The mountains in Montenegro .. Zabljak and the Durmitor National Park

The third largest canyon in the world, The Tara River canyon is in Montenegro. I had decided to go to Zabljak, the summer mountain destination of Montenegro, much before I knew about this canyon. The place for the sea had been filled up by Kotor, but on a previous occasion BiH (Bosnia and Herzegovina) was the prime candidate for mountains. As both the neighbors move northwards, so does the altitude. I needed a mountain destination for a stay and Zabljak in Montenegro, got the points over Visegrad in BiH. The river canyon would be a bonus, I thought.

It was one more of the Bus journeys and by this time I had really become fond of traveling the road like this. The constant flow of people in and out of the bus, doesn’t let you sleep, but then who wants to sleep, when some of the best mountainous scenery is unfolding in front of you. Smoking in the bus(only by the driver) is common, and even when the driver opened his side of the window to let the smoke out, it didn’t help me covering my face. It did however get a fresh breeze inside the air con bus. The cool in the breeze was a real welcome, to the mountains.

There is a village called Zakopane in Poland, where along with the mountains, the style of the houses are a constant reminder of the place. The style of the houses in Zabljak was what made Zabljak different from the other mountain villages I’ve seen in my travels. Though that night I slept in a basic town ‘guest house’, I knew that I would try to give my people the feel of staying in the country accommodation.

The red of the wine was the darkest color of red, I have witnessed in the glass. Even with the mountain sunlight kissing the surface, the color didn’t faint. ‘What do I have with the red’, I asked the waiter. ‘Something Local?’,  out of which only ‘local’ was said in English. ‘Malo’ I said. But like in Bosnia with the Cevapi, (the grilled meat sausage), malo, which is small in Slavik, made little sense when the order came in. At least the wine in the glass kept to its measure.

With some local roast lamb, still on my plate, I left the restaurant just when it had started filling up with ‘Russians’. ‘They have the same religion, they have the same writing, they are like us’, said the Serbian waiter to me. I don’t know how I felt about that and I doubt he did.

The ‘crno jezero’, or the Black lake is the pearl of the Durmitur National park. With only 3 kms away from the town and the lamb stuffed in my stomach, a walk was needed.  As I started on the path, more and more tourists joined in and equal numbers returned. There, I knew I was once again, only going to just check a place out.

In the evening a local travel guide told me that even though the lake is just 'good', the park on the whole is worth the visit.

The Black Lake in the Durnitor National Park

I would’ve questioned my coming here, but I knew when I give this more time I would justify the decision of including Zabljak in the tour. It had potential, I could sense it, and so with no rafting in the river, which was a must for everyone who came there, I decided to quietly leave the place to the future.

The next day when I passed the Tara river Canyon, on the bus to Belgrade, I peeped to look down at the gorge and the green lining at the bottom of it. The Tara looks much more beautiful with you touching it, someone had said. I said hello to Tara and then bid good bye in a matter of two turns of the bus, and  with the promise to myself of touching it sometime.

The good part of my work, remains, the comfort to know, that I would come back!

The Bay of Kotor - Montenegro!

The sea was missing from the itinerary till this point of my ex Yugoslavia search. The Adriatic practically runs Croatian tourism and Dalmatia the area of Croatia, which is the principle crowd puller is beautiful, but still has a very touristy feel in the peak of the summer. Even at the beginning of it the hotels don’t live up to the cost to service ratio.  I had decided to keep Dalmatia out of the itinerary.

The Adriatic bends to the south east of Croatia and partners with Montenegro, the youngest country to adopt the Euro. The bay of Kotor, and its views that everyone speaks of made me take the 8 am bus from Trebinje towards the coast. However it was more to find an alternative to the overly hyped Dubrovnik in Croatia.

Montenegro (Black Mountain) as named by the romans, does actually live up to its name. I don’t know about the color, but the mountains!! They are everywhere. The ‘van bus’ made a dramatic decent over the mountains reaching for the town of Herzeg Novi on the Adriatic. My next change to Kotor was in 10 minutes and it was not until 20 minutes into the drive that the bay started unfolding in front of my eyes. The shore is rocky but still as the small towns passed, there were more heads popping out of the blue sea than on the streets.

The towns all looked pretty much the same, and it didn’t create much of an impression. I was re thinking my move of including Kotor instead of Dubrovnik, it was only later that I realized that the bay looks its imposing self from the mountains and not from where I was looking at it.

The Bay of Kotor

The old town is beautiful and to get lost in it was a nice experience especially as the very narrow lanes shielded the sun and stone walls kept the walk pleasant. In my first 60 mins of walking around, I was surprised to learn that not once did my path cross with the earlier one. It was still post mid day and the sun would sneak in its fiery self from some random corner.

Too much of beer I had thought earlier, but there I was again with a wheat in my hand, not really for the heat but just for the wheat!

Kotor was in, even before I worked on what excursions can be worked out from there. Its position on the sea merited its position in the itinerary by default.

So a 50 euro taxi to catch the views of the bay from the top really made no sense, but I had to do something to make me feel that I was working. Sometimes I let the money go and think of it as an investment, just to cut the guilt I guess.

The rest of the evening I spent in checking a hotel out, again to remember that I was here on work. No matter what Hotel I check, if it has no contract with the agency I work with, the prices at the end will ensure that I don’t stay there. But nevertheless I still keep checking the hotels, so that the agency knows at least what kind of accommodation I would like to give my people to elevate the whole experience of the place.

The Old Town Kotor 

I longed for some cooler surroundings after 4 days in + 35 deg heat. When a country has ‘mountain’ in its name, a low temperature zone is just a pass away.

Montenegro was a wild card entry in the itinerary and it might just prove to be favorite, of the people, with a rare mountain and sea combination. Slovenia and Bosnia ruled in terms of its greenery but the color blue was missing, which Montenegro filled up with the bay of Kotor.

Exit Herzegovina .. Enter Republica Srpska (Serbian republic)

There are pretty villages around Mostar, I had heard. The transfer couldn’t be arranged by the agent in Sarajevo and I had to visit a local travel agency the next morning to get me on wheels to Trebinje.

‘I was here, all through the war’ my driver told me. I would talk to him later about it but then in the first few minutes after exiting Mostar, all I wanted to know was more about the villages around. I also for the first time had begun to form an itinerary for the tourists in my mind. It was a little village of Blagaj by the ‘Buna’ river stream that gave me a real picture of how the day would unfold around Mostar with my group. I imagined myself, running around with coffee as my people just sat and watched the river.

Blagaj with the River Buna, the less populated cousin of Mostar 

‘They, Bonians catholics have an additional Croatian Passport, the Bosnian Orthodox have Serbian passport, its only us, the Bosnian Muslims that don’t have a Turkish passport’ and he started laughing. It was a good joke, a trait which all the people in this region have. To make a humor, mostly black humor.

A car with a BiH number plate after being parked at the wrong end was turning in a weird way and Ahmed, my driver was prompt to say, it is a Bosnian! I smiled and I realized he might be replying to the question I had asked him earlier, ‘what is the basic difference between a Bosnian and a Herzegovinan’. Brothers he said, ‘but they have it much more easier than us, and they take things for granted’, just as this Bosnian, who thinks the road belongs to him.

It was just 30 mins into the drive from Blagaj, when Ahmed said, ‘this is it, Republica Srpska, if you are wondering why has the sun disappeared behind the clouds’. He was now really getting into the groove.

I had read about Trebinje and how the old town still has more locals than the tourists walking aimlessly in its shady square. This, one thing was enough for me to want to go there. Many monasteries pass on the way to Trebinje, and the orthodox religion is big especially on the borders. Monastries, and then there are vineyards, and then more vineyards. ‘The wine, you have to drink it’ said Ahmed just as many of the guide books say. With the mercury still above 35, I chose beer over wine, in the afternoon and tuna over meat. It is a really calm this trebinje I thought, more calming was its effect on me. Why do you want to go there? some people had said to me, there is nothing special. True, it is not an eye candy as its big two neighbors, Mostar and Dubrovnik. Trebinje doesn’t shout out to the world, it simply exists.

The quiet old town of Trebinje

 I was happy I was in Trebinje, as the itinerary had began to take shape in my head and I could just spend the evening researching about how to go ahead with the following days. It was like a start off yet a mid point to my journey. , As I walked the square with just one hotel occupying half of it and the other half being cleared off the morning vegetable and fruit market. It was just what I needed after Mostar and Sarajevo, with no touristy place to be seen or to be checked out.

I can’t point exactly why does a crowd of tourists feels more repelling to me than a crowd of local people. I keep telling my agents around the world that people from Mumbai live in crowds so we like silence when we travel. Maybe Trebinje with a local crowd of people who had come to attend a wedding didn’t feel ‘crowded’ ,just full of people maybe. People having a good time without a care and not trying to have a good time by taking pictures and shopping for sovenirs let alone sitting in the square and drinking beer.

I like ‘one of everything’ towns. One square, one market, one church and also the one hotel, Platini, which is a no nonsense place, which as Trebinje, simply existed in its own space. Almost everyone who worked there came from Serbia and had smiles as they served, didn’t feel commercial and that is very refreshing. That was,

I guess my first impression of Serbia, Hmm, good people!

The wine eventually did come to my table in the night, but my appetite gave in and the wine had to be shared with the same waiter who had recommended it to me. Maybe Trebinje would just feature as a lunch halt in my final itinerary or maybe I will stay there. I don’t know. All I know is that it’s a kind of a place that just slows down the pace around, and in you. Sometimes that is all that is needed on a travel.

The pearl of Tourism Herzegovina, Mostar!

The bus ride from Sarajevo in Bosnia to Mostar the principle city of Herzegovina, starts pretty bland. The bus timetable from the internet is not always spot on. But the difference is more or less under 30 minutes. My 1500 hrs bus (according to the internet) was scheduled to leave at 1530 hrs. ‘Cevapcici’ the national meat dish, of BiH, was a perfect way to spend the 30 minutes if you order a ‘malo’ (small) portion. But even the small, is big in Sarajevo! 5 to 6 pieces of mini sausage sized grilled meat comes in a beautiful soft, crispy open flat bread and is laid by local cheese and a generous helping of onions.

I was eating my way all through, to the bus. Chewing all that meat takes time. They take an extra buck for the luggage everywhere in this part of the world. It was still 38 deg in Sarajevo and the entire row of seats away from the sun were occupied. I need to mention here that even if your ticket bears a seat number, it makes no sense coz there are no seats numbered in any bus all throughout ex Yugoslavia.

As always is the case, the sun shifts once the journey starts, my only option of taking the ‘sun seat’ worked out well. The first 30 minutes of the journey and before the bus really begins its ascent through the mountains, is nothing to write about. It is only after the ‘Neretva’ the icy river flowing through the entire stretch south to Mostar shows its ‘green’ self does the camera’s of the tourists on the bus start clicking. Along with the Neretva, the ‘welcome to Herzegovina’ sign appears. Herzegovina, ‘The home of the Neretva’ the sign says. Geographical signs are good I thought, better, so much better than the political ones.

Herzegovina is the mountainous region south of Sarajevo and the Neretva to Herzegovina is the same as the Nile to Egypt I thought. It gives life to this dry and mountainous region. As the bus winds its way to Mostar, the river is a constant company all throughout, and this makes the journey very scenic. The villages along the way still bear the wounds of the war, but most of the houses have been re constructed and if the windows were open the mountain air even in +30 deg would be good to breathe in. But even the mountains, couldn’t make the temperature scale read less than 30 deg, and as I got down at the Mostar bus station, I realized, why they say, ‘Herzegovina has extreme of everything’.

The 'Stari Most' old bidge in Mostar 

I had decided I wont be visiting the places of war, but even so the 2 km walk from the bus station to my hostel, took me through a lot of damaged buildings. The sniper shots on the walls soon start looking like a design, a homogenous one throughout the town. I knew Mostar had the Croats, who attacked and not the Serbs, but war was not my agenda this hot evening.

The ‘Stari Most’ the old bridge is the symbol of Mostar and as I made my path to the bridge through the string of shops and herds of tourists, I had already lost interest to walk further. It was only after 4 hours more and a few rounds of wheat beer that I finally decided to walk the path again. It was around mid night and finally I could hear Mostar speak to me. The day tripper’s from Dubrovnik and Sarajevo had disappeared after their quick lunch and souvenir shopping and it seemed like the town now belonged to us, the people who stayed back.

The Nertva lined up with Restaurants, selling the view!

As night came, the restaurants around the river bank and facing the bridge twinkled in the Neretva and I decided to go down to the water level just to see how it feels from down there. Faint music from the restaurants combines with the sound of the flowing water and it has its own melody. Just as the right kind of tourism gives the locals a livelihood without them feeling overrun by the commercialization. Mostar at the midnight hour felt like what I had imagined. I would come to sit here again, I thought, as the only thing that pulled me out from there was to know if my agent in Sarajevo has mailed me the details of the transfer to Trebinje for the next day.

At midnight .. from down below !

Who knows with the current speed of development in Mostar, they might even have wifi on the river in a few years, and I wouldn’t need to go to my room to check the emails. But then why would I even come to the river.

Mostar, I hope has no more development and I come here again only before the mad tourist rush of June to August starts. The street to the bridge is full of odd shaped stones, and it would be good to hear my footsteps the next time I come here with the dusk falling on Mostar.