The Transfagarian Highway was on our list of must-see places whilst we were planning this journey. Today we finally made it. Built four decades ago by a dictatorial idiot during the communist times the highway is one of the worlds great driving roads. The highway starts out in the green fields and villages of rural Romania. Then it begins to climb through the mountains, in places bridges seem to be above other bridges as the road twists and turns on itself as it snakes along it's route. For those motorcyclists we met who are following our blog and considering it be advised that the road surface doesn't lend itself to a spirited ride on a motorbike but it is well suited to four wheels.

Along the way we came across a dam. The strange thing is that the top of the dam forms part of the actual highway and you don't realise you are driving on a dam at first, it just seems like a strange curved road and in the distance you can see that there is water on one side but not the other. It took a few secconds to realise what we were driving over. It's a hydroelectric dam and as you can see from their mascot they are quite proud of it! He must look great at night with those lights on ;) We did also notice that the mountains in the distance were covered in snow as you can see in the centre pic. Little did we know that the Transfagarian would take us to them...

Take us to them it did and after a seemingly endless ribbon of turns we were into the snow. It was extremely cold and we didn't have the right clothes. Getting in and out of the car to take photos soon numbed out fingers to the point that swapping lenses became difficult. To really make the most of this road we needed to have the car set up differently. We needed more torque, less luggage and tyres that weren't chosen with India and the unknown in mind. We also needed time to make multiple passes to learn the road and determine which corners were blind and which had cliffs for edges. Subsequently we enjoyed the view and had a spirited drive on occasion. It would make a fantastic targa stage and also a great cycling hill climb, for those of us who enjoy that sort of thing. This road was fantastic - take a few moments to look at it's curves and let your imagination fill in the blanks.

As always, we were racing the setting sun. We had hoped to make it to Brasov and see Draculas castle in the Transylvanian mountains but we didn't make it in the end. We did however get to enjoy this moving sunset before we decended.