Digital Wanderer

We live as long as we fly

☰

Montenegro — 3, Day 1, slightly bumpy

2012-05-31

We arrived, as previously mentioned, early in the morning, after 31 hours on the road. Naturally, we decided to catch some z's before rushing off to do heroic deeds.

I rode like this, the rest a bit differently (see below why)

Montenegro day 2


EveryTrail - Find trail maps for California and beyond

IMG_0547

The house in the dark

A group of people with hiking backpacks standing in a narrow hallway with wood-paneled walls under the warm light of a ceiling lamp.

Settling in

A recreation area among bare trees on a green mountain slope, with wooden tables, benches, a fire pit, and drying laundry. In the background — a valley with a house and mountains bathed in soft sunset light.

There are little benches around the house, and our hosts, who had been working in the fields during the day, actively used them for lunch, accompanied by the mandatory mug of beer or a shot of Rakia.

Four men sitting at a rough wooden table in a sunny clearing, enjoying food and drinks. Other wooden benches and laundry hanging on a clothesline are visible in the background.

Something like this

008-DSC_0017

 

Dawn is breaking

011-DSC_0020

General view of the residential complex: "Wolf's Mane"

The house, I must say, had all the amenities: 4 toilets, 3 bathrooms, a TV, and even a non-working PC with non-working internet.

Six books in English are laid out in two rows on a plaid blanket. The covers show titles by José Saramago, Bill Bryson, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, and Niccolò Ammaniti.

Curiously, a whole shelf of popular books for reading/browsing awaited us in the hallway: in Serbo-Croatian and English, and the travel guides were even available in Russian. The latter you couldn't read in advance, only buy.

Top view of a deep mountain valley with a river and wooded slopes showing the first spring greenery. On a hill in the middle of the valley stands a light-colored monastery, lit by the sun, while part of the slopes is in shadow.

Nearby is the monastery of the Holy Archangel Michael, if I'm not making it up

Two men are servicing mountain bikes on a dirt patch near a house and a white van with open doors. Tools and bike parts are lying around them, and hills and mountains under a clear sky are visible in the background.

First — assembling the bikes

A young man with dark hair, wearing a white t-shirt with the "Macclesfield Bikeathon" logo, holds a bicycle saddle with a bag and smiles while pointing at his t-shirt, against a background of blurred mountains and a blue sky.

The first breakdown happened before we even headed out

During transport, Oleg's seatpost clamp ring snapped. But he wasn't about to give up, and secured the seatpost with a front derailleur. He rode like that the whole week, it worked perfectly. Oleg is our president and leader, the head of the "Snowdrop" tourist club, the organizer of the trip. Stern in temper, sharp-tongued, he rides as if a thousand devils are chasing him.

A young man in glasses and a black t-shirt stands by a kitchen table with an open tin can, spices, and dishes. In the background, a second person is visible at the stove where food is cooking.

Then — breakfast

A man in a blue sports t-shirt is sitting at a table, holding a spoon and looking thoughtfully to the side. In front of him on a plate is a breakfast of porridge with sliced fruit; a metal mug stands to the right.

Where's the meat? Why is the portion so small? I demand a continuation of the banquet!

A man in a blue t-shirt is chewing a cookie with an expressive grimace of pleasure. A jar of jam and a thermos stand on the table nearby, and a cityscape is visible through the windows with brown frames.

"That's much better," Doomer thought, devouring his third jar of jam

A group of cyclists is moving along a dirt road through green hills; one of them is standing in the foreground. Trees and several houses are visible in the background under a clear blue sky.

Rolling out

On the first day, naturally, we decided not to go far or hard, about 40 kilometers around the neighborhood. But reality, as you know, throws curveballs: the paths marked on the map could sometimes not even be called paths, and sometimes in their place, dense thickets of bushes snaked along a steep slope.

A woman in a white helmet and cycling gear is leading a mountain bike through dense bushes over rough terrain on a sunny day.

The bushes are thorny, the angle is steep, the heat adds to the fun

This is Vija, Oleg's wife, a strong girl from the countryside, a part-time ecologist, taking care of the nature of her native land. For Vija, this was her first, and immediately extremely serious trip of this kind, and we all bow before her courage and resilience. Why so dramatic — you'll find out in the next episode.

A group of cyclists in protective helmets has stopped on a forest trail covered with dry leaves from last year, on a sunny spring day. In the foreground, a man with a backpack stands next to his mountain bike and looks at the camera.

Sometimes tourists have to swallow their pride and trespass on private property

A group of seven cyclists in protective helmets and sportswear stands with mountain bikes on a rocky dirt road. Behind them opens a spring mountain landscape with steep slopes, partially covered with forest, and a clear blue sky.

But they messed with the wrong guys! We made it up, despite getting flats from hellish thorns

 

A cyclist in a helmet leans over a removed bicycle wheel, trying to adjust the tire on a dirt road. Nearby by a fence stands a white mountain bike against a hilly landscape with trees under a blue sky.

The first flat, but far from the last

A man with puffed-out cheeks is swimming in a river, splashing water. A rocky shore with bushes and small white flowers is visible in the background.

At the very first opportunity, Doomer measures the temperature of the local bodies of water with the most sensitive instrument — his own body

A dirt road goes up a green hillside, where a brick house with an orange roof and an old wooden shed stand. A small structure is visible on top of the distant, forested hill.

The landscapes are pastoral-mountainous

Through a wire mesh, pink flowers on branches are visible, and in the background – a blue sky and a blurred green landscape.

Andrey took a highly artistic photo in the style of "Even under oppression, beauty will find a way"

A dark scorpion lies on its back among light-colored stones, its claws spread and its tail curved.

You come across these kinds of critters too

Two women in cycling helmets and gear sit on the hood of a heavily rusted white car. Behind them, a dry, hilly landscape with sparse bushes is visible.

You can immediately tell it's a country sympathetic to the communist cause

A man in a helmet and sportswear rides a bike with bags along a rocky dirt road leading uphill. The road is surrounded by dry bushes and trees.

Running on lack of sleep is always hard for me, but I managed somehow

A man in a cycling helmet, glasses, and sportswear rolls his bike in front of him, walking uphill on a rocky dirt road.

Although far from always

A man on a mountain bike rides through a muddy puddle, splashing water. In the distance, another cyclist is riding along a winding trail among grassy hills.

Thanks to the melting snow, little streams flow down from the mountains, diversifying the landscape and adding an element of cyclocross to our MTB rides

Eight cyclists in sportswear and helmets are resting with their mountain bikes on a forest trail. A sunny day, with young greenery of trees all around.

We hit a dead end, lengthy negotiations with a local clarified that there is no road further on. None at all.

Here I had a bit of a screw-up: I got a flat from that same notorious thorn, but my spare was bad and also quickly died. "Not meant to be," I thought, since my wheels are 28 inches, and my comrades couldn't lend me a spare tube. I had to calmly trudge 6 km home in the heat, dragging the bike, which had currently turned into a heap of useless metal, behind me.

A young man in a silver cycling helmet, glasses, and a dark buff around his neck looks straight at the camera. He is wearing a white sports jersey with black inserts and stripes; the background is a blurred forest with sparse foliage.

Not a joyful prospect, but what can you do

A flock of sheep grazing on a bright green hill under a blue sky, by an old wooden fence along the road. Trees and a small white house on a slope are visible in the distance.

So that's how I trudged home, admiring the sheep

A brown horse stands on a dirt road in a mountainous area against a clear blue sky, and to its right, a female cyclist in a red t-shirt and a helmet stands on the grass.

You come across horses too, but there are way more sheep

A smiling woman in a helmet and a red cycling jersey stands with a mountain bike on a muddy forest road with remnants of snow on the edges. Other cyclists are visible in the background among the dense trees.

The expedition, meanwhile, pressed on, and reached that same notorious snow that had periodically been the subject of conversation. The thing is, we went to Montenegro a bit early, in May, and at this time, at altitudes of a kilometer, a kilometer and a half or more, you can still easily encounter deposits of dense dirty snow.

Which is exactly what we observe here.

A young man with light brown hair and a light stubble in a white-and-gray sports t-shirt sits against the background of a rocky scree and thoughtfully looks away.

"How easy and pleasant it is to ride in the mountains," thinks Visla

Visla is as silent and calm as an elephant. He is part of the snail team, captained, as you know, by Doomer. Visla is an undercover counterintelligence agent of the Latvian Republic, because in civilian life he is known under the name Vladislav Sokolov, yet he is the most authentic Latvian there is. As it should be with a counterintelligence agent, I know nothing else about him, except for the insignificant fact that he didn't buy cigarettes in Montenegro, and in this way he was quitting smoking.

DSC_2366

The landscapes aren't breathtaking yet, but they already make you breathe heavily

For me, the first day ended with me sleeping through it. But for Andrey, things turned out much worse — almost at the very end of the route, he somehow strangely slammed his front wheel against the road, as a result of which it bent into the shape of an infinity symbol. This plunged him into deep shock, because without one wheel it is impossible to ride a two-wheeled bicycle, and he doesn't know how to ride a unicycle.

How it all ended, read in the next episode.

Ctrl + ←
Ctrl + →
To contents Ctrl + ↑