Friday morning. Smells like adventure!

Cara was back in working condition (after a fissure required changing the rear wheel). The rack was loaded with the tent, the sleeping bag and some mountain clothes. I took the train to Sinaia, then started my ascent up the Bucegi Mountains.

I was going to Padina Fest, on the Padina Plateau, at an altitude of 1400m. The festival is for people that enjoy staying in a tent, listening to rock music (a lot of unknown rock bands each evening!), hiking and biking. It hosts a mountain running race and also a mountain bike race. And I was going there like a real biker: with all my stuff on a bike, then competing in the MTB race and afterwards returning by bike – over 100km of biking up and down mountains in 4 days.

The road to Padina goes alongside Bolboci Lake and through a gorge, where Mihai, one of the bikers I’ve met on the way there, really wanted to explore a cave on his bike.

We set up tents close to the stage. Advice: don’t set up your tent close to a stage, if you plan on sleeping through the night. First the concerts, then the people drinking and enjoying themselves.. loudly, then the drunken people trying not to trip on tents were some of the things that kept me in a partly awake state. I kept on hearing bits of conversations: “… look at all these bikes…”, “… hey, check out these bikes…”, ‘… wow, so many bikes…”, “… can’t we just take them all?…”

My neighbors were a group of dirt bikers who were good at two things: drinking beer and jumping with their bikes.

While tenting, food is one of the problems. For breakfast, I had some basic high calorie stuff, like biscuits, halva and dates. I also brought my primus stove, so I could heat up cans of beans and cook couscous. The organizers of the festival had a big tent, providing food and drinks. What you see in the third picture was about 3.50 EUR.

Stuff to do at Padina Fest: listen to rock music (some known bands, but mostly obscure/weird, like these guys), rent a
bike, learn to cook vegetarian, chill out, shoot a bow, throw a log, go 20m up with a hot air balloon, …

Regarding wildlife, horses and sheep were everyday appearances at the festival. Some guys even saw a bear foraging through some trash bins. Something I didn’t know existed in these mountains (and I hope I’ll never see) was vipers.