This report is about the tour: Durmitor and Prokletije
Tour “Durmitor Prokletie” Montenegro, August 26 - September 9, 2012.
This was our second trip to Montenegro. Thanks to the reconnaissance carried out last time, we managed to avoid many difficulties and save a lot of time, which was immediately used to study new sections of the route and even new countries. As a result, we visited not only the mountains of Montenegro, but also, after crossing the border, we had a good walk through the wild corners of Albania, went rafting in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in the end we visited Croatia for the day (we saw Dubrovnik). And most importantly, the group was very friendly and positive - with such company, any route blossoms with new colors.
On this trip to Montenegro, as in most other “long-distance” travels, I reported online - I got Internet on my mobile and published daily on social networks (in our groups VKontakte, Facebook and Google+) notes about the latest events on the route, local gossip and other interesting things. Photos from a mobile phone don’t turn out so well, and not everyone read the broadcast - so the idea came up to collect all the notes on one page and supplement them with normal photos.
So, let's break it:
08/26/2013. The trek across Montenegro has started. As always, live reporting from the scene (well, maybe with some delay... but it’s not me, but the connection :) It’s so hot in Budva (a resort in Montenegro) that people, trying to escape from fatal dehydration, throw themselves into the sea from the cliffs :) I have a better idea - we’ll go to the mountains. We start tomorrow at 7, without breakfast or other delays.
08/27/2013.On the way to Prokletiye we have breakfast at a roadside restaurant with a shy cook (he hid from the cameras) and stunningly familiar paintings on the walls.
After the unbearably hot Budva, the cool Prokletiye seemed to us like a paradise resort. We joyfully (not in vain) put on our jackets and trousers and went to the radial to Volushnitsa.
If only you knew how happy the instructor’s heart is when the group sighs with admiration at the sight from the next pass. The top of Volushnitsa in Prokletiye is just such a place.
08/27/2013.We crawled onto the Karanfily ridge in the company of Polish tourists who were constantly losing their participants. Here two Montenegrin rescuers overtook us. As far as we understood, they were looking for some missing tourist. And yesterday someone actually fell off a cliff. In short, everyone suddenly didn’t want to get lost.
Finally we found an English-speaking local and he explained what was going on here. It turns out that the day before yesterday, when we were just approaching the Cursed Mountains (what did you think? This is Prokletiye), two Polish tourists, father and son, fell to their deaths on the route to the Karanfil peak. The second son survived (only broke his arm) and called for help (which is surprising, given the terrible mobile phone coverage). The working version of the emergency is simple - a cloud covered us, we got lost in the paths, and slipped on wet stones. As far as we understood, those two rescuers were carrying water and food upstairs for the surviving son who remained upstairs (why!?). Could it be that the bodies of his father and brother could not be brought down? Yesterday a helicopter flew over the valley several times. Probably I couldn’t get closer because the slopes were too steep. Yesterday we were only 300 meters from that dangerous section... but decided not to go to the top due to lack of time.
A few more nerve-wracking details about another incident in Prokletiye. It turns out they have been searching for the missing Italian for 20 days. At first we didn’t attach any importance to this, but then we remembered that returning to the camp from the most difficult radial route around Mount Ochnyak, we heard a distinct corpse smell in the forest. It was only a kilometer from the road on a very unpleasant traverse. It would be easy to fly off the trail there. Especially after a tiring descent over the rocks... In general, today we will try to find some representative of the authorities and inform him of our guesses.
08/28/2013.At our new parking lot we met a large Albanian family. Two sisters (Albanians from Albania) married two brothers (Albanians from Montenegro). Now they live here in Prokletiye, raising sheep. All summer they live in an abandoned border outpost above the Ropoyan valley, and for the winter they go down to Gusynye (the regional center). They say that last winter there was 5 meters of snow in the village, that they have no gas - they heat with wood, that children learn 4 languages at school (Serbian, Albanian, English and French), that it is generally not customary to drink tea here, but only coffee. in the evening, the whole family came to our fire and we continued chatting about the rules of sheep grazing and everything in the world.
So that during our absence (in the radials) the cows do not eat the drying clothes, we stretch the clothesline 3 meters above the ground.
08/29/2013.For the last two days we have been dining exclusively on local bread with fresh cheese and sheep’s milk (we buy from shepherds). from such nutrition, oddly enough, jumping ability, on average for the group, increased significantly.
08/30/2013.Yesterday we went to a radio station in Albania. Wild country, I want to tell you. Neither people nor animals. Huge raspberry fields stand untouched - there is simply no one to eat the berries (well, except us, of course). There are also a lot of snowfields and no water, firewood or shops at all. How can a poor tourist survive?
The main “horror story” of today is that the 2030m pass was easily taken in less than 2 hours. We relaxed, not realizing that the real test was yet to come - halfway down the descent, a significant part of the trail was swept away by a recent landslide. We had to cross twice a wide 50-meter zone of erosion, where the stones had not yet settled and even half-ton boulders easily moved under the weight of a person. During this hour and a half I did not take a single shot.
After a tiring day, swimming in the lake seemed like the ultimate dream. But Savino Oko is not a simple lake, but an “outlet” of an underground river. The water temperature here is about 6 degrees, and instead of one of the corners there is a bottomless tunnel into the depths of the karst kingdom. Not everyone decided to swim today.
Somehow I forgot to write about the most important thing. Forests have been burning in Albania for quite some time, and the smoke-filled air over Prokletiye has become similar to the weakly transparent atmosphere that I saw in India. From the very morning, a dense haze covers the mountains, significantly complicating the work of photographers.
01-09-2013. The photo shows the famous “General Paxson” (the driver of our minivan). He became famous by composing the motto of our campaign - “Problems? Ha-ha!” He uttered this phrase, wonderful in its power and simplicity, while jumping at full speed between an oncoming truck and a passing “brake” motorcyclist on a narrow mountain road. Now we meet any difficulties on the route with a loud “ha-ha” and without slowing down, we go straight ahead.
02-09-2013. We are already in Durmitor. Black Lake is surprisingly deserted today (and it’s a day off). Only the caretaker of the national park sadly wanders along the shore in the hope of selling entry tickets to someone.
In the evening we were going to go to the top of Terzin Bogaz. but on the way to the top we met a Russian group, whose instructor so diligently intimidated us with the South Top (the neighboring peak) that we could not help but go to this “crest of horror.” don't worry, it's a normal peak, nothing to worry about in good weather.
On the trail we met two park rangers with backpack sprayers. The summer was very dry, everything was dry, the leaves were turning yellow and falling off, the grass caught fire at the slightest spark. So far the sky is clear, there is no such veil of smoke as in Prokletiye, but the situation can change at any moment. I am glad that rain is promised by Thursday and nature has every chance of salvation.
During dinner, a sweet girl Dasha from St. Petersburg rolled into our camp (or rather, slid down the loose dirt at the fifth point). She: - travels alone, - constantly loses the path, - is in Durmitor for the second time, - lives in a hut with shepherds, - does not carry a flashlight with her, - has an extremely optimistic view of the world. Dasha's visit and her style of solo travel caused a heated discussion in the group. Dasha explained this by the impossibility of finding travel companions, but it seemed to us that she was not really looking for them. Although all this is not important - if you rely on your strengths and don’t get into trouble, then solo tourism is not crazy.
03-09-2013. Durmitor is also beginning to be covered in smoke from fires. In the photo taken in the morning, the smoke is barely noticeable - a white pillar, on the right behind Tanya’s back (in orange). By evening, it covered the entire valley (a huge valley) - the stars are almost invisible, night photography is impossible: (and yesterday we took a photo of such a star-studded timelapse - you'll rock :)
The group unanimously classified Bobotov Kuk (the highest peak in Montenegro) as a half-point difficulty category. In contrast to yesterday's Southern Top, which gained as much as two “points”. Translated into Russian, this means “the devil is not as bad as he is painted.”
For 10 participants in the hike, we have 3 vegetarians and 5 smokers. Moreover, these subsets intersect. This is, like, a coincidence. The photo shows a fragment of our camp lunch.
The ice cave caused wild delight among our photographers. All the rest simply did not crawl to the ice stalactites, because... were not motivated enough to overcome the steep, icy slope. Last year the summer was cooler and instead of melted ice there were comfortable snow steps on the descent. Now we even hung a piece of rope so that we could leave the cave more painlessly
04-09-2013. The afternoon conversation (at the Samar Pass) turned to all sorts of extreme sports. Rope jumping, slacklining, just rock climbing. A strange conversation - funny but sad, I can’t even retell it. I'll show you a better photo. Now we’ll finish and climb down. There you will have to crawl just 10 meters. Extreme :)
The participants of the hike asked me to write about today's dinner. You have already realized that the gastronomic topic is becoming increasingly important every day. So we had pasta for dinner. And I don’t know why (perhaps it had to do with yesterday’s dinner, which consisted of boiled wheat grains), but it was a sensation. We ate everything, the poor hedgehogs remained hungry.
05-09-2013. We storm the Planinnitsa pass (2330m) head-on. The tourists asked me to say hello to my family and write something about “foot-pads, swallowing dust, crawling on all fours and bloodthirsty thoughts.” In short, the mood is fighting, we will make it (pass). Some are even going to dance there.
Mountain goats (wild) suddenly emerged from a karst sinkhole with a half-dried puddle. we managed to freeze in place and slowly took out our binoculars... so far these are the largest undomesticated animals on this trip. before that we encountered snakes, giant toads, partridges and a fox.
Crvena Greda (Red Ridge) is the last obstacle on our route. We greeted him with mixed feelings. On the one hand, everyone is already very tired (even the instructors began to “creak”) and I want to quickly end all sorts of tests. On the other hand, the hike turned out to be so interesting, and the team was friendly and sociable, that it would be nice to push back the approaching finale... In the photo - Galya is sitting on the edge of the Crvena Greda plateau, and I (off-screen) give her a lecture about the inadmissibility of an unjustified risk in the form of dangling your legs from a cliff.
06-09-2013. In the photo, the dream of many men is a sea of beer. more precisely, it is a lake or even a reservoir formed after the construction of a dam and hydroelectric power station on the Piva River. That's what it's called - the Piva reservoir. They didn’t have the courage to say the word “beer storage” :)
The geography of our journey is rapidly expanding. Today Bosnia-Herzegovina has been added to Montenegro and Albania. We landed on its banks while rafting along the canyon of the Tara River. By the way, this year we found a more successful (full-water, rapids, picturesque) site for rafting than in 2011, and the swim was a lot of fun.
On the way from the mountains to the sea we stopped at the Ostrog monastery. we climbed the monastery hill on a minibus, and along the road, along the gravel, pilgrims walked barefoot, and, imagine, I was a little jealous of them. You will say that this is stupid, but isn’t it stupid to go to the mountains with a backpack? After this visit, I once again realized that it is necessary to prepare for such attractions in advance. read some legends, excerpts from historical chronicles, something inspiring. For Ostrog is a legendary and mega-attractive place, but not for us, but for Christian Balkans, and getting there without prior brainwashing we cannot taste Ostrog to the fullest. We see only cramped caves with dim frescoes, while millions of people come here for a miracle (healing, enlightenment, understanding).
09/07/2013. Not wanting to stop there (this means the number of countries visited in one trip), we again hired a minibus and went to Croatia for a day, more precisely to Dubrovnik. You don't need a visa to go there yet, all you need is a passport, a swimsuit and a camera :)
I can’t say that Dubrovnik is fundamentally different from Montenegrin Kotor, Budva or other Mediterranean fortified cities. Much is already familiar, but there are new impressions. In particular, I really, really liked the circular walk along the city walls. This is a kind of new perspective, an opportunity to look into courtyards and windows, to “fly” over the city.
There is an interesting selection of photographs at the top station of the cable car in Dubrovnik. First, the construction of the cable car in the 60s, then total destruction by bombing in 91-92, and restoration in 2010. It’s strange and scary to realize that just recently a war was raging here on the site of a tourist whirlpool.
07-09-2013. This is the second time I’ve been to the Bay of Kotor, but only now, after a hike in Norway, have I really recognized it as “the southernmost fjord in Europe”.
On the way to the island of St. Nepomnyuk (pictured), the helmsman of our boat did not forget to mention the celebrities (I think M. Douglas and K. Z. Jones) who bought a house on the Perast embankment. Even such a very indirect neighborhood significantly increases the status of the city, the bay, the boat in this bay, the helmsman, the passengers (us), and even this blog. That's why I write about all this :)
08-09-2013.Today we are already flying home... But I still don’t want to go back. We're having a very emotional walk.
Apparently feeling a subconscious desire to make the most of the remaining hours of my “vacation,” I wake up before dawn without any alarm clocks, take my camera and go to meet the sun.
And literally an hour before leaving for the airport, I was taken to an island in the middle of Budva Bay. With the risk of being late for the boat, I make my way through the local jungle, looking for something (the Temple of Doom, no less), frantically gathering the necessary stock of impressions :)
Kirill Yasko, Kyiv.