By Aditya Acharya

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We headed towards the south of Brasov city, where the southern Carpathian mountains were right in front of us. There were still snow caps in the mountain tops. Although these are called the Carpathian Mountains, the snow there is not permanent. The snow could be seen only until June or July before all of it gets melted.

We saw large patches of yellow fields, the flowering rapeseed, during the two hour drive towards the field. We had seen them also while travelling from Bucharest to here (Brasov) on the 1st of May; three days ago.

Today, our visit was to the Ingleby; a private forest company that has forests and farms in nine countries across 4 continents; Romania being one of those countries. After a brief introduction to the company and its activities, we saw forest protection activities and learned to identify the insects.

Later, we had lunch in the farm. The staffs were really cool and kind and humorous. It was the best day so far since the beginning of our tour 4 days ago. Not because they provided nice lunch, not because they gave so many things to us; they are really nice.

After lunch, we went to practice how to select the cutting and retaining trees for a thinning operation, in a 70-years old mixed stand of oak, beech, hornbeam and some other minor species.