Day 142, Útulna Andrejkova – Telgart

Weather: 🌤️🌤️☀️🌤️☀️
Lunch: 🥪🥪🥪🥪 (4 out 5, pizza in Telgart with Rein, Maja and Nikola)
Track: 🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰 (4 out of 5, beautiful track on the ridgeline to Kralova Ho’la, then tough track 1100m of elevation loss in 5 km..😅.)
Track intensity: 😯😯😯 (😯😯)(3 out of 5 for the first part, 5 out of 5 for the last part)
Overnight stay: 🛌🛌 (2 out of 5, hard bed (I know, we’re wussies 😅) in a pension with laundry facilities!)
Name of followed trail: SNP trail
Special mention: Maja and Nikola, who walked with us for the last few days and the festival of 700 years Telgart, which was very cool to visit.

We get up and have breakfast in the tent, because it’s cold outside 😅. Together with Maja and Nikola we start on our hike to Telgart. First we go uphill to ‘the three Ho’las with Kralova Ho’la as the highest peak. The first peak has the Slovakian cross in top, where we get a group picture of our small, confusing international trail family. People who greet us leave us mostly with more questions than answers; a family that speaks English together, with 2 girls speaking Czech and Slovak…🤔

We enjoy the hike to Kralova Ho’la and the great views we have. At the last peak we have a break near the radio tower, when a lady comes to us and asks: ” are you the Dutch hikers that go to Istanbul? We feel famous (and slightly confused), but she explains by saying: “Rein says hi” 😂😂

Apparently Anna met Rein yesterday at the pension and heard about our journey. After our conversation with Anna, we continue on our trail, that now leads us down quite rapidly. We loose 1100 meter of elevation in 5 kilometers. It takes us down through a maze of purple flowers, into the forest, towards the town. We have a short lunch break on the way, but we don’t take a long break before we are in Telgart. There, almost the first person we see, is Rein, waiting at the supermarket (that is unfortunately closed already). Good to see him again!

We all go for pizza together in town, and share our stories of the day. Rein indeed had his own little adventure trying to hitch on a road that has been barred. Luckily there indeed was a car there…😅

After lunch we say goodbye to the ladies, who will go home from here. It was a joy hiking with them! Two 19 year old ladies, who are such keen and capable hikers. Despite their fear of bears, they still went on, and had a good time too! We enjoyed having them as trail family for these few days. Thank you ladies!

We walk to our pension, where Rein arranged 3 beds for us. It’s a simple yet sufficient pension, with shower and laundry facilities. That’s all we need right now 😁. We spend most of the afternoon cleaning ourselves, doing laundry and writing this blog.

We heard that there is a festival in town because of the 700 year anniversary of the village. We stroll to the festival ground and enjoy the music, food and drinks. The atmosphere is relaxed and the background of a setting sun over the mountains is beautiful.

Together we bring a toast to Telgart and the beautiful low Tatras. It’s been a pleasure hiking here. Tomorrow, we enter Slovensky Raj, which translated to Slovakian heaven!