Contributor: VAEGABOND (Melli & Dani)
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Bulgaria — 15 countries in, and the Balkans have been delivering everything we could have hoped for and more. The landscapes are breathtaking. The climbs are brutal. And somewhere in the middle of it all, we quietly passed our one-year anniversary on the road.
Montenegro: the “Monte” is no joke
Montenegro doesn’t hide what it is. The mountains are right there in the name — and they delivered. Almost every day, we topped the elevation of the day before.
One particular day stands out and probably always will. We set off at 5 in the morning to make use of the cooler air — temperatures had been averaging 37°C and riding in that kind of heat is no joke. We were cycling along the Bay of Kotor, and every tiny village was more beautiful than the last: stone houses lovingly kept and decorated with flowers, ornate benches and chairs on the terraces. The kind of place that makes you slow down without meaning to.
That morning we were at sea level. By midday we were at 100 metres and sweating hard. We stopped at every possible water source along the way, knocking on doors in mountain hamlets to ask if we could spray ourselves down with a garden hose. At one house, we were invited to jump into the kids’ paddling pool and handed an ice-cold 1.5-litre water bottle as a gift. That felt like pure luxury.
Then came the real climb. Countless switchbacks in relentless heat. Energy fading, water running low. Melli hit a wall — a real one — but somehow, by the end of the day, we’d reached 900 metres of elevation.
At the top, a bar had claimed the most spectacular spot on the cliff, with a terrace built directly into the rock. We asked if we could pitch our tent there. No problem. As the evening came, more and more people arrived — and it quickly became clear why. The sunset over the Bay of Kotor was simply magical.
We cooked dinner on our camp stove on our last reserves of energy. A group of Germans spotted us and were completely floored that we’d cycled here all the way from Bavaria — and were planning to go much further. They bought us two drinks of our choice. We sat there with a well-earned beer in hand, full stomachs, and what was possibly the best wild camping spot we’d ever had.
Bulgaria: country number 15
One morning in southern Bulgaria, we were cycling through remote mountain villages when a local man stopped us — apparently the only English speaker within 50 kilometres — and asked, genuinely puzzled, how we’d ended up here. The road had turned to gravel after a few hundred metres, then to deep ruts that only got worse over the next 15 kilometres to the summit. We told him the truth: we’d been drawn in by the landscape. We’ll always take a smaller road through the hills over a highway through a city.
The stage was scenic, exhausting, and deeply peaceful all at once. The man showed us around the village — of about 60 houses, only 20 are still inhabited. The rest are crumbling quietly. And yet the place had a kind of magic that’s hard to explain.
The climb that followed was something else entirely. Gravel turned to sand. The ruts got deeper. The gradient steepened. Melli had to get off and push. Dani rode in short explosive bursts — five metres, rest, five metres, rest — covering about 5 kilometres that way over four hours. The hardest we’d ever fought our way up anything. But we’d built up enough in Croatia and Montenegro that we could take it. And the view at the top? Absolutely worth it.
One year on the road. Fifteen countries. And we still love this — every summit, every headwind, every day we could barely stand the sight of each other, every border crossed, every stranger who showed us unexpected kindness. All of it has been worth it a hundred times over. You can’t book this at a travel agency. You have to go find it yourself, one pedal stroke at a time.
Next stop: Turkey. 🚴♀️
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