The Green Interior – Day 6

Day 6 of 7

Horses, a Handsaw, and Vranica

The technical highlight of the tour. Best attempted dry. We did not attempt it dry.

We wake up and it is not raining. After yesterday this feels like something we haven’t earned, a gift from the mountain with no explanation attached. The stove is still warm. The boots have dried, mostly. Outside on the Cincar plateau the morning mist is sitting low on the grass and the light is doing something that makes everyone reach for their cameras before they’ve finished their coffee.

Then someone shouts.

On the plateau ahead of us — a large herd of wild horses. Moving slowly through the mist, completely unbothered by the group of riders standing there watching them. This is what I wanted them to see when I planned this leg of the route. You can describe Cincar to someone but you cannot describe this. We wait, patient and quiet, while the herd drifts across our path and disappears into the tree line. Then we start the engines and follow.

“Wild horses in morning mist on a Bosnian plateau. No photograph does it. You have to be there — which is, of course, the entire point of this trip.”

The forest trail toward Kupres is green and fast after the rain. Puddles everywhere — nobody cares at this point, everything is already damp from yesterday. Then, around a bend, the trail is blocked. A large tree has come down across the path, clean across, no way around it on either side.

David pulls a small folding handsaw from his pack. I watch this happen and say nothing for a moment. He gets to work. The tree is cut through, the log rolled to the side, laid flat across the trail. We lift the bikes over it one by one — front wheel up, over the log, back wheel up, over, down the other side. David, characteristically, clears it without help. Nobody asks how he does it. Some things you just accept.

We reach Kupres and eat lunch there as the weather begins to turn again. This is becoming a pattern. The sky does something noncommittal for an hour, then commits fully to rain. Our next destination is Vranica — the technical highlight of the entire tour. When it’s dry, Vranica is demanding. Under rain, on a big adventure bike, it is something else entirely.

The ascent begins at the edge of a village where shepherd dogs materialise from nowhere and make their position on motorcycles very clear. We navigate through them and start climbing. The surface is wet clay and loose rock, slick in a way that requires constant small corrections. Goggles fog. Visors fog. Everything fogs. The conditions are genuinely extreme and everyone knows it. The ascent, somehow, goes cleanly.

The Vranica descent – attention!

Vranica’s descent to Prokoško jezero follows a bujica — a flash stream channel — that in heavy rain becomes an active watercourse. The surface is wet slick rock and loose stone. On the Africa Twin, which is not a light machine, I warned the group before we started: I may fall, give me distance. I fell twice. Two rounds, fairly earned. If you are riding a large, heavy enduro and the forecast is wet, consider whether you want this section on your itinerary. If you are on a lighter single-cylinder, it is hard but manageable. It is never easy. That is also why it is the best descent on the tour.

At the bottom, Prokoško jezero is completely deserted. Fog sitting on the water, a few cows moving between the log cabins on the shore, silence. After the noise and concentration of the descent it hits differently — the stillness, the altitude, the fact that we are standing next to a mountain lake in the middle of Bosnia with mud on everything and nowhere else we need to be. Someone opens a sandwich. Nobody talks for a while.

We descend to Fojnica in the valley below. I notice on the way down that my front brake feels wrong — soft, pulling to one side. The Vranica descent has bent the brake disc. Something to deal with in the morning.

The accommodation in Fojnica is a private guesthouse with large rooms. One room per rider. After last night’s five-to-a-room bunk situation at the Cincar hut, the group’s reaction is immediate and visible. The French riders stand in their doorways for a moment looking at the space available to them with an expression that is somewhere between disbelief and relief. This is Bosnia — the contrasts are part of the experience and they arrive without warning.

The accommodation in Fojnica is a private guesthouse with large rooms. One room per rider. After last night’s five-to-a-room bunk situation at the Cincar hut, the group’s reaction is immediate and visible. The French riders stand in their doorways for a moment looking at the space available to them with an expression that is somewhere between disbelief and relief. This is Bosnia — the contrasts are part of the experience and they arrive without warning.

We are covered in mud. Not lightly dusted — genuinely, thoroughly coated. There is a car wash two streets away. We go there as a group and wash each other’s bikes and gear in the forecourt like it is a completely normal thing to do on a Tuesday evening. It is, at this point, completely normal.

Dinner is exceptional. The kind of meal that a town like Fojnica quietly produces without making any fuss about it. Beer is mine tonight — two rounds, both Vranica’s doing. Fairly paid. Everyone sleeps in their own room, in a real bed, under a ceiling that is not a bunk above them. It is an absurd luxury after six days and it feels like one.

We are covered in mud. Not lightly dusted — genuinely, thoroughly coated. There is a car wash two streets away. We go there as a group and wash each other’s bikes and gear in the forecourt like it is a completely normal thing to do on a Tuesday evening. It is, at this point, completely normal.

One day left. The group is tired in the way that means something — the kind of tired that comes from seven days of riding terrain that asked something real of everyone. Tomorrow we climb Bitovnja and say goodbye in Kreševo. Some are heading straight for France. Others are staying one more night in Baščaršija. Either way — it’s the last morning.