Overlanding through Serbia A wild-camping heaven
As much as the rest of the Balkans is a favorite overlanding destination for Europeans, Serbia, situated in the very heart of the Balkans, is some kind of a black hole in most overlanding charts. It’s hard to explain why most if not all itineraries of overlanders go around, but extremely rarely through, Serbia. Lack of information? Prejudice based on media reporting from the past? Absence of some record-breaking landmarks? Maybe a little bit of each. But for those who get to know Serbia, it’s a real revelation. Serbia doesn’t feature the extreme rugged and rocky, sky-high mountains of Albania, Montenegro or Bosnia, nor does it have the coastline of Greece and Croatia, or the huge freshwater natural lakes of North Macedonia. You don’t find it in any of the overlanding guidebooks, you don’t read much about it in the internet forums, and open-source GPS maps of Serbia feature the lowest level of detail of all Balkan countries. So, it’s
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close to impossible to discover its wellhidden secrets without an experienced guide. But one who invests an effort to truly explore Serbia keeps returning again and again.
What is so captivating about this landlocked country in the heart of the Balkans? Aside from the great Panonian Plain in the far north, Serbia is a mountainous country. Although Serbian mountains don’t reach much more than 2.000 m of height (2.170 m at the highest peak, Midžor), they are beautiful and diverse, very rich in forests of all sorts, from some of the largest beech forests in the Balkans to most beautiful pine tree forests in the higher areas. The longest European river, Danube, flows through Serbia and forms the Iron Gate gorge (called Djerdap in Serbian), the most
impressive part of its entire waterway towards the Black Sea. And that is not the only gorgeous canyon in Serbia. Lazar’s Canyon in the Kučaj mountains is also a must-see, as well as Uvac, Vladikine ploce, Temstica, Drina, Brnjica … it’s a long list. And the list of Serbian underworld is equally as impressive, featuring some of the most stunning caves in the Balkans, the longest one being more than 12 km long! There are also impressive lakes (Vlasina, Zavoj, Uvac, Zaovine), and medieval ruins peeking from some almost unreachable hilltops. But a very special phenomena which marks the Serbian Carpathians are the natural stone arches hidden deep in the river valleys in Vlach land full of legends and sorcery. Often surrounded by jungle-like terrain, with no clear signs leading to them, they just emerge like miracles in front of your eyes. Vratna River has three of them, making it unique worldwide.
