Walking the Kéktúra: Dorog to Pelifoldszentkerest (19.8km)

 One should never allow elevation to judge a hike. I cannot lie; I often do. Even though I grew up, or even because I grew up in such a flat place, I've quickly dismissed lowlands as either boring farmland or unnavigable swaps. This idea held despite many a wonderful walk in the prairies not far from my home town. That said, when I conceive of a hike, I imagine a mountain.

In Hungary, there aren't many mountains west of the Pilis; the Alps begin just when you cross the border of Austria. One could even argue that there aren't any mountains at all, but Hungarians are fiercely proud of whatever you call those bumps in their landscape, and as I explore them more, I become as well. It's about relativity and I suppose I should ignore my ancestral Rocky Mountain roots and extensive travels in the Himalaya and accept that I've been more or less a flatlander since birth. So let the Pilis be mountains, because it's just a word anyway.

I tackled all the Pilis sections of the Kektura first, which is natural, as they're the closest to Budapest and as much as I'd to view myself as some wake-at-the-crack-of-dawn-and-seize-the-day-even-if-that-day-is-Saturday-type of guy, I'm not. I'll have three beers on Friday night, watch a movie cuddled with Michelle, and get to sleep around 1AM, despite my best efforts, unless I absolutely have to. So after two months of wanting to venture further into the country, I found that I'd exhausted all the options for late starts.

Once you have to leave the general “metro” area, things become more complicated regarding transportation. Whereas the Pilis has hourly buses for the Budapestians that love to head to the hills to drink their beer, or to visit their parents or uncles who live in the villages, or oddly enough, the villagers who like to come to the city on weekends. The outer areas of Hungary are a different story. Sometimes you are lucky to find a bus at all that doesn't leave at dawn. So my mission of hiking across the country, one Saturday at a time, can't afford me such late nights on weekends, and if I decide to venture out on a Sunday, the buses are even more infrequent. This was the case last Sunday.

As we've established, I have a bias for high places and for my first real adventure in the heart of Hungary, I eyed the highest I could find, Kekes at 1014m. So, I filled out my little yellow post-it with bus times and transfer points, calculated my required pace to catch the last bus home, and finding my work done, I had another beer and watched a movie with Michelle, only to get to sleep too late, forcing my plan B: the Gerecse Hills, just East of the Pilis, only an hour from town.

The next morning, I found myself on the BP-Esztergom bus, amongst Japanese and Chinese tourists who were trying to flash moving photos of the poppy fields that so captured my imagination two weeks before. I was eyeing the elevations and my hike would only take me as high as 350m. I could see higher mountains out the window of my school! Unfortunately, I wasn't privy to this future essay's thesis statement, so between the low elevation and the dark clouds forming over the hills, I had little hope for this hike.

The Geresce hills are a thin chain of time humps that are a part of a longer narrow chain of humps connecting Budapest and Lake Balaton. This keeps Hungary from being completely flat in the middle and provides a convenient route for a long-distance hiking trail, that doesn't disrupt any farmer's wheat.

I was hiking from Dorog to Pelifoldszentkerest, opposite from the normal direction, mainly because buses didn't actually run Pelifoldszentkerest; the name is just simply too long to put on a bus window's sign. Even with the way I was taking, I'd have to backtrack for 30 minutes to the only slightly shorter named Mogyorosbanya, and catch one of the two buses that returned to civilization.

I'd written off this section and not just from the height and inconvenience, but also its lack of sights. The next section had two castles. This one only had three successive 300m climbs and descents. I'd learned in Nepal that it is often the lower hikes that prove the most strenuous. When you climb high, you usually stay high, but hills are a constant roller coaster of heavy breathes and sore knees.

Dorog was a lovely town with a gorgeous church and as I've mentioned before is a poppy paradise. The trail climbed straight up the hill Northwest of town. It was a moderate climb and I was greeted with a steady, but light rain. I've never loved rain, but there is one context that may make me a convert: when in the depths of a forest in summer and the leaves above create the most musical of umbrellas. Birds often love to add a melody to the thunderous percussion, the thump of my boots upon the ground, the squishy shlurp as they pull from the mud, and the rain drops' syncopation. Some mosquitoes attempted a high pitched harmony line, but I immediately squashed their dreams of joining my nature band.

Occasionally the trees would thin and I'd see the limestone hills above Kesztolc and the increasingly shrinking Dorog below. After a cloud obscured view of the whole valley from the top, the trail plummeted straight down the north face of the hill. I had to use the skinny oak trees and overhanging limbs to slow my slide down the mud-lubricated path. This was unpleasant, but I bet it would have been worse to go up.

The trail emerged in Tokod and I was glad that it left the unremarkable village quickly, especially because of what awaited ahead. I started climbing towards a rocky hill and the path travelled though another of the many lovely meadows that make Hungary so stunning in the summer. This one featured clumpy, cream-colored flowers punctuated by spiky purple ones that grew in kaleidoscopic patterns.

A storm was brewing above the hill I'd just passed, so I was pleased that I'd left no later than I did. Thankfully, the wind was blowing the storm from me, so I climbed higher, knowing I'd get to watch it without the danger of being struck by lightning.

The rocky hill was named Hegyes-kő. A couple months ago, I'd regard this as some exotic, poetic name, thought of by Petofi Sandor or some other great Hungarian writer. One often romanticises the words of an ununderstood language, often giving it a lofty status, but as I've learned more Hungarian, I've sadly discovered that the Hungarians are as bad at naming things as the Brits. This hill was called Mountain-y rock, which was simply what it was.

From the top of the mountainy rock, I could see the whole western side of the Pilis range and the great cathedral of Esztergom, the largest cathedral in Hungary. Even from miles away, it was impressive.

The trail then dipped down, crossing bald hills with views of the surrounding pastoral wonderland. I quickly walked through the cute, two-street village of Tokodipincék, stopping only to get lost and find the stamp for my book. People still collected their water from wells, every house had a garden, and most had grape vines. I should have stopped longer, but I only learned after the hike that “pincék” meant wine cellars—now that is well named village!

Behind the village was kőszikla, a hill with the name “stonerock”. After Mogyorosbanya (I don't know what that means.) I passed by “Old Rock”, a giant cave I didn't have time to explore. The section ended in Pelifoldszentkereszt, a holy place with a holy well that poured out holy water. I saw a woman loading up with it, using two-liter coca-cola bottles. I wanted to ask her if she desired to share a coke with Jesus, but I didn't speak enough Hungarian to be properly offensive.

The village may have been beautiful once, but this beauty led way for what appeared to be a seminary/dude ranch/Christian tourist trap. An old-folks home was across the street. The seminary was built around a reservoir and though I sure they were attempting some beautiful half nature/half human feel, in the end it just seemed like a waste of perfectly good forest. Just because it was lowlands, doesn't mean it isn't worth cherishing.