Bosnia. My first stamp in my new passport, and first impressions are; it’s hot, and it’s brown.

The North East of Bosnia is a pretty industrial place, not much fun for a cyclist really and if I’m honest, I was kind of questioning Robert’s judgement in telling me to head through the entire stretch. Was this a prime example of someone’s heritage impairing their judgement?

Bosnia was also the first place where I felt like a minor celebrity for cycling with lots of bags on my bike. Everyone says hello, beeps, waves and seems genuinely interested in what your doing. It was also the first place I got invited into someone’s house for some ‘blow-your-bollocks-off-coffee’. Alen, you’re a damn nice guy (he was so nice he even used Google translate to tell me to call my Mum and tell her I’m ok, aww).

Welcome to Bosnia…

…and welcome to Srpska

After two unplanned days in Jelah (my fair English skin got some ridiculous sunburn after going T.O.T.O (Top Off Tits Out)) I headed towards Banja Luka, then south towards Zelenkovacs. I decided to ask the hotel owner what the landscape was like before I left “Ya like hills?!” was his answer, good enough for me. He also told me he picked up some Polish hitchhikers heading for Asia once, and thought they were crazy, I, however, am apparently on a different planet. Interstellar. I can feel a Hitchhiker’s. Guide to the Galaxy joke coming on.

The ride to Zelenkovacs. This is where Bosnia got interesting. I got some hills, just like the hotel owner said, and they were good, lots of lush green vegitation to make up for the past few days of industrial dreariness. Banja Luka was nice too, a zinger of a river runs right through it. It also has a ratio of seven women to one man, a statistic I obviously learnt afterwards and didn’t make the most of during my two hours there.

Ya like hills?

Heading south I got my first canyons of the tour, and I want more, they’re amazing to ride, and even better if you get a nice decline so you can zip right down. This place was beautiful. So much more than the war-torn country I was told to expect.

Lush, made a change from the brown

Who’s better than canyon?

It was a long days ride though, 180km, and I was flagging. When you’ve heard of something like Zelenkovacs (an eco-village built up around a natural spring) you kind of build up an image in your head, and when you have zero energy you start to question whether it’s going to be like what you’d imagined at all. Was it going to be a man in a shed in a forest? Was it going to be paradise or a shitheap? Most importantly, was it going to have booze?

You can imagine the relief then, when I wheeled The Tangerine Dream down a tree-lined path, over a tiny, handmade wooden bridge, and into a clearing surrounded by wooden cottages with plenty of people chatting and drinking. This is where I met Pierre and Zoé. Unfortunately, being completely knackered, all I could manage as my introduction was ‘I need a place to stay’. Five minutes later I had my own little cottage, I was showered, and Zoé was making me something to eat. All I could have ever wanted.

The Tangerine Dream leant up against my shack for the night

The lodgings

Pierre and Zoé introduced to me to some other people, some local, some not. Kelly, an Australian from Sydney who’d been couchsurfing around Europe for the last month and found Pedja, who he stayed with and was subsequently brought to Zelevkovacs. Pedja introduced himself as a gamer, he even likened the war in Bosnia to ‘Call of Duty but with worse graphics’. I met a guy called Alex, son of Boro, the creator of this little bit of paradise in Bosnia. Alex had some interesting stories about how the place had developed, and in his own words – ‘it has not always been easy’. Zelenkovacs was started 30 years ago by Boro, an artist from the nearby village, and as the place grew, the government started to take notice, and they weren’t too keen on something they couldn’t really control. They held a referendum in the local village on whether this growing eco-retreat was allowed to stay, the result; a unanimous yes (the evidence of this was apparent as lots of locals popped in for a drink minutes after Alex told me). The white collars weren’t done there, they tried cutting the electricity. Now, you’d have thought they’d had figured that as this guy has built a small village, he’s probably pretty resourceful, apparently not, and as such, with the help of a tree, the power was back on. Apparently Boro knew this wouldn’t win the war, and knowing they’d be back, got a couple of friends to stand guard and fire warning shots when they tried to tear the power down. Sure enough, it happened, after soon after some white collars came to chat to Boro –

White Collar: “Boro, we heard gunfire coming from your village”

Boro: “Gunfire? Of course, this is Bosnia, there’s been gunfire since ’91!”

This little power struggle was over.

All this is not to say there is a perfect power supply, everything flickers and trips out, but it suits the ambience, let’s face it, if you’re here, your not here for things powered by electricity, candles and conversation do just fine. Pierre even mentioned that a place like this could only exist in Bosnia, where they have more lax regulations and the line of questioning goes a little something like ‘Got the money? Go for it.’

How much wood?

Careful with your matches.

My emergency wheel

The Zelenkovacians twisted my arm into staying a couple of days. They didn’t have much twisting to do to be honest, but apparently there was a wedding the next day, the first in the village’s history, so I figured I’d hang around and experience a Balkan wedding.

The beer and raki flowed freely. This was not just any raki. This was award winning raki from a local guy, some of it was akin to paint stripper, but some of it, especially the honey version, was incredible, suitable for stripping only the finest of paint from the finest of walls. There was a moment in the night where I thought ‘If you keep drinking, biking tomorrow might be tricky’, this thought was drowned out by Pedja hollering ‘Sem’ before handing me a salubrious measure of tooth-dryingly good raki, poured from an old Coke bottle. I spent a good couple of hours with Kelly speaking to a man dubbed ‘The Professor’, who had some interesting insight into the Yugoslavia days, immigration, and the current political climate. He also juxtaposed this with some translations of Balkan profanity, most of which included fucking various people’s gods. Not quite as tactful as Viz’s Profanisaurus.

Balkan style

At some point in the early hours I managed to persuade myself sleep was a good idea and fell asleep to the sounds of people playing guitar, djembe-ing and singing in the nearby clearing.

Back to the transient life of cycle touring. After a high-power coffee with the hungover Zelenkovacians I said my goodbyes, filled my water bottles directly from the spring and thanked them for the amazing weekend. As one guy said to me ‘Cycling to Vietnam? I bet you didn’t expect to find paradise in Bosnia!’ I didn’t, but I’m glad I did.

Just like Hollywood, minus 100% of the bullshit.

On the way out into the Bosnian countryside I stopped to take a picture of the landscape near a guy who was trying to hitch a lift. It turned out to be the award-winning, champion raki brewer. With my headache, I didn’t know whether to thank him or call him a bastard.

The Rakiman

It took a couple of days to Mostar, plenty of time to soak in the Bosnian hills. There were some interesting ranges where mountains would surround flat plains, so you’re cycling for kilometres enclosed by mountains before an eventual climb out. There were some lush lakes too, with steep winding climbs out that left me a sweating heap in the 40 degree heat, the views were worth every tired pedal stroke though.

Minor repair job

I didn’t expect Bosnia to be so lush.

Purdy lakes.

Long inclines

Wild camping in Bosnia comes with a fair bit of warning when you research it, there’s lots of ‘watch out for landmines’ and ‘wolves and bears will tear you to bits’. Ignore it. Go wild camping, Bosnia is beautiful. The areas with landmines are way out in the sticks and clearly marked, and wildlife doesn’t really make a habit of attacking humans, just stick your food downwind.

Watch out for these

But definitely go camping…

…because you get these.

Mostar was the only Bosnian city I visited, and to be honest, the first proper city since Vienna. I spent most of the day trying to find a decent bike shop to replace my increasingly worn tyres, to no avail, they did give me a new innertube for free though, the lovely bastards. After this, I only had a couple of hours to wander Mostar in the sun. Tourism has almost overrun the place to be honest, there’s lots of people hawking tat everywhere, but if you manage to see through that, there’s some amazing architecture here, and if you look closely enough in some places, you can still see the bullet holes in the walls, scars from it’s spicy history.

I still like hills.

This is Mostar.

Enter Alex Duaurin. French bloke. Touring cyclist. I’d found him on the WarmShowers forum and he was also planning a ride through Europe, Central and South East Asia, ending up in Australia. We went for a few beers along with an American guy who said he was in the special forces before he fell out of a helicopter and broke his back, forcing him to hang up the boots. I think he was telling fibs to be honest, massive fibs, considering he was contemplating jumping off the massive bridge into the river below.

It was good to talk bike to Al, the first tourer I’d met in the same mould as me. He also displayed a beautiful degree of French sleazery, excusing himself before saying ‘I’m just going to speak to those girls over there’. Upon returning empty handed, there were another two lasses kissing about 20 foot from us, and as he sat down, shaking his head, he remarked ‘What a waste’. He seemed genuinely gutted.

Al was set to take a rest day in Mostar to blog (something I could probably learn from). I, however, had been in Bosnia too long and had a hankering for a bit of coastline. I headed out south west through the canyons, past some sky blue lakes and vicious switchbacks towards Neum, Bosnia’s only claim to the coast. This place is different to the rest of Bosnia, they’ve inherited a bit of the Croat’s money-grabbing nature towards tourists. Out of interest I asked a campsite bloke how much it would cost to pitch up, 16 was the answer, then he clarified Euros. Joker. I laughed and went to enjoy my last wild camping in the Bosnian scrubs, before waking up and being refused entry to Croatia, they wanted me to go to the coastal border, this was a local crossing for local people.

Heading to the seaside.

But these were in the way.