Transcarpathia is the tucked-away corner of Ukraine, on the far side of the mountains from the rest of the country, and it feels like it. The region, known in Ukrainian as Zakarpattia, was part of Hungary for a thousand years, and later of Czechoslovakia, before the Soviet Union took it in 1945, so the villages mix Ukrainian, Hungarian, Romanian and Rusyn traditions. The Zacharovanyi Krai, the Enchanted Land, is a nature park in the hills near the town of Irshava, a country of beech and oak forest, orchards, and folds of low mountains on the edge of the Carpathian foothills.
The name is deserved. In spring the orchards bloom, in summer the hillsides are thick with wild flowers and herbs, and in autumn the forests turn gold and rust. Villages are strung along stream valleys, with wooden houses, plum trees, and small churches with shingled roofs. This is plum brandy country, called palinka or slyvovytsia, and almost every household distils its own. A strong flavour of the borderlands lingers in the food, with bograch, a spicy paprika stew similar to Hungarian goulash, and banosh, a cornmeal dish served with sheep's cheese.
The Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians, a World Heritage site that stretches across several countries, lie close by, and the Havesova forest in neighbouring Slovakia, named in the ride, is one of its jewels. Old beeches, some of them centuries old, stand beside fallen trunks in a forest left alone.
I have to be frank about the present situation. Since Russia's invasion in 2022, Ukraine has been a war zone, and although Transcarpathia has been far from the front, it is not entirely safe, with air raid alerts and shortages, and foreign travel advisories advise against travel. A rider should check the current situation carefully before thinking of coming here. In peacetime the roads of the region are winding and pretty in a modest way, with the surfaces ranging from good main roads to broken minor ones. Bereznyky and Kushnytsya are villages of several thousand people, and the nearby town of Irshava has fuel and shops.