What is on the other side?

How can I be better emerged into a mountainous landscape when I am dropped right next to it and I simply cycle back home. The best of both worlds, so off to pack these old panniers (post 1).

A huge cross marks the end of the climb, a lone shepherd waves me ‘dobar dan’. As always I am hugely curious what comes on the other side. And what comes takes me by surprise: a seemingly flat landscape that stretches far, edged with peaks and a single road in an almost straight line passing through. There’s hardly any traffic and the prospect of being on a plateau high up after climbing makes me jumpy and excited.

The lines that Maps.Me had chosen as my route turn off the main road and my happiness can not contain itself. Here I am on a track in the middle of such beauty that stretches literally all around me. The gnarled, ash white bushes that dot the plains have succumbed to the wind and remind me of dried out creosote bushes in the Mojave desert or those in Argentina. Sheep roam in neat bundles with a shepherd dressed up against the colder air and a few dogs closely knit to their job.

When a black sheep dog comes into my vision I avoid a scene and start walking, as to tread his territory with deliberate care. Viciously he tries to scare me off. In his trail a kind of Šarplaninac dog with matted hair and in his trail the lady of the house they belong to. Now that I am in close contact with a lady I make use and ask her for water. She asks me whether I also want a ‘caffe’. I readily accept even though I was planning to search for a camp spot. But what is better than kava with a local Bosnian in one of the most beautiful places I have seen in Bosnia? ‘Do you want Nescafé or real ground coffee?’ is what I make of what she says. Her home is bare but warm. Milica is dressed in a knitted vest and I ask whether she has made that herself. She has, as also her crocheted socks. While we unhurried talk in a language not common motor-cyclists and fancy overland jeeps pass by. Apparently a known region for travelers as she tells me they pass all the time. And I sit feeling privileged: snow white underwear hangs to dry, flapping in the fierce wind. Their cows in a sturdy barn, their sheep being led by her husband, cats, dogs and chicken rummaging around. I leave the premises with a ‘Bosnian souvenir’, much sweeter to my mind than the block of sugar in the coffee. I now have the same hand knitted socks as many farmer women have. We part with a tight hug and the little vicious black dog, he does so too: his territory is mine now.

The evening brings me the most quiet spot since very long (our Hungarian home not included). I am careful and seek for traces where either humans or animals have been. I’d asked Milica: ‘Are there bears here?’ She’s thought for a while, and says ‘no’ but I learned long ago to rely on my own observations as well. With a ‘no’ to bears the mind readily agrees but land mines is another thing. Trash is everywhere in Bosnia and for once it is a good sign. I sleep ultimately well. The tent act literally as a hard-shelled dome that, as soon as I close my eyes, feels like a place in my mind that is simply blank.

Like tin cans, plastic bottles and broken tiles, people too seem to be in places I least expect them.

‘Was machen Sie hier?’ I ask a lonesome older man who erupts from the bushes with twigs sticking to his black jacket. He looks like a bus driver and walks on something closer related to carpet slippers than shoes to walk a serious distance with. I’d given my last energies to get out from Mrkonjić Grad and into the woods above it to find a place to sleep. Into a narrow path leading to a transmission tower I thought I’d found an excellent spot.

‘I am walking’, the man of about 68 answers.

‘Do you have a dog with you?’ I ask.

‘No, I don’t have a dog,’ the man replies polite.

‘You walk all the way from Mrkonjić Grad to here?’

‘Yes,’ he answers graciously.

I am aware of the oddity of my questions, even common sense has faltered me and I feel very odd indeed, as if an inexperienced interrogator forgetting good manners. We speak in German and I come to realize that I don’t know a bit of what Bosniak, Serb or Croat men are doing in their free time, other than drinking kava and snaps in kafić or friend’s backyards. Here we stand, at a transmission tower, flat ground surrounding us, as does an almost impenetrable forest. I tell the man who fled the war and lived in Vienna that I wanted to camp here but since he is here too, I don’t want to camp here any more. He doesn’t get what I actually try to say and sweeps his arm around to point out a flat spot to place my tent.

‘This is an official spot, with the transmission tower of the state, and I think I should not be here?’ I try instead.

‘Are you alone?’ he asks after he said it is no problem to sleep here.

‘No, I am with my husband. We went together to Međugorje in a van and since my husband does not like cycling, I am cycling back on my own.’ Again I am aware of the odd view of reality that I present.

‘Do you have coffee in your bags?’ he asks and with our conversation that lasted much longer and that was a nice talk, I realize this man is a decent man. Nevertheless, I have made it a habit to always camp unseen.

An unavoidable short section on the M16 to Kupres is almost self-destruction. Kupres is lovely to witness. Many who visit the supermarket are dressed in overall, since most are farmers. Young guys assist their old grandfathers. Everyone greets one another. I manage to get back into the old groove of the high maintenance lifestyle of a cyclist by getting groceries, money, gasoline and dine out.

Rural Bosnia has that feel of being old fashioned, possibly not of lacking the will to go towards a modern mold but perhaps of the style old-fashioned ways work. Though someone I meet later tells me he thinks Bosnians are ‘stupid’, being a technical engineer he thinks socialist times were better. Even though some shepherd lead their flock by quad or car, many do it on foot. I pass men preparing for winter, their wood cut by hand, chain saw, some by wood-splitter.

Clouds hang low now I am at an altitude above 1000 meter in the Dinaric Alps. Cattle have ample space, calf’s trot beside their mother. Cats sit patiently in the meadow hunting their meal or are flattened on the road. Dogs tend their puppies, some of whom never become a cherished shepherd dog. A car halts beside me. The driver, a legless man, hands me over a bag with mandarins and wishes me a good trip. He’s full of enthusiasm.

Spot the tent (read more about how to choose a safe spot)

Almost everywhere are war evidences. Erratic round chipped shapes around windows and doors. Would people really hide behind a door to seek shelter from bullets? Or would they peek through the window to see if the gunmen had gone? Would the gunmen stand there until everyone had left the building? Apparently, there wasn’t much waiting, not like they had an hour to collect stuff but rather a few minutes. Resistance meant burning down the house. I pass many roofless structures, many abandoned houses. The homes that are content and functioning have ample shoes in front of the door and I have to laugh as Geo and I often trip over each others shoes at the front door. Will they also trip?

When I stop to admire where I am I send a photo to Geo with ‘how beautiful it is’. Checking the location it turns out I am exactly at the spot where Geo send me these very same words, and which I had made my route to. I camp not far from it and positioning myself in a dip where I am warded off from sounds and views. Stepping out of the dip I see trees that are a sea of singular leafs, so quiet and so eerie that I wonder whether I lay on a landmine. The quiet before the storm? It feels a little ominous and I leave early the next morning, to be surrounded by cold air and colors of autumn that strive for attention.

Having more appetite than I managed to stock up on burek and white bread I stop at the first cafe presenting itself. Motel Strojice is in full swing early morning. Resembling a disco, including the smoke effect, I sit by myself while fat, big men in overall gather behind me. One of them, younger and still in tip top shape acts as my unasked for translator. I am thankful because as a cyclist I have many demands: a big coffee with a lot of milk and just a little bit of coffee, an omelet, with 3 or more eggs and bread, with butter if you happen to have that.

‘How do you navigate?’ asks a man who’s producing liquor from plums. It is a very good question because I am about to be lost and need precise directions from loggers to get back down. Chosen a route out of Mrkonjić Grad towards Banja Luka and avoiding the busy M-16, I now cycle on the ridge, between plenty villages, higher up and looking over hills that roll endlessly behind my back. It is not shorter, even though the bus driver on carpet slippers had said so, but more up and down, which he had said too. If a local says it is a lot of up and down and he never has experienced it on a bicycle, merely by car, then it truly is hard work. I bail out. I get lost. Ending up on overgrown paths barely visible (only because lumberjacks pointed me out). Steep down below me lays the main road, I am almost vertical. Maps.me once again was eluding me; that’s how I navigate.

Reaching Banja Luka on the M-16 is maniacal. A local cyclist tags along and at times, to my horror cycles even next to me. With him cycling so close to me I find it disturbing and it makes slipping into a stealthy camp spot impossible. I have seen a few places along the Vbras river but end up at a paid camping, which is a new experience. It is utmost clean and so am I after a hot shower.

Leaving Bosnia behind is done with smiles and waves and words of encouragement, I imagine, by old gentle men on rickety bicycles. They stop and talk.

As I do with Bahtijar, who’s born in the same state in the Netherlands as I, who doesn’t think dried, shriveled to tiny sized okras are delicious. ‘Lekker is frikandellen en pindakaas’, she says. Bahtijar’s eyes get a layer of wetness when she talks about her parents escaping the war and she leaving the Netherlands after the war was over, now 30 years ago.

Immediately after finishing this pouch, Long Time Coming, it was purchased by a lovely couple. More here: cindyneedleart

The road conditions out of Banja Luka towards Gradiška border crossing are bad and the cycle path interrupted with an uneven ramp at every house, the road lined with homes. And industries and car parts, businesses and cafes, party centers and tepic cleaners, car wash and pekara, casinos and ljekarna, shops and slot machine places. Needless to say it is stressful cycling.

With leaving the country and entering Croatia I feel almost at home. Sleeping on familiar ground with the forest acting as a sound studio where the calls of foxes sounds clear and loud.

The hills are less in size and seem easy to tackle yet it takes a few days to be fully out of them and until then I wave like a caterpillar up and down, passing empty settlements and dreadful towns with a desolate feeling. War has raged here and it is still palpable: the people never returned. Trauma must have caused them to never resettle.

The route through Croatia is nothing short of rousing my mind although it is not very interesting. Being far away from tourism or any remarkable beauty, I watch every backyard and its high amount of self sufficiency, livestock and tractors. Busying with cutting wood and collecting corn, most people seem too astonished to greet back, some clearly just moody. Around Daruvar I start to see that typical view of stuckness. Young people usually dressed in black and being overweight.

Later on in the hills, of which I hope it is the last one, entire streets are lined up like Hungarian working class villages, the women often flabby with a suffering look and exhaustion. In Barcs I notice the same. The shininess like in Mostar and Banja Luka isn’t any longer. I am back home.

Being in Hungary I spurt to the forest, the familiarity makes it easy to find a spot out of sight from hunters. With a full day of drizzle ahead and a heaven overcast can rural Hungary show anything else than a poorness and an old-fashionedness that isn’t welcoming or heartwarming? Maybe not in the country side on a rainy gray day but I am fresh and see with newborn eyes what is coming on a route I have not earlier been on.

Cycling through Hungary is often on quiet roads without evidences of fatal accidents along the road, unlike Bosnia. Nature and now empty fields prevail, towns are long and concentrated, unlike Croatia and Bosnia & Hercegovina. Wooden carvings show craftsmanship in each village, Roma centers and poor communal workers. Besides them there’s hardly any life to be seen. It is them who dab color and liveliness, like chicken in a coop. Besides them, it is gray and the people too. I even feel a Russian depression. No one returns my ‘jo napot’ and when one flings me such greeting I am the one who is astonished. Beside this one person, most appear sour, sullen and withdrawn. Except the Roma, always intense and full of interest. Than, I pass a village with a few houses, so poor in appearance that they lack self-sustainability values or vegetable knowledge. Crumbled homes, not less desolate than the war torn Croatian settlements. Than, I am almost home and the whole atmosphere changes!

The surrounding changes according my memories and the life I lead there and it becomes incredible lush, beautiful, pleasant, special and idyllic. My face beams. My upper legs push harder, but they are sore. Here it might look as the previous parts I cycled and didn’t like it, with the grayness, overcast, drizzle and dark forest but all my mind is attached to it: I am truly home, where beauty embraces me!

Post 1 Let me cycle back home, from Međugorje onward.