The Balkans

Upon Liam Hairs' recommendation, I found myself at a hostel that catered towards hikers with the intention to summit the largest mountain within Montenegro. Liam Hair never got to the peak because of the snow that was present during his time in Zabljak, so I wasn't really sure what I was in for. During a stringent and thorough debrief provided by Alex, one of the brothers who organises the hikes, we set off on our journey. The debrief included useful information such as what paths to take to avoid dying, if we do die ensure it is in a location in which the body will never be found (saving some paperwork - a missing person isnt much paperwork but a definitive death is), and what to do if we find a dead body. Thinking this was all just a series of macabre jokes, we laughed it off. This is when he explained that an Aussie a few years back found the skull of a Singaporean lady who had perished in the hill a few years earlier while never being found. That was until the Aussie wandered off the path. He outlined his frustration at the ensuing paperwork that followed when the guy thought it was a good idea to bring the skull back to the hostel as a souvenir. Realising he was, in fact, not taking the piss, the obvious question to ask was how many people die on the mountain each year. He told us that 56 people had died within the last 10 years. Seeming quite low, we figured we would not be one of them and set off. Later, I began to question whether these all occurred in the 2-3 months mountain is actually open to hike in a year. Meaning around 6 people die every 3 months that the mountain is open. Or a person every fortnight. Luckily, this thought only occurred after the hike. With all of this incredibly useful information, we now set off on our journey.

Despite having to kill 2 days in Podgorica while waiting for space to open up at the hostel, it was incredibly quiet. I only had one other person in my 6 person dorm, and despite being one of the most popular hikes in Montenegro (as it is only available for a short period of time between being covered in snow), only 3 of us headed up for the hike. There was myself (a hiking rookie), another Australian girl (Zara, also a rookie hiker), and an Englishmen who was so quick to get ahead of us that we never even learnt his name. I am incredibly thankful that there was at least one other person within my skill range to do the hike with, as the hike was treacherous and dangerous.

The first hour and a half of the hour you would not have thought so, however. It was flat and cruisy with only minor rises. But eventually, we got witness to the absolutely enourmas mountain rise out of a plethora of other incredibly large mountains. And we knew that must be Bobotovs Peak. Luckily, at this point, we arrived at the lake where we could go for a quick swim before the final ascent. Out of interest, we checked the maps app to see how long it was expecting to take us and the next 470m was going to take us 1hr and 50mins - a blistering pace of roughly 0.25km/hr. This showed the incredible climb that we were in for. Looking up and seeing people that resembled nothing more than tiny dots climbing 90-degree walls, hundreds of metres above the ground made me slightly sick, but I had been warned what I was in for. Thus, we began our proper ascent.

The hike was broken into the parts: the flat beginning, the first ascent, and the final ascent. The first ascent was the aforementioned 470m, and it was brutally hard. Scrambling and high angled walking required Zara and I to take very regular breaks. The 1hr 50mins that we had thought couldn't be accurate, in fact wasn't. It took us even longer. Probably about halfway up the first ascent, we ran into the Englishmen that had started the first 100m of the journey with us. He was on his way down and appeared to not even have broken a sweat. Turns out he was an ultra marathon runner and an avid hiker. This made us feel a bit better about ourselves, but he was on track to make it back to the hostel by lunch, and we had the worst still ahead of us. Nonetheless, we powered through and eventually made it to the beginning of the final ascent. This was shorter but even more vertical. This was the point I questioned whether I would have continued on my own.

As we began the final ascent and wore ourselves out some more, we reached the very treacherous stage. There was a rope that you had to hang on as you zigzag up the final part of the mountain. With little more than a foot of very roughing standing between yourself and a sheer 200m drop, plus a few hundred metres of a slightly gradual drop, we began the final ascent. I clutched on to that rope for my life and didn't look down for a second. The best we could hope for was for no one to start the descent while we were ascending, or you have to backtrack and let them through. We got lucky and passed without issue. This gave a false sense of achievement as there was another ascent that included loose rocks and people going the reverse direction that had to be traversed. The picture I painted of this hike likely sounds quite negative and not worth the effort. But when I got up, on the ultra clear day, and saw kilometre upon kilometre of mountain ranges, spanning many countries and landscapes - it took my breath away and some. Zara and I had made it. As we admired our efforts looking back and tracking our journey from the beginning, we were quickly humbled by a stray dog that had ended up atop the highest peak in Montenegro with us. Given that we used ropes to pull ourselves up vertical cliffs, the mystery of the Montenegran Mountain Dog remains unsolved. Even as we descended, I spent much of my journey trying to see how a dog could have done such an incredible hike. Was she looking for food, friends, or something else? She sat at the edge of the cliff looking into the beauty that unfolded before her, and in that moment, I could only think that she was doing nothing else but appreciating the view as everyone else was. But whether dogs can appreciate the beauty of nature, I am still not sure. The dog raises more questions than answers. After some time and some lunch on the mountain, we figured it was time to begin the descent.

Getting down was perhaps more treaterous than up as we now had to handle the loose rocks and tourists going down the hill. If we slipped, it would be harder to stop ourselves. But obviously, it had to be done. I think i was running on a bit of adrenaline as we ended up storming down the hill. Whether or not our brains blocked them out on the way up, it was the way down that we began to see some of the plaques of the people who had died on the climb - some very young. But obviously, we had done the most dangerous part and continued to descend. At this point, Zara badly had to use the toilet, a much bigger issue for women compared to men. This hike was especially not suited for this issue. There were no trees, just endless rocks and grasses. The best bet she had was to find a rather large boulder and hope no one could see, but the people at the very top of the mountain would almost certainly be able to see. She chose to rather wait to get back to the lake, which was still quite a trek away. I could tell how desperate it was as she was storming down the hill, rushing to get to the water. At one point, she had a minor slip, and we were both worried she was going to piss herself. But after some time of hiking, we made it back to the lake, and she could barely wait to take her shoes off before jumping in.

After some more rest and food, we started the final part of the trek, the flat beginning (now end). For whatever reason, we expected this to take about 30-40 minutes. We forget exactly how long it was for whatever reason, but this was very painful. Our low expectations of how long it was going to take made it really drag out. Despite walking and talking the whole trip, at this stage, it was silent dragging of our feet to get to the end. It went on and on, and there were sections we had completely forgot about that depressed us each time we reached them. Eventually, we made it to the beginning, but you guessed it. It wasn't quite the end. We had to hitch-hike back to the hostel. We asked people in the car park but to no luck. Thus, we figured we would just start walking toward the hostel and try stop cars as they came by. For whatever reason, though, no cars were going in the direction we needed. We walked for an additional 15 minutes and contemplated getting a taxi, but eventually, a German couple stopped for us and dropped us at the hostel. Shattered remainders of the people we once were, had extended showers, and tried to recuperate slightly. After a while, we made our way to the hostel communal area out the back.

This is where a crazy situation unfolded. Someone checked into the hostel that reminded me heavily of a kid who was in my common room in high school. I was two years older than him in his sisters grade, but we sat together during the class close to a decade ago. I didn't think much of it but then saw him wearing Caloundra lighthouse footy shorts and thought something must be up. I asked him his name, and we eventually figured that he was infact that little kid from PLC, Riley. Crazy to think I ran into a very old high school mate in the mountains of Montenegro. Then, to make things even weirder, a girl checked in who I met in Kotor, Riley met her in Albania, and Connor met her in Portugal. The world is, in fact, tiny. Especially given the amount of Australians travelling at the moment. I would say the hostel was catering to about 80% Australians. After these revelations, we got a party of 8 of us and headed to get a cheap meal from somewhere down the road. It was my first time trying Goulash, but I don't think it was particularly good and was essentially just beef stroganoff. After this, we head back for sleep as the rest of the guys had the big peak tomorrow.

I have hundreds of photos from this day, so picking 20 was nearly impossibleLeia mais