Introduction
Tulcea county is Romania's far east, and almost all of it is water. The Danube arrives here after some two and a half thousand kilometres and breaks into three arms and an enormous fan of channels, lakes, reed islands and floodplain forest before reaching the Black Sea — the largest and best-preserved river delta in Europe, and a UNESCO biosphere reserve.
Overview
The delta is not a place you look at. There is no viewpoint, no summit, no single thing to photograph; it is flat to the horizon in every direction and it only reveals itself from inside, slowly, at water level. That makes the practical decisions unusually important, and the most important of them is the boat. The wide navigable arms that carry commercial traffic from Tulcea down to the sea are impressive in scale and essentially riverine — a big fast boat on those arms shows you a very large river and not much else, which is why a proportion of visitors come away underwhelmed. The delta proper is off those arms: shallow side channels barely wider than the boat, tunnels through walls of reed three metres high, and open lakes where the water is covered in white lilies. Reaching them needs a small, low, shallow-draught boat and someone who knows which channels are currently open, because the delta rearranges itself. What you find there is one of Europe's great wildlife spectacles — the continent's largest colonies of white and Dalmatian pelicans, herons and egrets in numbers, cormorants, glossy ibis, terns, and in migration seasons a corridor carrying enormous quantities of birds. There are also villages reachable only by water, with their own fishing culture and language, forests growing on old sand dunes with wild horses in them, and Romania's oldest and lowest mountains along the county's western edge.
Discover Tulcea
Understand this before booking anything. Three arms carry the Danube from Tulcea to the sea, and they are wide, deep and used by shipping — a large fast boat runs down one of them in a couple of hours and it is an impressive journey that shows you very little wildlife. The delta that people come for is in the side channels, the canals and the lakes between those arms, and it needs a boat small enough and shallow enough to enter them, moving slowly, ideally with the engine cut. So the question to ask an operator is not how long the trip is but where it actually goes and what boat it uses. A full-day trip from Tulcea in a small boat with a guide who knows the current channels is worth more than a multi-day package that stays on the arms. Even better is to base yourself in a village inside the delta and go out at dawn, which is when the light is low, the water is still and the birds are feeding. Bring binoculars, sun protection with no shade to rely on, insect repellent in the warmer months, and something waterproof: an open boat in delta weather is exposed in both directions.
Ways to Experience This Destination
The delta proper — narrow side channels, reed tunnels and lily-covered lakes reachable only by small shallow-draught boat.
Europe's largest breeding concentration of white pelicans, with Dalmatian pelicans, herons, spoonbills and a migration corridor.
Reed-thatched fishing villages where the boat is the car, and a former international free port at the end of the waterway.
Letea and Caraorman's liana-draped oak growing in sand with free-roaming horses, and Europe's oldest eroded range inland.
Frequently asked questions
Treat this Visaja page as your starting point: verify the current rules directly with the official source before you submit an application.