… Continued from Kotor and Budhva
Zabljak is a small town in northern Montenegro with a population of less than 2000. We left Kotor mid day . Bus journey itself was about 4.5 hours. Our hotel was just 5 min walk from the bus stop. The town is in the center of the Durmitor mountain region and the highest town in Balkan.
We spent the rest of the day walking around and had a nice dinner in the evening. Next morning my first destination was Black lake inside Durmitor national park. This was a flat 3 km walk from my hotel. This is a stunning glacial lake surrounded by a pine forest, which casts a perfect reflection in the mirror-like surface of the lake.
The snowcapped Medjed mountain peak, rising to a height of 2287m, provides the perfect backdrop to the spectacular scenery. The lake is divided into two lakes called Veliko Jezero (great lake) and Malo Jezero (small lake) connected by a narrow straight. The great lake has a depth of 25m while the small lake is a massive 49m deep, so by volume, the little lake is actually bigger! . I took walking trails along the lake . There are also some sign posted trails which I did not attempt due to my knee condition.
There are also small shops near the entrance of the park selling locally produced Durmitor honey and wild mushroom .
I came back to hotel around mid day. We did not have time for a proper lunch , so bought some bread and banana and then took a bus towards Tara river canyon. This is the longest canyon in Montenegro and Europe and second longest in the world after Grand Canyon, at 78 kilometers in length and 1,300 meters at its deepest. This is also a great place to do rafting . Water level was less in September and it was not worth to do rafting , however I did zipline to cross Tara river. It was so good I decided to do it again. There are three ziplines , I did two of them. Luckily there was not a very long wait for the bus back to Zabljak. We arrived our hotel late afternoon. We had traditional Montenegro dinner in the evening and thus we ended our trip on a high note !
Next morning we took our packed breakfast and left the hotel to catch the bus to Podgorica , capital of Montenegro. Interestingly I met a group trying to infiltrate Europe illegally. They are basically Pakistani, there route is Pakistan – Iran – Turky – Greece – Albania – Montenegro and then from Montenegro they want to cross to Bosnia – Croatia – Slovania – Italy , which is there ultimate destination and they expect to get paperwork in Italy . This journey till Montenegro took almost 6 months and they unsuccessfully tried to cross border to Bosnia 3 times … Surprisingly , they were from upper middle class family and already spent quite a bit of money. Nevertheless we arrived Podgorica arounf noon and then took TUI flight back home.
