are so comfortable around people and vehicles. Having more recently seen a few bears up close in a bear sanctuary in Croatia I’d say that these weren’t the biggest bears, most seemed the size of (very) large dogs but then it’s easy to say that from the safety of a motorhome! The European brown bear can weigh over 300kg and stand well over 2m tall (if it so chooses), several in the sanctuary were comfortably that size, these were at a guess 200kg or so. Maybe the bigger bears are less welcomed by people in the area.

Grumpy bear

Mummy bear

Mummy bear with the kids

Scrawny kid bear

Slouching bear

We spent one night parked up at the Transfagarasan treehouse village - a really cool bar/restaurant/treehouse chalet complex  where we had a meal and a few drinks. All the businesses along that road, as well as the various animal herders etc have a few dogs hanging around them to scare off any overly interested bears. We were therefore woken several times during the night by barking but that's maybe preferable to be woken up by a hungry bear climbing through the window. The second night we spent parked beside lacul balea with a great view across the lake. No guard dogs this time but also no bears, in fact the only time we saw bears was while we were driving which was surprising, we were worried that the smell of cooking would attract a few to the motorhome but perhaps our menu wasn’t to their taste.

Biggest bear

On the subject of food, there were several signs around warning people not to feed the bears. Apparently it’s quite common for some of the more idiotic tourists to do this and several have been fined 500 RON (around £100) when caught. Not only is it dangerous to themselves it encourages the bears to hang around the road more and lose their natural fear of people. You are then far more likely to get incidents of bears being aggressive, or causing traffic accidents, the end result of which ultimately is that ‘problem’ bears will get shot or at best captured and moved away. Frankly I’d have very little sympathy if some moron tourist trying to get a selfie with a bear got his arm munched off while holding out a big mac, but I’d much prefer bears to be seen as a positive thing rather than as a ‘problem’ that needs to be dealt with. 

Sniffing bear

Estimates of the number of brown bears in Romania vary wildly - usually depending on who is doing the estimation. Hunting associations claim the number could be over 10,000; conservation groups argue it could be as low as 2,000; the best guess is probably around 5-6,000. Trophy hunting for bears is illegal in Romania but they can still be shot as a way of controlling the population when that is considered necessary, and some people are willing to pay considerable amounts of money for the privilege of killing one (up to 15,000 euros). Maybe some suspicious person would see a link between the much higher estimated counts by hunting associations and the money they can make by shooting those bears deemed to be overpopulating? But I’m sure that’s not the case at all. Hunters are always known to have the best interests of the natural world at heart after all, the fact that they enjoy blasting away at bits of it with high powered rifles is neither here nor there.

Anyway, after a couple of nights and a fair bit of driving up and down ‘Bear road’ we headed off south, onwards towards Bulgaria!