The surroundings of the Saharna Monastery are perfect, first of all, for hiking. The itineraries are not very well laid out, but good enough to make your muscles work and burn some calories. Don’t forget that both Saharna and Tipova offer amazing views, but, unfortunately, they are not very safe so, be very cautious.
Let’s see our story. For a visit of Saharna you must first get to Rezina. I recommend this itinerary, because the roads are better and you will have less trouble. In Rezina you will find the road sign to Saharna only after you go through the center of the town. The rest is easy, follow the bank of Nistru up to the Monastery.
The Monastery is located at the bottom of three quite high hills on the bank of Nistru river. We entered the territory of the Monastery and the first place we visited was the “Holy Trinity” church.
The Church dates back to 1776 and was built by the abbot Vartolomeu, after a revelation he had on the nearby Grimidon rock.
After a tour of the Monastery “Saint Nicholas” and of the “Holy Trinity” Monastery, we saw the peacocks and freshened up with cold spring water and continued our journey to the Cave Monastery.
The exact date when the Cave Monastery “Annunciation” was built is not known, but it is much older than the Cave Monastery (1776).
The interior of the Cave Monastery is full of icons from different periods and the old cells of the monks are close by.
Another place of interest is the Spring with healing water. This spring with a pool was built near the place where, as the old people say, used to be the “Vavila’s Spring”, which had warm water in winter.
The difficult part starts here. You have to walk under the rocks, on the bank of Saharna river and you get to the “Gipsy’s Whole” Falls that is 5 meter high.
It is incredibly beautiful, it is cool in summer and wet, everything is green, but there is also a lot of litter left by the pilgrims.
After a pleasant walk, get ready for a harder journey. Climb another rock to get to the Geto-Dacian Fortress. The road is challenging for those who are used to sitting on office chairs:), and on top you will be disappointed, because there is only a small monument marking the place where the Fortress was located.
You won’t find any other information on the Fortress.On the way back, you leave the territory of the Monastery and climb the Grimidon rock. A small altar sacred to Virgin Mary is located on top of the rock. According to the legend, an imprint of Virgin Mary was left on a rock, which proves that the Monastery was built with divine input.
This is what you can see in Saharna and I assure you that the views are very nice, the relief is so different from the rest of Moldova and I am curious how these places look like when everything is frozen.
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