From the heart of the Via Dinarica in Bosnia and Herzegovina

On a reporting trip with The Yale Globalist in May, I researched the Via Dinarica, a new mega trail in the Balkan Peninsula. The Via Dinarica passes through isolated villages, lush green valleys and jagged, snowcapped mountains as it spans seven countries from Albania to Slovenia. With the motto of “Connecting Naturally,” the Via Dinarica crosses more than physical borders in this fragmented region.

In past years, the Globalist has sent groups of reporters to South Africa and Vietnam; this year, we traveled to Bosnia and Serbia. Each of the 17 members of our group had a topic to research, ranging from the cultural memory of the Bosnian War to turbofolk, a controversial musical genre that mixes elements of Serbian folk and pop. I chose to write about the Via Dinarica because of my love of the outdoors and my interest in environmental protection.

Without speaking the language and having very little knowledge of the Balkans from school, I was not sure what to expect. Fortunately, Tim Clancy, an ecotourism expert and member of the Via Dinarica project’s team, included me and three other Globalist reporters on a hike to the heart of the trail: Prenj Mountain. Clancy moved from the United States to Bosnia in 1992 to help with relief efforts during the war and now lives in an eco-home outside of Sarajevo working as a freelance writer. We were helping him bring climbing gear and food to Hendrik Morkel, a Finnish adventure journalist of the blog “Hiking in Finland,” and his Via Dinarica project manager and team leader Kenan Muftic, a mountaineer and demining dog trainer from Sarajevo.

After a hectic week of exams and packing, I was still getting used to Bosnia’s slower pace. We stopped in the town of Konjic to buy Bosnian coffee and uštipci, a beignet-like piece of fried dough served with a salty, spreadable cheese. The patio of the restaurant overlooked the clear Neretva River crossed by an Ottoman-style triangular bridge. Although I was anxious to get to the mountain so I could take pictures for my article, I had to remind myself that I was on Bosnian time. 

After Konjic, Clancy drove us up the mountain through a web of rocky logging roads, many of them freshly, and illegally, cleared. A few miles in, a truck was blocking the narrow road. Four men were loading cut logs onto the back of the car. “Would one of you write down the tag number please?” Clancy asked. Unfortunately, he explained, Bosnia has few regulations on logging and they are scarcely, if ever, enforced due to corruption and apathy towards the environment. 

In addition to building natural connections in a fragmented region, part of the goal of the Via Dinarica is to promote environmental protection. Clancy said that what he loved most about the Via Dinarica is its wildness. But if logging, river damming and strip mining are not limited, the Via Dinarica’s wildness will be at risk. The government offers little help; with an almost incomprehensible system of three presidents and over 150 political parties, the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina is currently ineffective at creating and enforcing environmental regulation. Grassroots projects such as the Via Dinarica must take the initiative themselves. 

As we drove farther up the mountain, red signs with white skull and crossbones warned travelers to stay on the roads because of remaining mines from the Bosnian War. Prenj Mountain was on the front lines, since military strategy prioritizes taking the highlands in order to have an advantageous position in taking lowland areas such as Konjic. I asked Clancy if mines posed a challenge to the Via Dinarica project. Hikers on the Via Dinarica are safe, especially if they stay on the trail. Still, the signs on the road to the access trail served as reminders of the scars of the war. 

Patches of snow made the logging road impassable by car a few miles from the valley, so we got out to walk. Clancy, photographer Olja Latinovic, media consultant Stefan Pejovic and Latinovic and Pejovic’s 8-year-old daughter accompanied us. 

It was raining during the drive and still drizzling when we started to hike, but after a few minutes the rain cleared and a strong, crisp wind began to blow the wispy fog over the mountains. After about an hour and a half of walking down the logging road, the trees began to thin out and the panoramic view of a vast green valley opened up below us. Prenj Mountain, still partly shrouded in clouds, towered over the opposite end of the valley. 

Energized by the view, we walked into the valley, where we found Morkel and Muftic. We sat down on the grass for a lunch of bread, cheese, apples, and Bosnian pastries made by Clancy’s wife, Sabina. Meanwhile, the sun began to burn off the fog so that we could see the top of Prenj Mountain, capped with snow at almost 7,000 feet. 

I could see what Clancy meant when he described the Via Dinarica as “wild.” Not only is it a new trail that few have hiked or even heard of, but it also passes through a rugged, strange and gorgeous landscape far older than the countries or peoples who travel it. 

For more information on the Via Dinarica, visit viadinarica.com. To read about The Yale Globalist’s reporting trip to the Balkans, visit globalistbalkans.wordpress.com. Look for another feature on the Via Dinarica in the Balkans issue of the Globalist this fall at tyglobalist.org. 

Olivia Burton, a 2014 Mountain Brook High School graduate, is a rising sophomore at Yale University, where she plans to major in English. She wrote for Village Living this summer.