16. A short Serbian sojourn

Day 89, July 11th.  Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina – nr. Uzice, Serbia, 28 - 41C, sunny

We’re a little apprehensive entering Serbia, after everything we’ve seen and heard about Serb atrocities in Bosnia during the Balkans War – and lovely Amina’s parting comments to us in Gorazde: her fears about the Serbian prime minister’s recent populist statements (“we can’t rule out another war…”). 

It’s nothing to do with personal safety, that’s not an issue – it’s more about making sure our preconceptions don’t cloud our experiences.

As it transpires, we needn’t have worried.  We’re not here for long enough to meet many Serbs, and amongst those we do meet, whilst they’re friendly and welcoming, the language barrier is almost complete.  Unlike their neighbours in Bosnia, Serbs don’t start to learn English at 3rd grade – Russian is still more widely understood than English, reflecting the country’s wider political leanings.  

Shortly after the border, the countryside opens up a little and we briefly leave the beautiful, yet slightly claustrophobic Dinaric Alps.  But not for long: the pleasant rolling countryside gives way to more forested mountains as we reach the city of Uzice, nestled in a steep valley, above the Detinja river.

‘Nestled’ is the wrong word: Uzice is an astonishingly ugly place, a mixture of old rustic farmhouses, streets of modern townhouses, and vast, ugly apartment blocks, dotted seemingly at random, throughout the city.  ‘Town planning’ is evidently not a thing here: we drive past numerous little houses, utterly swamped by Soviet-era and newer concrete monsters, often 16 storeys or higher.  It’s not a place to dwell in; no cheeky mid-afternoon espresso for us here.

Without stopping, we drive out of the city and up a hill, back into the countryside, looking for some flat land.  Ralph and Laurie are both insistent that we try to wild camp in Serbia – it’s not illegal here.  Doing our best to follow our own “listen to your children” mantra, we’ve been looking for suitable spots since we crossed the border. 

We’ve explained to them that wild camping spots should be:

(a) flat;

(b) shaded;

(c) out of sight from the road;

(d) not so remote that we’re going to get eaten by bears;

(e) preferably near fresh water; and

(f) ideally clearly on someone’s land, from whom we can ask permission…

We learned all these lessons on our previous overlanding trip (barring the bear one, but we’re not willing to test that rule in south-east Europe). We’re keen not to repeat some of our previous mistakes with the boys, especially since this time around, we’re sleeping on top of and not inside our car, and hence a little less mobile in the event of that angry 2am knock on the window… 

We find a suitable spot, in an orchard near a secluded little house; there’s a local washing his car outside, chatting on the phone.  He pauses his conversation as we walk up; despite the language barrier he understands what we’re after.  Unfortunately for us there is a proper campsite less than a kilometre away (the only one for miles around) and he’s convinced that’s what we’re after… with the language barrier, we’re simply not able to explain that we actually want to sleep on his land.

No matter.  We drive to the campsite nearby and it’s perfect.  It’s a large, flat, clover-filled field, next to a farmhouse and barn, with a handful of donkeys, geese, goats and a couple of fine peacocks roaming around.  We meet Rladko – the owner – as he’s driving down his drive; he turns around in his pick-up and leads us in.  There’s no-one else here. 

Rladko is our first Serbian encounter: he’s in his fifties, wearing just a pair of old shorts, with leathery, heavily suntanned skin and a slight limp.  Ralph and I do the registration formalities with him while Nina and Laurie photograph peacocks; while we hand over our passports, he insists on pouring out a shot of his home made rakia for me, and a local cola for Ralph. 

Inevitably, one shot turns to three (he joins me, of course) – then Nina turns up and is poured another one – which she secretly gives to me as well.  It's predictably strong and disgusting and completely puts me off my much-anticipated cold beer that’s been waiting patiently in the fridge.  Luckily, we’re old hands at putting up our roof tent now…

In the evening, we enjoy a vast grill of local meats, cheeses and some (surprisingly delicious) cabbage, plus some afterthought salads, prepared by (we think) Rladko’s wife, who speaks a little more English than her husband.  We’re early to bed – enjoying the peace and the dark, starry skies but not the unrelenting heat.  It’s another sweaty, uncomfortable night in the roof tent.

Day 90, July 12th.  nr. Uzice – Uvak canyon, Serbia, 31 - 37C, sunny

We don’t hurry this morning – partially because we’re enjoying the shade (we smugly parked our car next to the woodland at the edge of the field, to benefit from the morning shade), and partially because we’re not really sure where we’re going next.  

We enjoy a couple of ‘Serbian’ (effectively Turkish) coffees with Rladko, who by 10.30am has started on the rakia, before effortlessly moving on to the beer at eleven.  Work doesn’t appear to trouble him much, but he nevertheless keeps himself calm with a near-continuous stream of Black Sobraine cigarettes.  During our stilted conversations, everything remotely positive is “perfekt” whilst everything negative is “catastroph”.  Entertaining, but not enlightening.

This corner of Serbia is remote and hilly, and it takes a long time to get anywhere.  To cross into Kosovo – our next intended target – we need to take a six-hour detour east and then south, to avoid closed border crossings, but this feels like unnecessary extra driving.  We can enter Kosovo later in our trip, more easily, from the south.   

It’s also still ruthlessly hot – and to avoid further unnecessary baking of ourselves or the boys, we’re trying to stay at altitude, or near water, wherever possible. 

In the end we agree a change of plan and drive south, heading for the Uvac canyon and a border crossing with Montenegro tomorrow.  It’ll give us a slightly less circuitous route through the southern Balkans and enable us to get high up into the Montenegrin mountains tomorrow.

There’s little to divert us on our drive to the Uvac river.  Sleepy, bucolic, rolling countryside, little farmhouses, locals driving along the lanes on ancient tractors: it’s pleasant enough – perhaps like driving through southern France in the 1950’s – but there’s little to stop and dwell over.  This part of Serbia feels a little ‘forgotten’: a long way from the capital, hard to get to, and hard to get out of. 

We stop for a picnic on a hill near Zlatibor – a small town that’s seemingly being arbitrarily converted into a ski resort, completely with an array of fancy new apartment blocks, hotels, restaurants and cable cars.  It’s at 1,200 metres – but at 37C and with no obvious large mountains in sight – we’re not quite sure how it’s going to work.

We reach the Uvac river in the early afternoon.  It was dammed up in the 1970’s to produce hydroelectricity, but it’s extraordinary, steep-sided meanders are still clearly visible above the water line.  We spend an hour traversing a long track high above the dam, looking for wild camping spots, but to no avail – it’s too vertiginous, and there’s no shade to be had anywhere.

We follow another track down to the lake and park above a soft, crumbled rock ‘beach’.   There are a handful of locals splashing about the water, and one old boy renting out kayaks.  We hire three – one each for Laurie and I and one for Nina and Ralph to share – and spend an hour exploring the lake’s meanders, natural arches and cliff faces from water level.  The dam’s level is about 20 feet lower than usual – meaning far more of this river’s remarkable natural features are on currently visible.

Back at the beach, it turns out that some of the locals here are actually based in Chicago, just back for the summer holidays and staying with their grandmother nearby.  They explain that the dam is lower than usual since it’s running at more than full power – profiting from the massive shortage in electricity across southern Europe (and ensuing price hikes) resulting from the war in Ukraine.

They also suggest that we can camp on the ‘island’ in the middle of the lake; a small promontory that is usually covered up by the water, but which is currently accessible by 4x4s, and regularly used by them and other campers. 

We don’t need asking twice.  Aside from ‘shade’, the promontory fulfils all our other free camping criteria.  We move the car; Nina and I set the tent up while the boys hastily collect driftwood to light campfires (as luck would have it, the land here is also sufficiently clear – being usually underwater – to negate the risk of wildfires).

We spend the evening alone, eating grilled peppers, pasta and a sauce cobbled together from various random vegetables procured in a Serbian market earlier, plus the rest of last night’s grill from the campsite, which we’ve brought with us.  The boys diligently and lovingly tend their respective campfires, both built in their inimitable styles: Laurie’s a traditional, open fire, neatly enclosed in a circle of rocks, Ralph’s more like an oven, enclosed entirely by rocks and with a flat ‘cooking stone’ on top.  They’re in heaven; it’s an idyllic spot. 

As dusk settles, we’re joined by four friendly stray dogs, who decide that we’re good company for the evening. 

They keep a casual yet experienced eye on our developing food and bin situation, but don’t beg or steal – barring the large yellow lab who’s clearly the pack leader, who nabs a piece of Ralph’s bread off him.  After several bouts of enthusiastic and noisy fornicating, they eventually go to sleep in between Laurie’s campfire and the car.  They bark intermittently during the night – but that’s OK.  It feels like we’ve acquired our own guard dogs for the evening.

Day 91, July 13th.  Uvak canyon, Serbia – Biograd Lake National Park, Montenegro, 30 - 41C, sunny

We sleep soundly, despite the intermittent barking.  A cool breeze comes off the lake and sweeps straight through the roof tent, giving us our own personal air conditioning system.

Ralph’s up very early in the morning – before 6am – rekindling his fire.  In his enthusiasm of breaking sticks and clearing out the ash, he wakes Nina and I.  Whilst we’re less than thrilled, it’s hard to be cross with him.

We’re all up by 7am, except for the dogs, who are fast asleep under our car: last night’s romantic activities have evidently taken their toll.  Laurie gets his fire going too and soon, both boys are busy cooking toast on their fires.  Shortly, Ralph raises the stakes and attempts to fry an egg on his cooking stone – which is entirely successful, save for his stone not being non-stick…  Further eggs are successfully fried and eaten, with the helpful addition of a frying pan.  By 8.30am, both boys are fully fed, covered in ash and soot, looking entirely feral – and possibly the happiest they’ve been on the entire trip. 

Nina’s breakfast is somewhat disturbed by more enthusiastic coitus between the yellow lab and the small back terrier; they’re at it again, less than a foot from her granola.  Despite their lack of personal space awareness or decency, we can’t help but admire their ability to overcome the clear logistical issues presented by their size difference.  

Breakfast finally finished, we pack up the tent and go for a family wash in the lake – to clean the soot off and cool everyone down – it’s already 34C.

We weave our way further south, through the most southerly reaches of this remote corner of Serbia, stopping for lunch in the largely Islamic city of Novi Pazar, near the Montenegrin border.  It’s a long, narrow, scruffy conurbation; clinging to the banks of the Raška river and punctuated by dozens of extremely pointy minarets – like super-sized knitting needles dropped out of a plane. 

We eat in a local restaurant, making full use of their air conditioning, before managing a 20-minute walking tour of Novi Pazar’s few sights (an old mosque, a mini-Ottoman quarter comprising a single street like those we saw in Sarajevo, and a fountain with no water).  It’s far too hot to try to do anything more – or to care about anything we haven’t seen.

We buy ice creams – more for medicinal purposes than anything else – then jump back in the car, put the air conditioning on full, and make all haste to the Montenegrin border.