Glimpses from Bosnia

Bosnia is a country in Balkan peninsula that was formed in 1992 when Yugoslavia broke down. It has a history of civil wars till 1995, but since then things have stabilized and the economy is picking up. There are talks of Bosnia joining European Union soon.

As for us, we were fortunate to be commissioned by the Bosnia tourism board to shoot around the country and use the pictures and videos for promotion of Bosnia tourism board.

Here are a few places we covered in Bosnia

Sarajevo

Sarajevo is the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and has direct connections from hubs like Istanbul and Dubai, so from New Delhi it was 1 stop via Istanbul for us. The city itself is fairly developed and resembles any other European town.

One of the first places we visited was the park of Vrelo Bosne, which is located at just outskirts of the city of Sarajevo. It has a beautiful waterfall as you can see below, and has a canal running through a park. It is surrounded by alpine hill forests. It certainly makes for a half day visit.

Visoko and the Pyramid of Sun

Next we headed for the town of Visoko, which is about 60km from Sarajevo. There are some hills here which resemble the shapes of pyramids.

It is said in Bosnia that these hills were actually pyramids earlier and have an access system inside the hills like Pyramids have. While we cannot comment on that, but this region is certainly beautiful and the most important hill is the “pyramid of the Sun”, which is a good 20 min drive up from the town of Visoko.

The shape of these hills is actually like a pyramid and that is the reason for these theories to spring up.  It overlooks all the other surrounding hills. Then there is a pyramid of Moon nearby which is smaller but equally beautiful.

Rainforest at Foca

Before coming we read a lot about the rainforest at Foca. It is said to be the largest primeval rainforest in Europe, and truly it is a large stretch of dense forest. One thing which I liked is that it is still not damaged by tourism and development, as some of the other European wilderness have been.

Hotels are scarce and we could not see any industries in this 30-40km stretch, though there are small eco-friendly homes of local residents. The morning we went there it was completely washed out by rains and we could not shoot much.

 

Sand Pyramids

The evening before, we went to another attraction near town of Foca, which is called the sand Pyramids. These are natural rock formations occurring in middle of the dense forest. These ones are certainly not Pyramids by any means, but these look beautiful in middle of a green and dense forest.

 

Sunsets in Bosnia

It is interesting to note that most of the country is formed by small hillocks and plateaus and it is hard to find stretch of flat land anywhere. Most of the terrains resemble alps of Switzerland with green valleys and alpine trees all around.

Apart from the main tourist attractions, we drove a lot across length and breadth of the country and came across many beautiful moments. One of them was a Sunset like this 🙂

Kravice Falls

Next, we headed up north of Bosnia where we came across the beautiful Kravice falls. It is a falls with multiple water streams in a hilly terrain. We had to walk down a fair bit to reach the base of the falls from the parking. The effort is certainly worth it.

Una National Park

Our last stop in Bosnia was at Una National Park, before we headed out to Croatia. This park has the Una River flowing through it and the river twists and turns through various waterfalls inside the National Park. The most prominent of these falls is the Strbacki buk Falls, which is a 3 layered falls. The total height of the falls is 25 metres

As I write this, am in Slovenia waiting for brown bears in a hide. This will be yet another story, but what we saw in Bosnia will remain with us for a long time, and we would be starting with the Balkan region as a photo tour destination very soon, covering Bosnia, Croatia and Slo