THE
LAND
OF
LADIN
Stand on the shores of Lake Misurina at dusk and the Dolomites will play their first trick on you. As the sun sinks, the jagged towers of Tre Cime di Lavaredo begin to blush—softly at first, then with a vivid fire that looks as if the mountains themselves have been set alight. After riding 180 relentless kilometres from Kranjska Gora, I found myself stopped cold at the water’s edge, staring upward. Mountains shouldn’t glow pink, I thought. And yet, in the Dolomites, they do.
Journey
Dolomites Brevet
Words & images
Novak Stefanovic
DOLOMITE PINK
The locals have a word for this spectacle: Enrosadira. In Ladin—the ancient mountain language spoken here long before the first hairpin road was carved— it means “becoming pink.” The language survives today only in a handful of valleys, guarded like a family heirloom. And with it lives a legend: the tale of King Laurin, the Ladin ruler whose kingdom was once covered in a garden of roses. When enemies invaded, drawn by the brilliance of those flowers, Laurin cursed his beloved garden. He turned every petal to stone, commanding that the roses vanish both day and night. But the king forgot about twilight. At dawn and dusk, the memory of his roses still rises—the peaks igniting with a pink glow, like an ancient spell flaring briefly back to life.
It’s in moments like these that you understand why the Dolomites have inspired not just folklore, but entire eras of creativity and courage. Le Corbusier once called them the most beautiful architecture in the world. Cyclists, however, know them for a different kind of artistry: the kind shaped by suffering, grit, and the thin air above the treeline.
THE LEGEND OF MERCKX
These mountains have forged legends on the very roads that ribbon through them. None more so than the story written here in 1968, when a young Eddy Merckx rode himself into myth.
Stage 12 of that year’s Giro d’Italia was a brute: 213 kilometres from the Slovenian border to the summit of Tre Cime di Lavaredo. The rain started early, the snow followed soon after, and the mountain roads turned into rivers of slush. Merckx suffered a mechanical and a bike change, losing minutes as the leaders pushed ahead into the storm. For most riders, that would have been the end of the day.
Merckx is not most riders.
Wearing short sleeves in the freezing air, he launched into the chase alone, reeling in the breakaway with a determination that looked almost reckless. By the time the race reached the final climb to Rifugio Auronzo, he had not only caught the favourites—he had ridden straight past them. Merckx arrived alone at the finish, breathless from the altitude, and wearing the Maglia Rosa he would keep all the way to Naples.
He didn’t just win the stage. He announced himself to the world.
LAND OF LADIN
As the road carried me toward Cortina for the night, the thought of the Ladin people stayed with me. Mountain people who have seen everything these peaks have ever revealed—and concealed. I wondered what it must feel like to grow up here, between walls of stone that change mood with the light, in valleys where every bend in the road seems to hold a story older than any map.
For cyclists, the Dolomites are a playground of suffering and reward. But for the Ladin, they are a home shaped by centuries of endurance. Long before the Giro turned these passes into battlegrounds of athletic glory, the Ladin walked them, farmed them, survived winters that would make most riders turn back at the first flake of snow. Their culture—quiet, steady, stubborn in the way only mountain cultures can be—has outlasted empires, borders, and the changing whims of the world beyond the valleys.
I wondered if they see what we see when we come here.
Or if they see something far deeper—an understanding built of storms weathered, of cliffs climbed long before asphalt softened the approach. Maybe that’s why the Dolomites feel different from other mountain ranges. You don’t just ride through them. You enter a continuity—a lineage of people and peaks, legends and roads—woven together by time.
Their culture—quiet, steady, stubborn in the way only mountain cultures can be—has outlasted empires, borders, and the changing whims of the world beyond the valleys.
THE REAL MAGIC
It struck me then that the Dolomites don’t just inspire legends—they preserve them. Every rider who takes on these passes becomes, in some small way, part of a continuum. You chase the same light that King Laurin cursed. You ride the same slopes that sculpted Bartali’s grit. You climb the same walls of stone that immortalised Merckx on that savage day in 1968.
By the time I reached Cortina, the sky had faded to a deep alpine blue, and the mountains loomed like silhouettes of old gods watching over the town. The Enrosadira had passed, but its afterglow lingered—not just on the peaks, but in the stories they’ve inspired. Stories of courage and endurance, born from the same spirit that the Ladin have carried for centuries.
And perhaps that’s the real magic:
you arrive chasing the thrill of the mountains,
and you leave carrying the stories of those who call them home.
1 — 8 July 2026
DOLOMITES ESCAPE
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