TRANSFAGARASAN – Climbing the Greatest Road in the World on a BIKE

Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear once called this winding passage through the Carpathian mountains in Romania as the “greatest road in the world.”

But how’s the Transfagarasan experience on two wheels instead of four and two legs instead of six cylinders to move you along?

foreign [Music] there’s images you see on TV which you simply never forget [Music] that’s the most amazing Road I’ve ever seen [Music] the 70s this is the transfer Garrison Highway six thousand tons of dynamite were used to make it and 40 lives lost in here the belt’s ringing because I’m waking up at frankly ridiculous times in order to do what most would describe as clinically insane with tiny dose of masochism a few months ago I was blown away by the beauty of the snow-capped mountains of Transylvania and I realized that the road I had once heard about on an episode of Top Gear passed through those very same slopes so when I knew I would once again be passing through Romania during the only season the road is open to the public I knew I would regret not doing everything I could to experience the Transfiguration for myself every year the road attracts thousands upon thousands of keen tourists to its winding Mountain slopes the vast majority of these visitors make the ascent in the comfort of four wheels knowing that as long as they got fuel in the tank all they need to get to the top is to step on that gas pedal but that’s not good enough for me one day I’ll grab a sports car with a massive engine on the back and I’ll take on those hip run turns like a proper The General but today I’m staying humble and I’m conquering this mountain pass using a different weapon [Music] this is my weapon of choice for today it’s my old orbea and it looks very different from the original state you can find more details about what I did to this bike in another video of mine [Music] foreign number one is the tires these are Rubino first or in Victoria they are the next level up from the safety approach which I use on this bike number two is the brake shoes and brake pads I used to have the stock tiagra one installed but I wasn’t happy with the performance stopping power so I upgraded to a new acid brake shoes you will notice that these two upgrades are not really immense for climate there’s not much you can do to implement hunting ability other than to train but they will be absolutely instrumental in getting me out live from darling so with upgrades taken care of I packed up my bike in Bulgaria where I’ve been living all summer and made the long journey to Romania Once I arrived I assembled my bike once again and made sure that the setup was completely dialed in then I came up with a plan no fancy [ __ ] as I would only have one day to attempt The Climb my journey began in Cebu waking up at 3am stepping on the train at four arriving at five dead of night that hour aboard the finest of European trades would give me plenty of time to pray to Ms the messenger of the Gods to grazing with the legs to successfully climb the Transfiguration and come back down unscathed or you know sleep once in courts up it would be a relatively easy climb to the black of night [ __ ] am I doing man the town of carteshwa where the Morning Light began to cast the Silhouettes the carpathians before shortly after I reached the foot of the mountain where the Despicable violence of the climate brought my average speed from a respectable 16 kilometers an hour to a heartbreaking night I also went all the way down to my last year and I would stay on my view for most of the remaining 25 kilometers to La cubala at the top I kept my Cadence on the pedals high and most importantly kept the fuel steadily coming in until I stopped around the 19 kilometer Mark to give my ass a much needed break all right so I’m gonna take this opportunity to talk a little bit of nutrition here so on my bike as you can see I’ve got a frame bag right here and a top two bag on my frame bag which I’m kind of using instead of bottle cage I’ve got mineral water and an assortment of Power Bars mostly I just got a bunch of these two coconut protein bars and zero sugar baked Oat Bar so I got these uh in Bulgaria you don’t need to go with anything fancy but it’s got a bunch of those and I’m just alternating heating between them two on the way up and on my top two back I’ve got basically the exact same thing I found my wallet and that’s about it this video is about using the equipment that you’ve got making the best out of the situation and uh you know you don’t need anything faster to go the mountain so let’s keep going we’ve got one more thing that’s very important for nutrition sour gummies the road continued a few kilometers up one side of mountain until I reached a sharp Bend with a lazy and hop on a cable car and cheat their way to the top I stopped off to have a look at the Ravine carved by the river and then kept on pushing [Music] I’m about a third of the way through and it is absolutely brutal so far it is just continuous uphill non-stop most climbs have a little bit of a respite in between you know they uh they climb a little bit and then you got a flat section where you have a tiny downhill before you start going back up again [ __ ] this is nothing alike this just keeps going up and up and up I have not changed gear from my easiest let me tell you so the road itself is actually kept quite clean and well maintained say for a few sections where it’s a little bit bumpy like right now we’ll see how it looks once we get to the taller stage but so far so good at this point the surrounding tree line began to reveal glimpses of How High I’d already climbed not a bad view eh but my legs also began to protest every single paddle stroke I refilled one of my three bottles of ballsack with fresh Mountain Water and pushed on until I reached the last section of this uphill Journey [Music] the same grass-covered Hills I’d once seen on a TV screen had now materialized before me and it’s inside one last eight kilometer push and the job would be done [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] it was towards the end of my Summer Long staying Bulgaria sitting in a cafe in the center of Sofia with the thought of taking my bike all to the way to the top of the carpathians first occurred to me a week later I was climbing the past surrounding vitasha Mountain a modest 800 meter climb from my flat in the outskirts of Sofia to the Village of yarima a taste of the pain to come a week after that I was in Romania with sore neck no sleep and just enough time to get my bike set up have a quick look around Seaview and enjoy a three hour nap before my train ride to court but I did it three hours and 37 minutes of riding 36.4 kilometers and 1668 meters of climbing and two unfathomably sore butt cheeks a small price to pay for a future ability to casually drop an anecdote about climbing the world’s most beautiful Road on an old orbea that cost me less than 400 Euro to put together but the story was not yet over foreign you see when you’re born and raised at 2600 meters of altitude you learn that the conditions can and will change at the drop of a hat as we say in my home city of Toluca is [Music] a storm had crept over La colbalia potentially making things very interesting for the 60 kilometer descent back to sibi but I wasn’t worried I warmed up at the Lakeside Cabin with Romanian soup and a lit up a cigar as I sipped on my cappuccino life is short and believe me worse things can happen than being stuck in the mountains at 10 am on a Tuesday well we think things stronger will be unstoppable don’t know what I did it for I needed to know that it was always [Music]