We cycled from Timișoara, Romania, to Split, Croatia. Around a hundred kilometres a day. Six days. With people I had only just met.
I could write a lot about that trip — the sunflower fields of Serbia that went on forever, the heat that made us stop and hide in city parks from noon until four, the rhythm of eating and drinking and sleeping that replaced every other thought. But three moments stand out from everything else. Not because they were the most beautiful. Because they were the most real.
The dogs
We were crossing into Croatia for the second time. Out of nowhere, five dogs came at us — fast, aggressive, closing the distance without hesitation. I didn't think. My legs moved before my brain gave any instruction. Adrenaline arrived instantly, flooding everything. I pedalled with a force I didn't know I had.
I could have been completely exhausted a minute before. In that moment, it didn't matter at all.
The person I was riding with managed to push them back, create just enough space. We got through. And just like that it was over — except the feeling, which stayed in my body for a long time after.
What I understood in those seconds: your body holds reserves you never access until it has no choice. Fear unlocks something that effort alone cannot.
The tunnel
Croatian coast roads are beautiful and demanding — serpentines, cliffs, the sea somewhere below. And then we entered a tunnel.
I still had my sunglasses on.
I couldn't see. I could only hear. Engines passing on the left, air shifting around me, the sound of my own wheels. Stopping wasn't possible. My friends had lights, but it barely helped — like lighting a match in the middle of a forest and hoping it would show you the way out.
So I kept going. Pedalling through fear, through noise, through a darkness I couldn't measure, until — light.
We came out the other side. Alive. Shaken. And I felt an overwhelming gratitude that I wasn't expecting — not just for getting through it, but for things I had stopped noticing. Vision. Breath. The simple fact of being able to see the world.
We say we're grateful. It takes something like this to actually feel it.
The fireflies
That evening we found a forest to camp in. Dense trees, dry leaves on the ground like a carpet, silence that felt intentional. We stepped into it as if entering another world.
When darkness arrived, the forest came alive. Fireflies — dozens of them, maybe more. Small, quiet lights moving in every direction, surrounding us. It felt unreal. Like something imagined rather than something you were actually standing inside.
We watched without speaking.
Sometime in the middle of the night I woke up — I've always been a light sleeper. I heard something outside. Careful steps. I went out.
A deer. Male, still and alert, standing not far from the tent. Surrounded by fireflies. Lit softly by the moon.
For a moment, everything stood still. No fear. No movement. Just the two of us, in the dark, in a forest that seemed to belong to a different time.
Then it was gone.
That was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. And it happened at the end of one of the hardest days. That's the thing about travelling by bike — it strips everything back to the essentials, and then, sometimes, when you least expect it, it gives you something extraordinary in return.
