Zabola: An Estate That Is Lived In
Confiscated in 1949 and restored by the family since the early 2000s: at Zabola in Transylvania, guests stay in the historic buildings of the Mikes family estate.
Zabola lies on the edge of the Carpathians in Szeklerland, in the east of Transylvania, where Hungarian is widely spoken. Its guest houses stand in a castle park of around fifty hectares, part of more than five hundred hectares of forest and meadow that the estate looks after.
The estate’s story has been linked to the Mikes family for centuries. It was confiscated in 1949. In the early 2000s Gregor and Alexander Roy Chowdhury, sons of Countess Katalin Mikes, began restoring it, and in 2002 the family moved back into the Garden House, the last building it had lived in before 1949.
The houses in the park
At Zabola you choose a building as much as a room. Ármin Mikes built the New Castle in the early 20th century. The lower floor of the Machine House is more than 250 years old and once held the estate’s pumps and generators; it was the first guest house to reopen. The Old Saddle House, around 300 years old, has had guest rooms for more than two centuries and, like the Garden House, is rented as a whole house. Families can look at the New Yard, which has sleeping lofts for children and is close to the stables.
Zabola Style restaurant cooks with seasonal produce from surrounding villages, vegetables and herbs from the organic kitchen garden and honey from the estate’s own bees. The Castle SPA nods to the family’s Indian heritage, and a wood-fired sauna stands in the forest. Dobrica Hunting Lodge is a separate place to stay, around 60 kilometres away.
Horses, bears and the forest
The Count Mikes Stud dates back to the late 17th century; under Ármin Mikes it kept more than 300 horses. Gregor and Pauline Roy Chowdhury revived it in 2018, and guests can ride with a guide in the park and the forest.
Bear-watching is led by a ranger, who takes guests by Land Rover and on foot to a wildlife hide at the forest edge. As the estate explains on its own website, food such as corn is put out to draw the bears into view. Outings last two to three hours, run until the first snow and are open from age eight, and a sighting is never guaranteed.
The estate’s own guidelines rule out new buildings. Guests stay in restored houses from the 18th to the 20th century, and much of what the restaurant serves comes from the estate or the villages around it.
Practical
Brașov airport is about 70 kilometres away, Bucharest Otopeni a little over 200, so plan several nights rather than a short stop. Book riding and bear-watching in advance: the hide takes up to eight guests, and guided rides have a weight limit of 85 kg.
