‘Oh yes, there are mines up there,’ she said. ‘But the trail through the forest is safe enough, if you see it has recently been walked on. Lower down in the meadows make sure you walk where the grass has been scythed. After the war we did not know for sure where the mines were, but every year we cut more and more ground for hay. Wherever you see the hay has been cut you will be safe.’ It is from the farming community of Bosnia that a dozen or so victims are killed each year.
The long walk ahead left us no time to dawdle, so after filling our water bottles in the kitchen – another room yeasty from energetic home-making – we said our goodbyes to Sonja and her family, her children nodding mutely at us from the balcony. We headed through the garden, past old car tyres that had been elegantly cut and tulipped inside-out to make flower pots. The footpath we were aiming for could be seen snaking up a hillside above an orchard of fruit trees. I was glad to see Sonja had a firm hold of Alba’s collar, but just to make sure, I kept half an eye looking back over my shoulder until we were safely through the orchard and off Aćamović land.
The gradient stiffened and we adopted the slow and steady method for hills: little steps, lots of them, without resting. In places the grassy hillside had been worn through to the gravel below, and the path grew so steep it scrunched into a concertina of hairpins. Soon we were too breathless to speak, climbing, climbing, climbing. After an hour Mile’s mobile phone rang and I was glad for the break as he took the call, turning round for what would be my last look at the plain of Pasić. It was the rural European idyll in snapshot, a fertile valley dogtooth-checked by fields, threaded by a single track used by farmers and fringed by mountains. It felt a peculiarly peaceful backwater for the epicentre of the First World War. With Mile’s mumbling in the background, I remembered a monumental map of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that I had seen on display at Artstetten Castle in Austria, the private estate of the assassinated Archduke, Franz Ferdinand. The map was enormous, a swaggering imperial inventory of the Habsburg project at its height, charting every feature then valued by the empire: cities, towns, churches, factories, bridges, rivers, mountains reaching right across land that we now know as Poland, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and beyond. But what it missed was the birthplace of the person who would bring it all crashing down. Obljaj was much too small to be marked.
As Mile continued speaking on the phone, I wondered if Princip had also turned and taken a last glance at the valley as he and his father had trudged through these hills – the bibliophile teenager with a highlander’s pedigree and a feeling for the underdog. Could he have had any idea of the changes that his horizons would undergo?
The man who today proudly keeps alive his name, Gavrilo Mile Princip, finished his call and announced a change of plan. ‘I am sorry, but I really have to leave you now,’ he said. ‘My son, Vuk, is only four, and Nikola tells me he won’t stop crying for me back in Obljaj. Good luck with the rest of the walk and, if you get to the top of Šator, say hello to Milan. He is a friend of mine and is looking after the old bear-hunting lodge up there. Tell him you know me and he might give you some help.’
It was a disappointment to be losing Mile, but at least he had started us safely on our way. We shook hands warmly and I urged him to thank his family for their hospitality, before he turned and skittered down the hill at a speed that belied his age. The last I saw of our Princip guide was Mile waving his walking stick and shouting, ‘Remember the mines – stick to the path.’ Arnie and I turned back up the slope.
After six more exhausting hours of climbing along a track that wormed through thick forest, we reached the lodge Mile had told us about. An A-framed structure from the late communist era, it commanded the view across the lake below the peak of Mount Šator. We had not seen a soul on the path and, as we dumped our gear on benches in front of the building, there was no sign of Mile’s friend, Milan. I left Arnie recovering from the day’s exertions and walked by myself down to the water’s edge, delighted to be free at last of my rucksack. There was no wind to disturb the surface of the lake, set in a dell beneath the rocky summit of the mountain. Scree slopes protecting the peak reflected in its green water as I approached and, with nobody around, I took off my filthy hiking gear and waded in. The lake was bath-warm, the dark motionless water heated by the long summer day’s sun. I kicked out, happily plunging my face into the murk, unable to see the bottom.
The aches of the day’s hike were flushed away by the time the first tickles from underwater weeds indicated that I had reached the far side. I turned over and floated slowly back towards my clothes, all sound muffled by the water in my ears, my skyward view framed by rock fields frozen overhead in mid-cascade. By the time I had dried and returned to the lodge, the hike’s exertions had been forgotten.
‘Milan has turned up,’ Arnie said when I got back. A compact, capable-looking man in his early forties stepped forward to shake my hand. He wore military camouflage trousers and a khaki vest. ‘Milan’s an ex-soldier from the war. He looks after this place in the summer and there is nobody else here but his son, Stefan.’ A teenager emerged from within, as Arnie went on. ‘When I told him we had met Mile, he said we are welcome to stay. We can camp outside or sleep indoors on the floor.’
I went inside and found the lodge to be little more than the shell of a building. Outside stood Milan’s van, a rusty wreck from the 1980s parked facing down the slope of the gravel track. The ignition did not work properly and gravity was needed to roll it to a bump-start. Inside the building was a long wooden counter that would once have served as a fancy bar, but all the cupboards and surfaces had no stock now, apart from a few waxy jam jars carrying stubs of candles and a generous sprinkling of mice droppings. A loaded shotgun was leaning up against the fireplace, proof that we were definitely in bear country. On the wall there were patches where pictures had once hung. ‘There’s no power here, but Milan uses one room out the back to sleep in and keeps a fire lit in a stove in another room. He says we can cook there if we want to.’
Arnie had followed me inside, sharing what he had found out. ‘It used to be a smart lodge for hunting parties coming after bears. But now it is used only from time to time. The last big group to come here was a bunch of bikers from the Czech Republic. They rode huge motorbikes laden with crates and crates of booze and had a wild time. But Milan says nobody has come this season, so he just keeps it ticking over.’
With the sun now low in the sky, the altitude was such that the temperature began to dip quickly. From my pack I retrieved warm clothes, food and cooking gear, leaving Arnie to debrief Milan further. My nose led me to the ‘kitchen’ where a cast-iron, enamel wood-burning stove belted out heat inside a cell of a room with a dingy window and no running water. A roasting tray of chicken pieces was already sizzling temptingly for Milan, so I set about mixing up our own meal, a broth of soup and pasta. Arnie had forgotten to bring a bowl, but I retrieved an old yoghurt tub from a dusty cupboard, rinsed it clean and served my companion. There were some grumbles about it being too salty, but I could tell from his smirks that he was teasing. After such a tough opening day it was a relief simply to recharge our energy levels.
‘Milan was telling me that the path over the mountain goes across that big patch of rocks.’ The last sunlight of the day rouged the rocky flanks of the upper mountain, its lower reaches already in darkness, and I could just make out the scree field that Arnie was pointing to on the far side of the lake. ‘He says the path is easy enough to follow, but that most people have a car to pick them up on the other side. If we are going to make it all the way to the next town, it will take all day.’
Milan’s advice tallied with what my map suggested. After crossing the mountain we would be dropping down onto the plain of Glamoč, the next of Herzegovina’s wide valley floors, and to reach the small town of Glamoč itself the map indicated a hike of close to twenty-five miles. The lodge was now in total darkness, disturbed only by traces from our head-torches as I made a round of tea fo
r everyone and we chatted. I asked Stefan if he had ever heard of Princip.
‘Sure,’ the young boy said. ‘He was the man who killed the Archduke. We learned that at school. The teachers called him a terrorist.’
Milan piped up. ‘When I was at school, things were different,’ he said. ‘That was back in the time of communism, and we were taught Princip was a national hero.’ I found the malleability of history intriguing, as I scribbled away in my notebook.
I was tired, struggling to keep up with the conversation, and fell back on watching Arnie chatting by candlelight with our hosts – something that a few years ago would have been impossible. Arnie is a Bosnian Muslim, transformed by Milošević’s 1990s nationalism into the mortal enemy of a Bosnian Serb soldier like Milan. But instead of power politics they talked of trophy bears that were once hunted in the forest through which we had walked, of how Milan as a boy had climbed up to an eagle’s nest on Mount Dinara to kidnap a chick that he then reared as a pet, and a whole stream of other tall mountain tales. As the stories grew, I went inside and unrolled my sleeping bag. The sound of scurrying mice could not keep me from sleep.
It proved impossible to kick-start Arnie the following morning, so I decided to begin without him. I fancied climbing to the top of Tent Mountain, a challenge that Arnie was happy to miss. His new boots had blistered him cruelly during the climb to the lake, so I left him with a packet of anti-rub plasters and the agreement that he would follow me after exactly two hours. From Milan’s description, the path sounded clear enough and we settled on a rendezvous at its highest point, just where it crossed the shoulder below the peak before beginning its long descent towards Glamoč. Working with Arnie years before had taught me he was not a morning person, so this seemed a better plan than fretting about him emerging from his sleeping bag. After breakfasting on dried fruit, peanuts and tea, I left him to rest some more.
A cuckoo sounded from within the forest as I loaded up on the porch of the lodge, the mountain peak barely visible through the chill, early mist. Cloud had built up overnight, dark enough to threaten rain but thin enough to deliver, so far, only the flimsiest of showers. I put on my rain jacket, jiggled my stiff shoulders to settle my pack and swung my hazel stick for the first of that day’s many iterations.
The path cut up and across the scree field. Scree is never the easiest surface to hike on, small gravelly stones giving the impression that each step loosely slides back down as far as it has just reached up. Fortunately rain had washed most of the looser stones away and my progress was quicker than I expected. Catching my breath for the first time, I turned round to take what I had hoped would be a fine photograph of the lodge reflecting in the lake, but the mist had closed in. I hiked on, wondering if splitting up from Arnie on a cloudy day was such a good idea, only for the visibility to improve all of a sudden at the shoulder. Breaking right from the main path, I followed a fainter trail up the ridge, which my map promised would lead me to the summit. With historical irony, painted markings left on rocks to guide hikers were red squares with a white strip across the middle, a rather good impression of the flag of Austria. The foreign country that had ruled Bosnia in the run-up to Princip’s assassination of Franz Ferdinand is today memorialised countless times along the country’s hiking trails.
Fun though it is to walk with companions, I still find there are times when it is satisfying to go by oneself, following one’s own pace, and nobody else’s. My legs felt strong as I climbed for that hour or so, the clouds playing games with me, coming and going on the wind, promising wonderful views one second, then shutting them away the next. Sadly, by the time I reached the trig point marking the summit at 6,100 feet, all around me was a mucky grey. I might as well have been stumbling around at sea-level in a foggy quarry.
A wind shelter had been built out of rocks around the trig point and, tucked amongst them, I found a notebook where climbers logged their achievement in reaching the top of Mount Šator. I took the book out and saw its earliest entry was dated 2004, and was curious that it might have taken so long for the first recreational climber to reach here after the war ended in 1995. I thumbed through to the most recent entry, already almost two years old, adding my own message: ‘British author in search of Princip’s ghost – safe travels.’
Comfortably out of the wind, I snacked and took a long drink from my water bottle, hoping the cloud would lift. No luck, so after a rest I picked up my gear and headed down again to begin my search for Arnie. Within twenty minutes the cloud rose once and for all, revealing a scene that reminded me of cherished holidays in Scotland as a teenager. The southern summit flank of Mount Šator was one huge great moor, a rolling, treeless expanse of tundra-like tussock, yellowed in places by flowering patches of small plants that could double perfectly for Scottish gorse. In contrast to the previous day’s low alpine terrain, this was a starker, treeless zone reaching in a south-easterly direction for many open miles, before coming up against another slab of thick Bosnian forest stretching to the horizon.
It proved easy enough to reconnect with Arnie on the main track, although he was full of apology for turning up a little later than planned. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ he grovelled when he came into view. ‘Milan got talking. And then he made coffee. Serbian coffee, of course. And then he offered me his own-brew plum brandy, in which he soaks fresh mint leaves. It would have been rude to say no. I don’t normally like plum brandy, but his was really special.’
No apology was needed. We had plenty of time, the sun was now shining and we were back together on Princip’s trail, hiking over terrain that felt more and more familiar. Larks exploded noisily upwards in alarm from either side of the winding track, and all around was the same barrenness I remembered from hiking in Argyll. It looked so much like the Highlands I would not have been surprised to come across a gaggle of British ramblers or a shooting party in tweed banging away at grouse. But as the track finally reached the trees once more, we found evidence of a very different type of shooting activity.
Soil had been piled up to make breastworks to protect artillery positions. Prefabricated concrete doorways were set into a series of defensive underground bunkers. All around lay wooden pallets, the sort of thing you see in factories and round the back of supermarkets where the delivery trucks go. They seemed so banal, so civilian, so out of context in a war zone. But then again, what better way was there to deliver heavy items, whether they are sacks of flour or high-explosive 120mm artillery shells?
‘Don’t go in there,’ Arnie said with a firmness I had not previously heard in him. I had approached one of the bunker entrances, but his words stopped me. ‘These are positions dating from Operation Storm. Milan warned me to look out for them next to the path. They were built by the Croat army and there is no telling if there is unexploded ordnance still in there.’
I took his advice, viewing the scene instead from the security of the beaten track. Over the intervening years long grass had grown over the earthworks, and the timber of the pallets was bleached pale with age. In August 1995 Croat forces would have valued the high ground around Mount Šator, commanding as it does the valley of Glamoč over to the east. This would have made a fine position in which to dig in artillery, supporting Croat forces working their way deeper into Bosnia. Those would have been summer days and the gunners would have enjoyed the same scene as us: the edge of a high mountain moor, under a blue sky, with a nearby beech forest offering restful shade.
For the next few hours Arnie and I prattled away happily as we made good progress under the cover of trees along a jeep trail that had clearly not been used for a long while. Branches overhung the track so thickly it was reduced in places to a footpath for a single person, and the gravel where tyres once ran was covered with a filigree of moss. My de-mining map showed a minefield on the right-hand side of the track, perhaps a defensive position to protect the approach to the gunnery position back up on the moor. This might once have been a recreational area for hikers, but it was clear that today it
was rarely used. Perhaps the meagre record in the logbook at the top of Mount Šator indeed comprised the full picture of who had climbed in this area these past years. We were yet to meet anyone on the trail, even though the terrain was as beautiful as any I have ever enjoyed for hiking.
The thought of food and drink is a stalwart motivator for long hikes, so Arnie went off on a riff about what he would most like to have, if we made it to Glamoč that evening. The map suggested we still had about fifteen miles to go, and although it was now well after midday I was relaxed as the various landmarks we were passing suggested that we were making steady progress. At a break in the forest we passed a mountain meadow of such size it warranted a reference on the map: Medjugorje, a name that translates as ‘between the mountains’. With my children I had recently and repeatedly sat through one of their favourite stories, Heidi. Medjugorje could have doubled nicely for one of the high alpine pastures where the goatherd had lived with her grandfather.
The track continued on and on through the forest, all the time making an almost indiscernible descent. As the hours passed Arnie’s blisters started to trouble him and I heard him grumbling about his footwear. ‘Bloody boots! What was I thinking, buying shit like this? They are good for strutting around Shoreditch, nothing more. I’ve only used them for a day or two and the soles are already shredded to nothing.’
There comes a time on a trek when it’s best just to let it all out, so I eased off the commiseration and let Arnie get on with it. We rested every hour or so, and after a while the forested terrain began to feel very same-ish, the trees crowded so thickly that it was difficult to spot any landmarks as reference points. We were deep in the forest, on an old jeep track, and the compass alone was telling us that we were heading in the right direction for Glamoč. There were no indicators of progress except for the passing of the hours, no sign of any local people we could ask to check we really were on the right path. Arnie’s morale was beginning to dip, his footfall now painful to watch as he shifted his weight all the time to try and protect those worsening blisters. He started complaining about the tepid water in our bottles.