Field note 11 Hard Roads

A mother bear charged me. The engine noise is what stopped her.

Romania's most famous road climbs to two thousand metres through the Fagaras mountains, and it runs through the largest brown bear population in Europe outside Russia. On 28 June 2025 one of them came at Jacko and me from seven metres away.

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From Rodrigo's road archive

A brown bear sitting at the edge of the asphalt — One of them on the verge, doing nothing in particular, entirely used to traffic.

A man in a long black coat beside the loaded motorcycle — A stop on the way up, and someone who wanted a closer look at the bike.

Satellite view of the Fagaras mountains and the Transfagarasan — The logged track over the Fagaras mountains: in red, 28 June 2025, the day of the bears; in grey, the first crossing in September 2024. The two amber marks are where the GPS puts me when I filmed. Imagery: Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics.

Hard Roads

A mother bear charged me. The engine noise is what stopped her.

2,042 mAt the top
5+Bears begging in the road
1 mHow close she got

1 / 8

2,042 mAt the top

5+Bears begging in the road

1 mHow close she got

01The road

Built for the wrong reasons, and it turned out beautiful.

The Transfagarasan was cut through the Fagaras mountains in the 1970s on Ceausescu's orders, after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, as a military route across the range. It cost a great deal of dynamite and a number of lives.

What is left is ninety kilometres of switchbacks climbing to just over two thousand metres, open only in summer because snow closes it the rest of the year. I rode it northbound, from the village of Capatanenii Pamanteni on the southern side, up over the pass and down the far slope.

The day before I had ridden the Transalpina, the other famous mountain road in Romania, and it did not do it for me: too open, too much plateau. The Transfagarasan has closed forest and harder corners. That is the one I came back for.

The Transfagarasan switchbacking down a green valley under low cloud — Ninety kilometres of this, cut across the range for military reasons and open only in summer.

Jacko on the tank bag looking down a forest road — Jacko's view of it, from the tank.

A bear and a cub crossing the empty road between the trees — And this is the other thing the road is known for, walking across it.

What the road kept

The danger was never the road.

Ninety kilometres of switchbacks at two thousand metres, and the thing that nearly went wrong was standing at the side of it with three cubs, tame enough that a rider walks up to seven metres without thinking, and wild enough to cover that ground in under a second. People made her that way by feeding her family from car windows.

02The year before

The first time, I arrived at midnight with a torch.

In September 2024 I reached the same village at the end of a fortnight of electrical trouble: a Chinese alternator, then two batteries killed by it, then the regulator beside it, rebuilt out of a part from another motorcycle by my mechanic Gabriel in Pitesti and finished off by Gabriel's father with a soldering iron. It came to well over two hundred euros in the leanest stretch of the whole trip.

I left Pitesti at half past eight at night, in the dark, with the motorcycle finally running properly, and rode the hour to the foot of the road. The campsite was closed. It began to rain. I turned onto the first dark kilometres of the Transfagarasan remembering everything I had been told about the bears, sweeping the verge with a torch, nervous and hoping in equal measure.

In a small green valley by a bridge, the torch found a mother bear with two cubs, walking calmly. They saw me, bolted uphill and were gone in about thirty seconds. I rode on with the beam swinging in every direction until the rain got heavy near midnight, then turned back to a lit restaurant and talked them down to a twenty euro room. It was my first bed in thirty days.

I couldn't believe what I had just seen. I kept looking behind me, in case there was another one back there in the dark.

A man grilling meat over an open fire at night — My birthday, on the shore of Lake Arges. I had arrived that evening on a dying battery, flat out so the motorcycle would not cut out, and found a group lighting a barbecue on the beach. They shouted me over. Pork, venison and chicken over the fire, and it turned out the big Romanian doing the cooking, Bogdan, was five days younger than me.

Sunset over the lake with Jacko standing in the shallows — The same evening, before any of that. The sky went completely red as I came down to the water.

The tent pitched under a workshop roof beside the motorcycle — Two days stuck in Pitesti. A Chinese alternator, then both batteries killed by it, then the regulator that sits beside it, rebuilt from a part off another motorcycle.

The loaded motorcycle on a bridge above a river valley — Above the reservoir on the southern approach, September 2024.

03The crossing

Fog on one side of the tunnel, sunshine on the other.

I spent the night before at the foot of the north side, in Cartisoara, in a cabin that cost seventy lei, about fourteen euros, taken from a woman at the restaurant who spoke no English and quoted the price on a calculator. Every other cabin was empty. I got the bags off the bike and it started to rain, and I went in and lay on the bed with my boots still on. The forecast said rain until four the next afternoon.

I came back for it properly on 28 June 2025, leaving at half past nine to get ahead of the rain that was forecast for mid morning. The first half went quickly: heavy fog, tight curves, no view at all, and no rain layer on, so I rode tense the whole way up expecting the sky to open.

The southern half is not the beautiful half. Just before the long tunnel that splits the road there is a little roadside market. I went straight through, and on the other side the weather had completely changed: clear sky and warm light.

The descent was the reward. Curves and bare rock at the top giving way to thick mountain forest, greener with every hundred metres, the sun finally breaking through, the camera running and Jacko barking with excitement on the tank.

04The bears

Standing in the middle of the road, asking for food.

The first was a mother with a cub, with cars already pulled over. The light was perfect. Most people took a photograph and left. I stayed and followed them at a distance through the trees.

Then came the others, one after another. Huge lone males standing in the middle of the asphalt, making the same gestures, waiting to be fed. I counted at least five. That is when the feeling changed and it stopped being a wildlife sighting.

At one point I asked another motorcyclist to photograph me with a bear behind me. The man refused to come anywhere near the distance I had already walked to. I did not understand why until about ten minutes later.

They looked like zoo animals, stripped of their wildness, enslaved by human scraps.

Romania holds the largest brown bear population in Europe outside Russia, somewhere around six thousand animals. Feeding them from the car window is banned and fined along this road. The signs exist because the habit created the problem, and the animals standing in the traffic are the result.

A large brown bear standing in grass beside a power line pole — A big one out in the open by the power lines, on the southern descent. The GPS puts me within a few hundred metres of here for most of an hour.

A mother bear and two cubs beside the crash barrier — A mother and two cubs at the barrier. This is the situation the advice is about: never end up between her and them.

05The charge

Seven metres away, and then Jacko barked.

Past a mother with two small cubs on a bridge, near a tall power line tower, I found the biggest bear I had ever seen: thick honey brown fur, in perfect condition, with three cubs only a few weeks old. I got off the motorcycle and stood about seven metres away beside some parked cars, just watching.

Jacko barked. The bear tensed instantly. I tried to cover the dog's mouth and quiet him, but it was already too late, and she came at us at full speed. I had never seen anything move like that. I froze.

Somehow I got the phone into the mount, got back on and hit the starter. She was a metre away. I revved the engine hard, and the noise is what stopped her: she startled and backed off. Every tourist nearby was standing frozen, staring, saying nothing. I put it in first and rode off with a nervous smile, not really understanding yet what had happened.

I understood later that afternoon, at Gabriel's place in Pitesti, showing him the photographs. Gabriel showed me photographs back: tourists from that same stretch of road with their arms torn open.