After some back-and-forth I’ve altered the travel route a little and am intending to travel down the coast instead of going back inland. Getting to Skopje from Podgorica would have required to cross back over the Dinaric Alps and would have meant either a gruelling 12h bus ride or a 300 Euro flight. Neither was overly appealing.

Instead I followed a recommendation from a fellow traveller at the hostel in Podgorica and took the bus down to Ulcinj, a Montenegrin town just north of the Albanian border.

The centre of town is extremely touristy and a 15 minute walk through there last night was more exhausting than a 2h mountain hike. The good thing is that the season is winding down and the local “beach bar”, a tucked away place with amazing views, had all but three patrons.

The hostel is situated

“It’s incredible”, “I’m lost for words”, that’s the kind of descriptions other travellers gave of Kotor, a small town at the Adriatic coast. It does have a touristy reputation as well though. Cruise liners drop off their cargo for the day, flooding the old town with holidayers on a spending frenzy.

Regardless of that, I wanted to have a look and took the bus over there on Tuesday. It’s a 2.5 hour drive and most of it leads through mountainous terrain. Once the coast was reached, I got an idea of what people were talking about.

The town itself, specifically the old town, has a nice flair to it. Most of the buildings are kept in good shape, the area is clean and the towering mountains

There is something pacifying about horses. They spend 15-20 hours a day just eating. The rest of the time they are standing around or have a short nap.

Having had the recent nice experience in Serbia, I organised a continuation not much later. Searching the internet for horseback riding in Montenegro brought up a good result, and a few emails later I had booked a few hours of riding for this Sunday afternoon.

This time I didn’t just want to ride around but also learn a bit about how best to “behave” on horseback. How to sit, how to move, that kind of stuff.

The “ranch” is a little outside of Podgorica and it took about 20-25 minutes by taxi to get there (8 Euro, cheap country this Montenegro). Soon after the city limits the landscape opened up to a breathtaking

Biggest lake in the Balkans, half an hour from Podgorica and apparently a must-see. How does one get there? “Take the train!” said the hostel staff. I enquired about buses but was told that they’re more expensive and less reliable. Oh well… train it is.

And what a train it was! Clean, modern, could have cruised the rails of Germany. My opinion on train travel in the Balkans got a bit better.

At the lake it was a 10-15 minute walk from the station to the village centre (across the train tracks, through the shrubs and there you are).

The recommendation I got for experiencing the lake was to go kayaking. It’s reasonably cheap with just 3 Euros per hour and I was in need for some exercise.

Twenty minutes of paddling later and I’m still in some form of canal, on my way to the actual lake. It did look beautiful.

Once I had reached the open lake, it was a fair bit to the next landing point. Almost an hour into the journey