Steam hangs low beneath the wool-covered walls and ceiling while pirts master Rolands Fedotovs squeezes warm foam from a bundle of birch branches onto my chest. The room smells of wet leaves, herbs, heat and something older I can’t quite place. Outside, somewhere beyond the walls of this woollen pirts, Gauja National Park sings through the beaks of a thousand birds, while steam hisses. Nobody speaks.
Rolands moves slowly through the steam like a priest who has done this thousands of times before. Maybe he has. The branches brush softly against skin. Birch. Juniper. Linden. Oak. “Anything juicy and tender. This is the perfect season,” he says. The heat rises from a large pile of local river stones heated by a glowing stove. Three hours into the ritual at Ziedlejas Wellness Complex and the world outside has become irrelevant. Time dissolves inside a Latvian pirts.
“You don’t come here to wash your body,” Rolands says quietly. “You come here to clean your thoughts.” Then silence again, and sensory delights. This part of Latvia has a habit of doing this. Saying something deceptively simple before letting the forest finish the sentence.
Outside, the Gauja River keeps meandering through the valley, as it has been doing for thousands and thousands of years. Long before Latvia existed. Long before Christianity reached these forests. Long before roads, castles or borders. The Gauja as the eternal witness, running through everything.
In spring, life along its banks arrives like layers of colour slowly waking from sleep. First the russet-brown catkins of hazel and alder. Then the white softness of willow-catkins. Bird-cherry blossoms follow shortly after, hanging over the water like pale smoke. Along the forest floor, the spectrum changes almost weekly: blue liverleafs, violet hollowroots, poisonous mezereon shrubs glowing pink among the trees before yellow takes over completely. Wood anemones. Marsh marigolds. Cowslips. Celandines.
The Gauja valley doesn’t simply become green in spring. It blooms in stages. And the river watches all of it, as it grows with pride as the melting waters join in joy.
You notice the sounds too. Corn crakes hidden somewhere in the meadows. Golden orioles calling from riverside forests. Nightingales singing deep into the evening while white storks return to nearly one hundred and fifty nests scattered across Gauja National Park.
Latvians don’t separate themselves from this landscape. Not really. That relationship feels older than language itself. The strange thing about Gauja National Park is that it never fully feels like Europe. Technically, yes. There are roads, cafés, design hotels and fast internet hidden among the pine trees. But underneath all that runs something older. Something pagan. Something that survived crusaders, Soviet occupation and modern tourism campaigns.
The old gods never entirely left Latvia. They just retreated deeper into the woods. Watching silently, knowing that time passes and passes but wisdom always remains.
You feel it immediately after leaving Riga behind. The landscape changes gradually: suburbs become fields, fields become forests, forests become something denser and quieter. By the time we arrive at Camping Ezerpriedes, on the shores of lake Burtnieks, silence has become the dominant language. Nothing happens here. Which makes it perfect.
The lake beside the cabins lies flat as black glass beneath the northern night sky. Somewhere in the distance, a bird calls once and then stops. Northern Europe understands silence differently. Emptiness is presence.
Before Christianity arrived in the 13th century, Latvia was one of the last pagan territories in Europe. Forests belonged to Meža Māte, the Mother of the Woods. Rivers had guardians. Thunder belonged to gods. Certain rocks carried healing energy. Sacred groves existed where cutting trees was forbidden. The remarkable thing is not that these beliefs existed. It’s that they never fully disappeared.
The next morning we pedal rail bikes through bog landscapes near Zilaiskalns. Old railway tracks connecting the ancient peat ground with the present. Fertile grounds shared and sold to the world. At the watchtower above the trees, Gauja National Park unfolds in every direction: endless green beneath a pale Baltic sky. “Some places here are stronger than others,” Rolands tells me later. “People still come to certain rocks or forests for energy. Seers still bridge the human world and the divine, and still see the unseen as they have always seen.”
He says it matter-of-factly. Not mystical. Not performative. That’s Latvia, and Gauja, in a nutshell. Nobody is trying to sell spirituality here. It simply exists underneath daily life like groundwater beneath the forest floor.
The Gauja itself feels alive. Brown-black water winding through sandstone valleys shaped over millions of years. Ancient Livonian tribes believed rivers were boundaries between worlds. Looking at the Gauja, it doesn’t feel difficult to understand why.
At Valmiermuiža Brewery, the mood shifts from spiritual to deeply physical. Beer, it turns out, is another kind of ritual. Inside the brewery restaurant, beer sommelier Atis Everss slides a dark amber ale across the table. “Hop makes you hungry,” he says. Then comes cold beet soup. Smoked meat. Sharp horseradish. Mustard with enough bite to wake the dead.
Atis talks about beer the way some people talk about religion. “Everything starts with respect for ingredients,” he says while pouring another tasting glass. “Otherwise it has no soul.”
At Valmiermuiža, brewing feels less industrial than agricultural. Rooted in landscape. Rooted in seasonality. Even the beer tastes northern somehow: earthy, herbal, slightly wild. Smokey even.
Soul. That philosophy appears everywhere in Gauja National Park. Later at Kārļamuiža Manor, dinner follows the same quiet logic. Nothing feels overworked. Forest mushrooms. Fresh herbs. Root vegetables. Slow-cooked meats. Plates built around seasonality rather than trends, as if the kitchen simply continues what the forests and fields started outside. Latvian cuisine doesn’t try to impress with complexity. It wins through honesty.
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We know where to go. We know the best places to stay. And we know the local partners who turn a trip into something unforgettable. That’s why when we design your journey, it isn’t just a holiday. It’s a story you’ll carry for life.
Our mission is simple: to inspire you to explore the world with curiosity, optimism, enthusiasm, and respect. To connect with cultures, to marvel at breathtaking landscapes, and to embrace the beauty of untamed nature.
So, tell us — what once-in-a-lifetime adventure may we design for you?
In Cēsis, a charming little town, Ieva Zaharova walks us through narrow streets lined with old wooden houses glowing softly in evening light. Mājas Cēsīs, the company of which Ieva is the director, is responsible for renovating quite a number of rundown historical gems with love and precision. “We respect the soul of buildings, the memories that remain in the walls,” she says. She laughs slightly after saying it. But not enough to suggest she’s not dead serious.
At Sietiņiezis Rock pale sandstone cliffs rise above the Gauja River like the crumbling remains of some forgotten kingdom. Wooden staircases disappear into moss-covered ravines. Water drips slowly from stone. Lovers have carved their names for eternity in the soft stone, shouting silently the memories of loves long gone.
“Latvians have long believed certain natural places carry power, “ says Rolans. “Energy points. Sacred springs. Healing rocks.” Some traditions remain openly pagan. Others survive disguised as folklore or local habit. You stop asking where belief ends and landscape begins.
The next day belongs entirely to the river. Kayaking through Gauja National Park with guide Vents Strautmanis feels like outdoor adventure while drifting through mythology. Red sandstone cliffs rise from dark water. Pine forests lean over the banks. Occasionally caves appear in the valley walls. “People believed spirits lived there,” Vents says while pointing toward the cliffs near Līgatne.
The river moves slowly enough to notice details: mist trapped between trees, the smell of wet earth, birds circling above the valley, a drowned reindeer. We don’t see them, but somewhere along the banks, beavers move through reeds while deer emerge cautiously from forest edges. The Gauja doesn’t demand attention dramatically. It pulls you inward instead. And maybe that’s the real magic of Latvia. Not spectacle. Atmosphere.
By afternoon we’re flying headfirst across the valley on the Sigulda Turbo Zipline. Forest rushing beneath us. River flashing below. Adrenaline replacing meditation. Later comes the bobsleigh track in Sigulda, where athlete Olga Lapsova used to train on ice during winter and tourists hurtle through concrete curves in summer. Latvia has a beautifully strange ability to place extreme adventure directly beside ancient spirituality without either feeling out of place. It shakes you up like the G-forces of the bobsled track.
In Līgatne, we descend into sandstone wine cellars beneath the town where Julija Hana-Vanaga pours blackcurrant wine under candlelight. The cellar walls sweat moisture. The air smells of berries and stone. “The forest decides the flavour,” she says. “Every year changes.” Latvia isn’t traditionally associated with wine, but perhaps it should be. Berry wines made from currants, rhubarb and local fruits feel perfectly suited to the Baltic landscape. Slightly tart. Slightly mysterious. Impossible to imagine anywhere else.
The deeper we move into Gauja National Park, the more nature stops feeling like scenery and starts feeling like a character in the story. At Turaida Museum Reserve, its medieval castle rises above the valley, full of stories of ancient Livonian leaders and Teutonic crusaders. The Gauja shimmers below in the valley. Always moving. Always listening.
And then we return to the pirts. Back to heat. Back to steam. Back to the forest. The ritual at Ziedlejas begins before entering the sauna itself. Tea brewed from local herbs. “Two fingers of herb for your name, two for your wish what this session might bring you,” Rolands says. He explains that traditional Latvian pirts rituals were never simply about hygiene.
Historically, children were born inside the sauna. The sick were healed there. The dead were washed there before burial. Folk healers performed rituals there because the boundary between worlds was believed to thin inside the steam. The sauna had its own spirit: Pirts Māte, the Mother of the Bathhouse. Inside the woollen pirts, the modern world evaporates quickly.
Rolands works with branches soaked in warm water. Birch for cleansing. Juniper for protection. Oak for strength. The branches press rhythmically against skin while steam rises around us in thick waves. At one point he places fresh herbs over my eyes.
For several minutes there is only darkness, heat and the sound of water hissing onto stones. Outside, the Gauja River keeps moving through the valley beneath the night sky. And suddenly it all connects. The rivers. The forests. The beer. The songs. The pirts rituals.
The old pagan beliefs never disappeared because they were never really religion in the traditional sense. They were relationship. A way of understanding landscape not as something separate from human life, but as something alive and inhabited.
Modern Europe forgot much of that. Latvia didn’t. It lived on in the pride of its people. Occupied or not. Hours later, after cold water and steam and silence have stripped something loose from both body and mind, Rolands throws one final ladle of water onto the stones. The room disappears behind a wall of heat. I feel renewed. Beyond the wool-covered walls, somewhere in the darkness of Gauja National Park, the river continues moving silently. And inside the steam, for a brief moment, it feels entirely possible that the old spirits are still listening, and whisper their wisdom: spread the word, spread the word. We are ready. Gauja is waiting.
Latvia’s largest national park is a place where sandstone cliffs, ancient forests, rivers and old pagan traditions still shape daily life. From kayaking the Gauja River to sauna rituals, castles and craft breweries, this is the Baltic wilderness at its most soulful and adventurous.
Article created and published in project "Enter Gauja + ilgtspējīgs tūrisma galamērķis". Project Nr. 1.2.3.6/2/24/A/008
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