MOTORCYCLE TRAVEL IN Montenegro

Climbing the Kotor Serpentine by motorcycle means tackling 25 hairpins cut into the rock over just 25 km, gaining more than 900 meters above the Bay of Kotor, cited in much of the region's geographic literature as the only fjord in southern Europe.

The road was completed in 1884 as a joint project between the newly independent state of Montenegro and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which ruled the coast at the time: before that, the only way between Kotor and the old capital Cetinje was a mule trail along the same line, still visible alongside it as the Ladder of Kotor.

Each curve, numbered by local rally drivers themselves, offers a different angle on the bay, until the road disappears into the forests around Njeguši, the village that lends its name to Montenegro's most famous prosciutto and cheese.

Climbing before 9 a.m. is almost the only way to avoid the tour buses coming up from the cruise ships — the road's average width is just 5 meters, with no shoulder on most of the curves.

Crossing Tara Canyon by motorcycle means riding along the edge of Europe's deepest gorge and the second deepest on the planet after the Grand Canyon: up to 1,300 meters deep in places, within a basin UNESCO declared a Biosphere Reserve in 1976.

The star of the route is the Đurđevića Tara bridge: 365 meters long and 172 meters above the water, built between 1937 and 1940 by engineer Mijat Trojanović. When it was finished, it was the largest single-arch concrete bridge in Europe.

It has a history few bridges can claim: in 1942, in the middle of World War II, the very engineer who designed it blew up one of its arches to slow the Axis advance — an act that later cost him his life and inspired the Yugoslav film Most (The Bridge, 1969).

The road that descends from Žabljak to the bridge and continues to Mojkovac has stretches of narrow, unlit tunnels carved directly into the canyon rock, and turns slippery after rain.

Crossing Sedlo Pass by motorcycle means reaching 1,904 meters above sea level, the highest paved road in all of Montenegro, cutting across the Durmitor massif inside a park that UNESCO has listed as a World Heritage Site since 1980.

It's 46 km with 40 bends — 16 of them hairpins — and grades of up to 11%, skirting Bobotov Kuk, the massif's highest peak, and the small Valovito lake, visible from the Priješpa viewpoint.

Several specialized European guides rank it among the most beautiful motorcycle roads on the continent: it's not the longest or the most technical in the Balkans, but it's the one that best combines altitude, isolation and alpine scenery in a single stretch of asphalt.

The road has long stretches with no guardrail above the drop-off, and there's practically no traffic outside high season — bring tools and don't rely on your phone, since coverage is patchy along most of the crossing.

Riding Piva Canyon by motorcycle means hugging the cliff for 31 km, crossing 56 short tunnels carved directly into the limestone, alongside the turquoise waters of the Piva reservoir.

That reservoir was born in 1975 with the construction of the Mratinje Dam, 220 meters tall — one of the highest in Europe — sitting at 675 meters above sea level, which makes it the highest artificial reservoir in the world.

Some riders who've done both of northern Montenegro's canyons describe this one as wilder and less traveled than the neighboring Tara Canyon, with the same profile of curves hugging the rock but far less tourist traffic.

The tunnels have no artificial lighting and several are so narrow a single car barely fits through — slowing down and switching on your lights before each one isn't a suggestion, it's mandatory.

Riding the loop around the Bay of Kotor by motorcycle means tracing 50 to 60 km around southern Europe's only fjord, according to much of the geographic literature — a sea reaching kilometers inland between mountains that drop almost vertically into the water.

The route passes through Risan, the bay's oldest town, with Roman mosaics over 2,000 years old, through Perast, a village that turns pedestrian-only in summer so you'll have to walk instead of ride, and through Kotor, whose old town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

An almost mandatory shortcut is the ferry between Kamenari and Lepetani, which crosses the Verige Strait in about 15 minutes and lets motorcycles skip the car line — saving over an hour compared to riding all the way around the bottom of the bay.

Outside peak season (July-August), this is probably the most relaxed route in the Top 10: smooth pavement, almost no elevation change, and water views on every curve.

Riding up to Ostrog Monastery by motorcycle means reaching one of the most visited sanctuaries in the entire Orthodox Church: between 1 and 1.2 million pilgrims arrive every year at a temple built literally into the vertical rock of the Ostroška Greda.

It was founded by Saint Basil of Ostrog in the 17th century; he died there in 1671, and his tomb, next to a vine growing straight out of the stone, still draws Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim visitors alike.

The road ends at the Lower Monastery; from there, tradition calls for walking the final 3 km to the Upper Monastery barefoot, so it's best to leave the bike parked and bring comfortable shoes for the rest.

It's a short stop compared to the mountain routes up north, but its religious fame makes it one of the most searched destinations in all of Montenegro — many riders add it as a stop on the way to Durmitor or back to the coast.

Riding out to Lake Skadar by motorcycle means reaching the largest lake in the Balkans, with a surface area that varies between 370 and 530 km² depending on the season, roughly 65% of it on the Montenegrin side and the rest in Albania.

The Montenegrin section has been a National Park since 1983 and is recognized as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International, with more than 270 recorded species, including the Dalmatian pelican.

Virpazar is the gateway, a village on the Belgrade-Bar rail line surrounded by vranac grape vineyards, and the road follows the western shore to Rijeka Crnojevića, where the wreck of the steamboat Skanderbeg, sunk by partisans in 1942, still rests 11 meters below the surface.

It's the flattest, most accessible route in the Top 10 — a perfect way to close out a trip that began in the mountains up north, with the lake's still water replacing the canyons' vertigo.

Riding Montenegro's Adriatic coast by motorcycle, from Budva to Ulcinj, means taking the M-1, the only road connecting every coastal town in the country — two lanes from start to finish, with no motorway project planned to replace it.

The road passes Sveti Stefan, the Adriatic's most photographed island-hotel, crosses Petrovac and reaches Bar, before ending in Ulcinj, a town inhabited since the Bronze Age that fell to the Ottomans in 1571 with the help of North African corsairs and earned a reputation as a pirate stronghold for centuries.

Just south of Ulcinj lies Velika Plaža, with 12 km of unbroken sand — Montenegro's longest beach — and the river island of Ada Bojana, a gathering point for kitesurfers and naturists from across Europe.

It's the easiest route in the Top 10, ideal for the first or last day of a trip through Montenegro, though in high season the two-lane traffic turns slow between Budva and Bar.

Riding into Grebaje Valley by motorcycle means entering the Prokletije, the Accursed Mountains that Montenegro shares with Albania and Kosovo — the country's newest national park, created only in 2009, almost six decades after Durmitor, Biogradska Gora and Lovćen, the three original parks from 1952.

Just 16,630 protected hectares lie on the Montenegrin side, but they hold some of the most rugged peaks in the Balkans, with vertical limestone walls enclosing the valley like an amphitheater.

It's the least-traveled region in this whole Top 10: the towns of Plav and Gusinje, with a strong Muslim and Albanian population, still see very little organized tourism, and the pavement runs out before reaching the head of the valley.

For anyone who's already ridden the better-known routes in the north and south of the country, Grebaje is the reward: silence, raw mountains, and not a single tour bus in sight.

Riding down Morača Canyon by motorcycle means following the 70 km gorge the river carved between Podgorica and Kolašin, the old E65 that for decades was the only way across the country's north.

Since the new parallel motorway opened, this stretch lost its heavy truck traffic and became a much quieter secondary road for riders — the same phenomenon that has cleared out other cult routes elsewhere in the world.

Halfway along, a side road leads to Morača Monastery, founded in 1252 by the Serbian prince Stefan Vukanović, with 14th-century frescoes still visible in its main church — a worthwhile stop for anyone after more than just curves.

It's not the most spectacular route in northern Montenegro, but it is the most practical: it connects the capital to the gateway to Durmitor and Kolašin in a single stretch.