Category: Reviews

Travel writer Laura Sanders shares her experience of joining a group of fellow solo female travellers for our 7-day multi-activity holiday in Serbia, which launched earlier this year. Read about her most memorable moments and anecdotes from the trip below – including how a mountain ranger saved her life from an ancient Balkan ailment with a hairdryer and a pair of socks. In the lead up to my week-long adventure in Western Serbia, I was met with a lot of ‘is it safe’s?’ and ‘you’re braver than me’s’. For many who were around in the 1990s (I was teething), mention of any former Yugoslavian country conjures up harrowing images from the six o'clock news. And while I'm not naive enough to think all is completely rosy now, it’s evident from past trips to the Balkans that life has moved on by a whole generation, and people aren’t their politics. Having ticked off Croatia and Bosnia, I was keen to experience more of this unique region, and so jumped at the chance to join Undiscovered Balkans on their inaugural tour in Serbia. From hiking through lush mountains and kayaking rushing rivers to sharing laughter over rakija with locals who would have gladly given us the shirts off their backs (and socks off their feet, more on that later) — my personal and professional mission was to override these old memories with fresh images of Serbia, its bucolic beauty and warm, genuine people. Well, mission accomplished. A walk on the wild side The first morning, my comrades and I (a group of intrepid women aged between 29 and 65) were whisked straight out of Belgrade for a river hike on the Gradac, one of Serbia’s cleanest waterways and an example of the striking karst landscapes I’d see throughout the week. I felt