Day 59: Rogatica do Mokra Gora (Рогатица до Мокра Гора)

Avoiding main roads on a Sunday morning meant we had a blissfully quiet climb to Višegrad. I’d been feeling less than inspired for riding on some of these recent traffic-y, narrow, ride-only-to-get-somewhere routes, but these roads were a needed reminder of how fun it is when you’ve got space to look around and some fresh air to breath.

Data was missing for large sections of the climb, resulting in scary-looking 50% grades followed by uncannily flat sections on our computers. Luckily the average of the two was something in the 2-7% range for the first 20KM.

The whole stretch, plus a lovely plateau at the top, was quite agrarian, with more fruit trees, a flock (herd? murder?) of horses, and a couple taking wedding photos with a drone.

For better or worse the descent to Višegrad was much steeper, with loads of switchbacks, but we were happy to see they’d attracted the 5th other cyclist we’ve seen in Bosnia. At the bottom was the town with it’s famous bridge.

We were hosed and hungry after the climbing, so tarried too long at Ćevapi lunch and had a rough go of it getting out of town. I had told Philipp we’d soon pass the Dobrun Monastery – a cool 15th century orange monastery, but either the Ćevapi was bad or it had been painted white when we arrived. The monks lived in a cave above the monastery.

Decided to finish the Bosnian section on main roads to save time, meaning we rode through some seriously blasted rock and tunnel sections, likely to accommodate the train that we followed along the river.

Reached the now-leaving-Bosnia border crossing at about 3:30PM, as signaled by traffic backed up for several hundred meters. Philipp had the cheeky suggestion to just sneak by everyone, which was sketchy as unlike Americans in SUVs it seems drivers here prefer to fling open their doors for fresh air. However, between the exiting-Bosnia and entering-Serbia lines we probably saved more than 90 minutes of standing in the sun and exhaust fumes, so I’m content that we spent a little queuing karma.

Spun our legs around for another 6KM until our hotel for the night, a train station with a train only for tourism – over-ate on some steak, soup, salad, rice, french fries, and something like a whole-wheat burek for 2500 Serbian Dinar (25 CHF). Booked and routed our next few days and hope to be in Belgrade in three more sleeps.

Total distance/elevation to date: 4666km/38’938m
Rest days: 16
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