TET Bosnia & Herzegovina 2021 (#1)

October 18th — 20th

By Watracz Is Traveling

December 15^th, 2022

Having crossed the TET Croatia route, which I wrote about here, I took on the Bosnia and Herzegovina portion of it.

Below you can see the map of the whole trip.

Day 1: TET B&H, Glamoc

October 18th, 2021

Bosnia unfolds great views from the very beginning, from the border crossing in Strmica. It’s a warm, sunny day and the tree-covered hills shimmer with all the colors of autumn.

I reach the town of Bosansko Grahovo, where I try to buy a local SIM card. There’s none to be had at the gas station, nor at the post office, nor at the grocery market. So I need to cover the first part of the TET route without connectivity, using an offline map only.

Route to the Šatorsko lake

The road goes through a forest, with fallen trees and branches blocking it in several places. There is a layer of snow in the upper parts of the mountains. And there’s ice on the road in places, so I need to be careful. The parking lot next to the lake has views of the mountains, but you actually need to take a short stroll to see the lake itself.

Time for brunch.

The next part of this section of the TET leads through a forest that’s clearly a logging spot. The road is in bad shape, there’s mud everywhere. When I finally exit the forest, my bike is so dirty you can hardly see the license plate.

More SIM card adventures follow. I’m able to buy one at a gas station a few kilometers outside of the town of Glamoc, but I still can’t access the internet. The info hotline operators only speak Bosnian, so I can’t understand a thing; the shopkeeper speaks no English, and the customers who pop in to the gas station don’t seem to know how to help. After an hour of trying to move things forward I give up and move on instead.

Glamoc

The next gas station has a lot more staff. I’m hoping someone there will be able to help me. The shopkeeper manages to call the SIM provider’s hotline and it turns out you need to download some particular network settings for an iPhone XS. The helpline consultant sends me the settings, I enter them as needed, and suddenly everything’s working. A girl working at the cafe section comes over, and her English is great, so communication is much easier, too. She checks my phone and tells me I have some credit on the card, but it’s not a lot, so I also add 20 BAM worth of credit, to have enough internet access for the entire trip.

I stay the night in one of the hotels in the town. The Split hotel, which has definitely seen better days, charges me 13 EUR for the night. The tablecloths are colorful, the main decorative elements are the ashtrays, and the air has an aroma of cigarettes. But, the bed in the room is soft and the water is warm. That’s all I need today.

Day 2: TET B&H, Kupres, Livno

October 19th, 2021

The walls between the rooms are so thin that an alarm clock from the next room wakes me up at 2 am. It fails to wake its owner for a long time, though. You can hear dogs barking outside, and for 2 hours I can’t go back to sleep — I keep thinking someone’s trying to steal my bike.

I order a cheese-and-mushroom omelette for breakfast (it’s pretty good). I pay 5 BAM and tip the waiter, asking for hot water for my thermos bottle, to make tea later. Sadly, instead of boiled water I get tap water.

I get a text from the Bosnian phone network that I only have 86 MB of internet left on the card, and I wonder what happened to the credit I added to the account the day before. I go back to the gas station to clear things up. There’s a different person working the counter that day, he doesn’t know English and can’t spare the time to try to help. Still, I pressure him because it would really help me to have internet access in the mountains today. We call the girl who was here the day before and spoke English. Perka (that’s her name) comes over about a quarter later, so we get coffee and sit down to figure out the phone situation. It turns out that after buying phone credit you still need to buy a data package. Just in case, I buy a second SIM card, which is supposedly better. Perka helps me activate it and set it up. Everything’s in Bosnian, there’s no chance I could have done it by myself. I also learn that tap water to make tea is the standard here. We exchange contact details and I head into the mountains to ride the TET.

Following the TET

I pause on a hill outside of the town and set up my tripod to take a photo. A moment later a military car comes over, and a soldier tells me to be careful: they’re about to run shooting drills nearby. As I keep going, I pass a group of maybe 30 soldiers, and I hear gunshots just minutes later.

There’s snow in the upper parts of the mountains, and the road is icy.

As I take photos and make videos, a group of bikers from Czechia arrives. A KTM 950, a KTM 890, a Husqvarna 701 and a Yamaha Tenere 660. I join them and we ride the rest of the route together. If anything happens, it’ll be easier for a group of people to dig out my Suzuki from a snowdrift.

The group is riding dynamically, we rarely stop, so I mostly make videos. There’s quite a lot of snow and mud, but I manage without much trouble. We take a shortcut at the last part of the route, in order to make it back to town before it gets dark.

We exit the forest near the town of Kupres, where we fill up the bikes. From the gas station, you can see snow on the summit of Stožer (1,768 m. a.s.l.), that the TET leads over.

The Czechs tell me they’re skipping that part, and that they’re going to conquer the summit of Pločno not far from the Blidinje lake, where the conditions should be better. The route is supposed to be challenging, and they propose I go with them. I agree and we head together to Livno, where my new friends have rooms booked at the Novitas Livno hotel. There’s a free room for me, too. The hotel is high standard, the rooms are clean, there’s an underground parking lot where you can park a bike for the night, and there’s a grocery market on the other side of the street. In the evening we have a tasty supper, drink beer and talk about our motorcycle journeys.

Day 3: TET B&H, Pločno, the Ramsko lake, Livno

October 20th, 2021

I order bacon and scrambled eggs for breakfast, with a side of sausages, some juice, and green tea. The route is supposed to be demanding, so I leave as much unnecessary stuff in the room as I can, in order to have the bike as light as possible.

We leave Livno around 9:30 am, going towards the Blidinje lake, some 65 kilometers away. We take a short break by the lake, then head into the mountains, to the summit at 2,228 m. a.s.l.

The route really is hard, and I’m happy I left some ballast at the hotel — you can feel the bike is lighter and more manoeuvrable. The steep road is full of rocks, gravel, and sharp turns, but the views make up for any difficulties. The higher we get, the better you can see the area. On top of that, the weather is very nice, it’s warm, sunny, and there’s no wind.

Pločno

2,228 m. a.s.l.

We reach the top at 11:45 am and stop at an empty lot next to a building that looks like a mountain lodge. A while later, someone working at the building comes over and asks us to move the bikes — the empty lot is a landing pad and there’s a helicopter scheduled to land here any minute.

Time for a “beer of victory.”

We take the same route down. It’s much more pleasant, because this time I know what to expect. The next part of the TET goes through the woods towards the Ramsko lake.

There’s an island in the middle of the lake. We take a longer break there, because we need to replace a broken bulb in the Husqvarna 701. There are three overseers needed to oversee the work of an experienced specialist. We also tighten the rear wheel on the Tenere 660.

Around 4 pm we divide into two groups. One group goes back to Livno, while me and the Husqvarna 701 decide to check out the TET north of Ramsko. Unfortunately, the road is impassable, but at least we get a nice view of the lake.

It’s about 6 pm when we get back to the hotel in Livno. I do laundry, and after dinner I join my new friends, who have been tasting the local liquors in the hotel restaurant for a while now. It’s the last day of their trip. I have a few beers and head to bed, while they continue celebrating late into the night.