The Transfăgărășan exists because a dictator feared an invasion. After Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring, Nicolae Ceaușescu ordered a road blasted straight over Romania's highest mountains, so his own army could cross them if Moscow came for Romania next. Soldiers cut ninety kilometres of asphalt through the Făgăraș range with dynamite and raw labour, boring five tunnels and stacking viaduct upon viaduct up slopes no road had ever touched. By official count at least forty of them died building it, and the military need faded almost as soon as it was finished. What you drive today is a grey ribbon of more than sixty hairpin bends climbing to 2,042 metres, the second-highest pass in the country.
Nobody drives the Transfăgărășan to save time; people come for the road itself. From the plains near Curtea de Argeș it climbs past Lake Vidraru and the cliff-top ruins of Poenari, the fifteenth-century stronghold of Vlad the Impaler. Then the forest gives way to bare granite, drifting mist and snow that lingers by the verge into July. At the summit lies Bâlea Lake, a glacial tarn cupped in a rock cirque at 2,034 metres, with a wooden chalet on its shore. Beyond it the 884-metre Bâlea Tunnel, the longest in Romania, is driven clean through the ridge. This high stretch spends most of the year under snow, so the full pass usually opens only from July to October. Set out at first light, before the coaches grind up from the valleys, and for long minutes there is nothing but cold wind, the clank of a shepherd's bell and the next bend swinging into view.