Day 1: The way to Durmitor

We left Prague at about 7 AM and the ride was supposed to take 14 hours. But we spent 3 hours at the Hungary-Serbian borders, because thousands of German, Swiss, Austrian and Dutch Turks were heading home for the holidays. Being in Schengen area we didn’t imagine something like this can happen. It was also getting extremely hot and the ride was getting really unbearable.
Consequently we arrived to Zabljak at 2 AM, where our trip started. We had to find a place to build our tent in the darkest night with no idea where a good place could be, but we were accompanied by a Good Spirit, a dog, who followed us all the way to our place in the woods by Crno Lake where we built our tent and fell asleep covered with our single shared sleeping bag.

Bear attack

The night wasn’t as smooth as we would like it to be. We were woken up several times during the night, because the spirit dog barked a lot at imaginary intruders (at least we were hoping they were not real) and at one moment he even jumped on our tent and landed on @mor. She really freaked out because she thought that it was a bear (Well she was also dreaming at that moment about being chased by a bear, so it wasn’t surprising that she got so scared). At the end the dog calmed down and we got at least some sleep.

Day 2: Non-smoking ice cave

In the morning there was no trace of the dog. That’s when we started to call him Good Spirit, because we weren’t sure if he had been real. We got up very early, because we didn’t know it was allowed to sleep by the lake.

We had our first wonderful breakfast - muesli we prepared ourselves before the journey. Oat flakes with powdered milk (so that we can just add water), various dried fruits (plums, raisins, banana, cranberries) which are a good source of immediate energy, and nuts (brazil, keshu, pecan, sunflower seed, coconut) which give you a slower energy so you are not hungry before lunch.

After a short swim in the lake we started climbing in the direction of Bobokov kuk, the highest mountain of Durmitor. We intended to camp somewhere in the mountains. We met the Spirit Dog as he was following some people going down from the mountains. After a while we realized that he switched and followed us again.

We found a cottage with a sheep shepherd and a place with an official (but free) camping place. As we had no plans where we would like to go. We were tired from the short sleep, but were eager to see the mountains. We asked some people passing by where they were heading and decided to go there too. To the ice cave. And the dog still with us.

The cave was pretty cool, actually so cool that some Danish scouts couldn’t resist to smoke inside. We told them half-jokingly, half-angrily that this was a non-smoking ice cave, but they didn’t care.

We were very tired after the lack of sleep, so we took a nap on the way down right there on a flat stone. That’s what I call freedom, to be able to lay down anywhere and not to be pushed to do anything by anyone else than myself. That gave us the energy needed to return to our tent.

To “sweeten” up this day even more we bought some delicious sheep cheese from the shepherd and in order to be able to move tomorrow we did some cool-down stretching yoga. We also meditated a bit, which was just amazing in the mountains.

“In the mountains you find good people”,

said Ross, an israeli student and traveller, who stayed with us at the campsite. This is actually quite a an interesting idea. The discomfort from physical activity, changeable weather and absence of a soft bed probably serve as a filter for nice people.. And it really works (except for the smoking scouts ;-) ).

We discussed quite a lot with him, sitting by a bonfire we made, sharing nice Nepali tea, dried fruits and nuts and his amazing dried meat. We talked about constellations, travelling, education, people and politics. Note: Don’t ask Israelis about their situation in the middle east, they just don’t want to talk about it all the time :).

We will conclude today’s post with some cute and funny little goats sniffing the ashes of our yesterday’s fire;-)

@hr1 and @mor

If you liked this post, you might also wanna see the Introduction post about our travel.