Land of promise

For decades, Bosnia and Herzegovina has lived with the memory of conflict. But while some locals are keen to move on, its story is important to hear and touches even the most bucolic corners

Words Lyn Hughes

“She’s not going to write about the war, is she?” someone asked my guide, Ivance. In truth, I knew little about Bosnia and Herzegovina (often abbreviated to BiH) before I arrived. But when we launched Wanderlust in 1993, the news was dominated by images of Sarajevo under siege from the Serb army. In November that year, as the first magazine was printed, the iconic Stari Most bridge in Mostar was destroyed by Bosnian Croat forces, sending shockwaves around Europe. Thirty years later, I felt I was long overdue a visit to somewhere that had been so much a part of our collective consciousness in the early days of the magazine.

As we drove out of Sarajevo the morning after my arrival, taking the city’s main boulevard, Ivance casually mentioned that this was formerly known as Sniper Alley during the Bosnian War (1992–1995). With a jolt I recognised it from the old news footage, and it was at that moment that I thought, yes, I probably was going to at least acknowledge the war in anything I wrote. But once we were out of the city and heading north-west, into the country’s mountainous heart, I soon realised there were plenty of others stories here waiting to be told.

We had entered a world of pastoral scenes and plunged into valleys with sparkling rivers. Over 40% of the land here is forested, and bears, wolves and wild boars lurk in the more sparsely populated wilderness areas.

Arriving in the small but historically important town of Jajce, the overcast skies and persistent drizzle did little to distract from its picture-perfect beauty. Down the centuries, it has been home to Illyrians, Romans, the Bosnian Kingdom and the Ottomans; now its medieval citadel stands proudly atop a 22m-high waterfall. It was of little surprise that Jajce lies on the UNESCO tentative list, nor that it has 30 national monuments and several museums.

Local guide Dragan took me on a whistlestop walking tour, offering insight into the city’s multilayered and multicultural history. Frankly, it was dizzying. “This was the door to Bosnia,” said Dragan. “Thanks to its geography, the country was only accessible from the west.”

We started at the Mithraeum, a temple dating back to Roman occupation and dedicated to the Persian sun god, Mithra, who was widely worshipped at the time. From there we headed up to the fortress, first stopping in the 14th-century catacombs, then at the ruin of the oldest church in Bosnia, a place where monarchs were once crowned. I also heard the rather gruesome tale of the last king of Bosnia, Stephen Tomašević, who only ruled for two years in the 15th century before being captured and beheaded by the Ottomans. What is believed to be his skeleton is displayed in the town’s Franciscan museum.

But the part of history that lures the majority of the city’s share of tourists is Jajce’s connection to the Second World War, Josip Broz Tito and the declaration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia at a momentous meeting of the six republics in November 1943.

“Our history is so connected together,” remarked Dragan, referring to the neighbouring nations that made up former Yugoslavia. “We’re just normal people that have lived together for hundreds of years,” he continued, while I studied the black-and-white photographs covering the walls of what had been the secret location for the meeting.

As I travelled the country, the name of the old Yugoslavia president, Tito, came up many times, even among the young people I met. Mostly, it was said with a kind of nostalgia for the united times before the 1990s. Indeed, while Bosnia and Herzegovina might be independent, it is still burdened by the legacy of the last war.

“It’s complicated,” said Ivance, explaining how BiH has three presidents, representing each of the largest ethnic groups (Bosniak, Serb, Croat). These also account for its trio of official languages, though in reality they are all very similar, Ivance explained: “I like to describe them as being the equivalent of English, American English and Australian English – fundamentally the same but with some different words and phrases.”

A leap of faith

The day was still hot when Ivance and I arrived in Mostar, a city that often captures the hearts and minds of visitors. My first stop had to be a viewpoint of Stari Most, one of the most beloved and photographed bridges in the world. Built during Ottoman rule, under the orders of Suleiman the Magnificent, it spans the Neretva river, and its creation even led to the town that grew around it becoming an important trading hub. Over the centuries, Mostar has had its ups and downs, but by the 1990s it was a prosperous and peaceful city with a multi-ethnic population. However, in 1993, relations between the Bosnian Croat and Bosniak population reached breaking point and the former destroyed the bridge, shocking the world and adding another point of conflict within the wider Bosnian War.

Now fully reconstructed, having used as much of the original material as could be salvaged, the bridge is now known for the daredevils who use it to dive 20 metres to the water below. Competitions are held in the summer, notably as part of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series, but on any given day you’ll find locals leaping off it as a way to make money from the hordes of tourists who gather here.

Sure enough, as I was admiring the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian buildings overlooking the water, a young man climbed over the bridge railing and posed as if to dive. The crowd on the bridge stopped and excitement levels rose. A hat was passed around, with promises of the dive happening when enough cash was raised. Another 20 minutes or so of gamesmanship followed until the takings were considered satisfactory, then a completely different man, small and muscular, appeared in tight red Speedos and duly plunged into the river to gasps and cheers.

I followed him back up a street to the bridge, its cobbles worn smooth by centuries of use. The press of the crowd meant that I nearly missed a sign saying, ‘Don’t forget 93’. As dusk fell, the hordes of daytrippers left and the old town took on a magical quality, its cafés and restaurants still lively but its quieter corners a throwback to Ottoman rule. As the call to prayer rang out, it was easy to imagine the traders and the spice merchants of yesteryear bellowing about their wares.

The next couple of days took me to many more historic sites where there was little mention of the war. At Radimlja necropolis, I squinted at medieval tombstones known as stećci, covered in engravings of little-understood symbols. In Stolac, a town known as the ‘Museum under the Sky’ due to its many monuments, I dropped in on a restored 19th-century house now used as a cultural centre and had a demo on how to make traditional fig cakes. And in Blagaj, I visited a serene Dervish monastery, or tekke. I realised I’d need weeks rather than days to appreciate everything here.

But it took a drive up to the country’s highest village, Lukomir, to truly transport me back to a time before war touched this land. Its residents now live here on a seasonal basis, arriving in the summer to graze their livestock and grow their crops, and there were no sounds of modern life when I arrived. I wandered through the village to a vantage point that looked over to the Visočica Mountain chain and across Rakitnica canyon, one of the deepest in Europe.

Settling into this quiet life, I had a late lunch at the home of a family who rented out two of their rooms to walkers and cyclists. They served freshly made zeljanica (pastry stuffed with spinach and cheese) the traditional way, with a glass of drinking yoghurt on the side. They said that they wished they’d had more notice of me coming because they would have prepared something more, but in truth, as I sat in their garden, I couldn’t have dreamed of anything better.

About the trip

The author travelled with Intrepid Travel. The eight-day Bosnia and Herzegovina Expedition covers much of the same itinerary, including ground accommodation, activities, transport and selected meals. Departures from May 2024.

The trip is also available as a private tour; contact Intrepid for details.