The High Tatras

The High Tatras are the smallest great mountains in the world: a granite ridge twenty-six kilometres long, shared with Poland along the crest, that rises straight out of the Slovak plain to two thousand six hundred metres with no foothills to speak of, so that from Poprad, in the valley, the whole range stands up at once like a wall of teeth. Along the foot of the wall a little electric railway strings the resorts together — Štrbské Pleso with its lake and ski jumps, Starý Smokovec with its funicular, Tatranská Lomnica with the cable car that goes to the summit of Lomnický štít and its observatory — and above them, in the valleys, the chaty, the mountain huts, serve soup and bread and beds to anyone who has walked up.

The traveller sleeps in one of the three resorts and rides the red railway between them; walks from Štrbské Pleso to Popradské pleso, an hour, for the lake under the peaks and the symbolic cemetery of those the mountains kept; takes the funicular from Smokovec to Hrebienok and walks on to the waterfalls of the Cold Creek and up to a hut — Zamkovského, Téryho if the legs allow — for the soup; goes up Lomnický štít by cable car, booked, for fifty minutes on the summit and the whole of Slovakia below; and, if the season is winter, skis, and, if it is summer, watches the weather, which changes on the ridge faster than the forecast.

The Guide's honesty: the high trails above the huts are closed from November to mid-June — not advised, closed, with fines —, and the mountain rescue is not free: buy the insurance —; the weather is serious at any season and the afternoon storm is a rule, so start at seven and be down by two; the huts are simple, cash-friendly and glad of you, and the soup is the best meal in the country; the Lomnický štít cable car sells out — book online, days ahead —; the railway is cheap and the trains are small; and Poprad, on the plain, is the gateway with the airport, the trains from Bratislava and the last supermarket. Go up prepared and come down happy.