Sedlo Pass – Montenegro’s Highest Road by Truck

“It’s fine,” Mark had assured me when he showed me the Sedlo Pass on Google Earth. “It’s narrow, but it’s paved, and it has passing places.” 

It looked okay to me, and I trusted his judgement, even though the website Dangerous Roads warned, “Do not rely on signage to tell if the road is passable.” The write up also mentioned, “multiple high points with massive drop offs,” cautioned it was “not suitable for bigger vehicles”, and concluded with, “Due to its dangerousness, this road will be bypassed in the future by a motorway.” I tried to ignore the, “unlit tunnels.”

It wasn’t so much the state of illumination that bothered me, but the fact the tunnels were roughly hewn out of solid rock, had hairpin bends in them, and there were no height limit signs. In the UK, that means a minimum clearance of 5 m (16’ 6”).

But we were in Montenegro.

One Google Earth photo showed a car emerging from a tunnel. We scrutinised it on our 32 cm (13”) laptop screen. With thumb and forefinger, we could extrapolate the car’s dimensions to the height of the tunnel. Using this highly scientific rationale, we adjudged the clearance sufficient to accommodate the 3.85 m (12’ 6”) high truck, The Beast.

We felt reassured by our research and calculations. Despite the challenge, we could safely enjoy one of the world’s most spectacular drives.

As relative newbies to trucking, neither of us considered whether the bends were shallow enough to take our 10 m (33 ft) length without getting stuck.

But we had a backup plan. We had spied areas of rough ground by the tunnel. Any problems, we concluded, and we could simply turn around.  

What a fine delusion this would turn out to be!

As we left Camp Eko Oaza, The Beast’s sedate top speed of 45 mph (73 kph) gave me time to appreciate the magnificent surroundings. It was rather less terrifying than the Lewis Hamilton-style charge along the precipice enacted by the driver who took us rafting.

Montenegro’s Tara River Canyon is the deepest in Europe. Its maximum depth of 1,300 m (4,265 ft) is within a tick’s testicle of Britain’s tallest mountain, ‘The Ben’, Ben Nevis. Obviously, we weren’t on the top of the canyon, at least not yet, but as we progressed along the highway above the Tara River, the plunge from the margin had already reached the realms of ‘certain death’. The stomach-sinking scarediness was only going to intensify over the 30.8 miles (49.7 km) that make up the P14: Montenegro’s highest road.

We turned left at the Đurđevića Tara Bridge, site of the rafting HQ, and climbed. The Beast growled her way up a rapid succession of hairpin bends. On the opposite side of the canyon, dark, pine-covered mountainsides were speckled with terracotta-coloured villages, marooned in oases of apple-green grass.

As we crested the climb, the scenery opened out into a wide plateau, home to the ski resort of Žabljak, the Balkans’ highest city. Behind the town, a towering ridge of huge rugged peaks was so perfectly picturesque, it looked like a painted backdrop.

Because our two-night stay had turned into nine, we had depleted our food supplies and spent most of our euros on the campsite. A shopping trip was part of the reason we had intended to depart the previous day. Unfortunately, it was now Sunday, so Žabljak’s supermarket was closed. We got cash from an ATM and bought a burek (filled pastry) for lunch from a small shop. A tanned man with black hair dressed in a shocking pink shirt raced over to admire The Beast. He invited us over to his restaurant for a drink, but we needed to get on. Sedlo is not a road to tackle in the dark.

Past Žabljak, we turned onto a single-track road: the start of the Sedlo pass.

The pass runs east to west through the UNESCO-listed Durmitor National Park, from Šavnik to Plužine.

Outside the Eco Bungalows Katun, we passed some horses on a trek. Two foals ran loose alongside their mums. Clearly, it was Take the Kids to Work Day.

Under an angry grey sky, we stopped to eat our burek on a high point near the Jezera Lakes. Ahead, we had a moody view of Stožina, a conical peak that rises to 1,905 m. (6,205 ft).

Behind, rows of hills faded into the mist, like ripples on a lake. A thunderstorm broke out above them. I filmed it in the hope I could freeze frame the lightning bolts, but lightning never strikes twice… Predictably, they usually struck exactly where I wasn’t pointing the camera! We didn’t linger, because our poor Rosie-dog is terrified of thunder.

The scenery is probably the most spectacular I’ve ever seen. Mother Nature was really showing off. Pale, sculpted limestone peaks rose sharply from meadows dotted with wildflowers. Here and there, glacial lakes, known as ‘mountain eyes’, shimmered like jewels in this most magnificent setting. The route meandered between the summits on top of the massif. Long straight sections gave great visibility ahead. Mostly, the carriageway is too narrow to accommodate two cars. Sometimes, we sat in a passing place for five minutes or more to give way to oncoming vehicles. I don’t know what the drivers behind thought we were doing. Frequently, they overtook the stupid lorry that had obviously just halted to annoy them, only to cause gridlock when they met the approaching stream of traffic.

Patience is definitely a virtue when you’re navigating the Sedlo Pass.

One particular hairpin caused us a major issue.

Mark told me,

“I need to go slowly, so if you want, you can hop out and take photos.”

The downward bend curled right back on itself. It was so tight, he shuffled back and forth a few times to get around, but there wasn’t room. The only solution was to cut the corner and drive across the grass at the apex of the turn. Horrified, I watched as The Beast’s rear end tipped sideways at an alarming angle.

I knew the truck’s specification claims it can traverse a thirty-degree slope, but that’s surely a best-case-scenario under perfectly controlled conditions. The middle of nowhere in the Montenegrin mountains was not the place to test our limits. Since being crushed under a 16-tonne truck was not on my agenda for the day, I dodged out the way pretty sharpish.

All I could do was stare, helpless, while my home with everything I loved in it looked as though it might overturn. My stomach did a somersault, and I felt absolutely nauseous.

Thankfully, The Beast bumped back down on to level tarmac. A few miles further on, we spotted a little roadside restaurant surrounded by a fortress of limestone pinnacles and stopped for a restorative coffee. I still felt sick.

There was a large shepherd dog in the car park, so we left our pups in cab. If I were to guess the breed, I’d go for two thirds woolly mammoth.

From the café, we could keep an eye on the truck and our pooches. Inside, we met a charming park ranger. He told us the dog was just a youngster and was really friendly.

“Humans don’t deserve dogs,” he added.

I couldn’t agree more. Dogs are unconditionally loving and loyal, yet humans consistently abuse and abandon them. If only Homo sapiens was more dog, the world would be a much better place.

As we drank our coffee, I admired the graceful S-shaped folds in the limestone cliff opposite.

“It’s caused by tectonic uplift,” the ranger explained. “We don’t get many earthquakes here, but the African and Eurasian plates meet in the Mediterranean.”

A young sad-lookling Slovenian couple at the next table told us they were stranded there in their van.

“We’ve had lots of bad luck on our tour,” they said. “Last night, we fed a stray dog. We gave him food, water and played with him. Then this morning, we had two punctures. He’s left teeth marks in two of our tyres!”

I struggled not to laugh, but, despite their predicament, they could see the funny side and seemed quite sanguine about it.

“Do you need anything?” I asked.

“No, we have water and food, and someone is coming tomorrow to change the tyres.”

Such mishaps make a trip memorable, but the incident was too raw to point that out. Only hindsight can transform them into amusing anecdotes.

An orange butterfly fluttered in the window. I took an artistic photo of a butterfly with The Beast, framed by the window. As we sipped our coffee, it was interesting to observe the streams of passers by who took photos of our truck, or posed next to her. En route, we had so many thumbs up. It’s lovely that she brings such joy.  

Duly revitalised and caffeinated, we drove onwards to our park up. An oversized frame for Instagrammers outlined the view of a saddle-shaped double peak, Sedlo, which gives the pass its name. (Sedlo means ‘Saddle’ in Serbian). In case anyone was unsure of their hashtags, #MontenegroWildBeauty was embossed into the dark wood.

A group of Bosnian blokes screeched into the gravel layby. As one, they photographed The Fab Four lined up in the frame for a puppy pose.

I offered to take a group photo for them, but was called upon to repeat it a few times because my attempts fell below par.

 “He’s a professional photographer,” someone explained, indicating the one peering through a viewfinder to line up the shot he wanted, before beckoning me to stand exactly where he’d been. When I finally produced an acceptable result, he returned the favour and took a photo of Mark and me.

He didn’t even get the whole frame in the picture!

The lads loved the truck. We opened her up so they could all troop inside and have a look. When we relayed our incident on the hairpin – they said,

“We saw it!”

We watched as a lady in a flowing white linen dress did a Julie-Andrews-in-the-Sound-Of-Music run down the hill. It was pure theatre. Her partner filmed her as the breeze lifted a train of feathers on her straw hat, which she clutched to her head with one hand as she whirled like a Dervish.

I love to see Instagrammers #LivingTheirBestLife!  

“I don’t like this park up,” Mark said. “It doesn’t look remotely like the photos on the web. There’s bound to be something better.”

I agreed. It was right next to the road. Plus, we spied a flock of sheep. This made us worry about the safety of The Pawsome Foursome. Where there are sheep, there are usually large and fiercely protective shepherd dogs.

A few miles further on, I was thrown forward in my seat when Mark swerved off the main road on to a narrow, unmade track.

In a voice that had gone soprano with shock, I blurted out, “I don’t want to get stuck with nowhere to turn around.”

Mark stopped the engine and said, “I’ll have a walk up and check it out.”

As I waited, I drank in the enormity of the surrounding scenery. Pale chiselled peaks soared skywards out of the open plateau, which was punctuated by smaller rounded hills and knobbly limestone bluffs.

Fifteen minutes later, Mark returned with an update.

“It’s crap,” he said.

“Is it?”

“NOOOOOO!”

The Beast bounced and rumbled up on to the summit of a grassy knoll. We were level side to side but not front to back. The second we made to reverse around on to a flatter piece of ground, a Belgian couple in a van veered on to it at a velocity just below the speed of light.

With 123 square miles of national park to choose from, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Van lifers will tell you this is a thing. However big the space, someone will always try to park in your bed, if not closer. And perhaps The Beast has a bigger gravitational pull than other motorhomes.

A few motorbikes appeared on the track and paused to give The Beast a thumbs up.

“Where does this track lead?” I asked.

“All the way to the capital, Podgorica,” they said.

Now, that would be an adventure.

I wouldn’t want to ride a bike on most Montenegrin roads, considering the way people drive, but off-road, though scenery like this. That would be really something.

Since we missed the supermarket stop, we’d had to delve into the darkest recesses of the freezer. I found some meat that Mark had bought in Albania.

“It’s frying steak!” he insisted, as I peered at two pieces of leather draped upon a polystyrene tray.

“It looks more like stewing steak to me…” I said, but he was adamant.

“I mimed frying to the assistant. And it was the most expensive meat they had.”  

Once Mark had sawed it off the bone and excised all the sinew, it left a very small pile. I sliced it as thinly as possible, then stir-fried it with the home-grown peppers from Camp Eko Oaza.

After that standoff with an Albanian cow, my jaw was too tired to say, “I told you so.”

We spent the evening watching the light change on the mountains. ‘Breathtaking grandeur’ doesn’t even begin to do Durmitor justice – although what was to come would certainly take our breath away.

We had enough food to last one more day, but then we would have to tackle the tunnels.