The Tara Canyon, Europe's deepest gorge

The Tara is the river I find most compelling in Montenegro and, honestly, one of the most powerful landscapes in the Balkans. It has cut a 78 km canyon into the limestone which, according to the national tourist board, reaches 1,333 metres deep between Obzor and Štuoc, and UNESCO’s Durmitor listing calls it Europe’s deepest gorge. Best of all, it’s still intact. UNESCO also points out that it’s one of the few canyons in the region with no dams or roads slicing through it.

A long river and an undammed canyon

MONSTAT gives the Tara 146.4 km, 141 of them in Montenegro. It rises below the Komovi where the Opasnica and Veruša meet, flows past Kolašin and Mojkovac and enters the canyon at the mouth of the Bistrica. From there it heads north, between the Durmitor massif and Sinjajevina, to Šćepan Polje, where it joins the Piva by the Bosnian border and together they become the Drina.

The canyon is part of Durmitor National Park, which UNESCO inscribed in 1980, and UNESCO added the Tara basin to its biosphere reserve programme in the 1970s. Official sources disagree on its length, and I go with the 78 km the national tourist board gives on its rafting page, from the Bistrica to Šćepan Polje.

Where to look into the gorge

Without getting wet, the clearest spot is the Ćurevac viewpoint at 1,625 metres, recommended by National Parks, with its turning a few kilometres from Žabljak. That’s where the scale sinks in. The other must is the Đurđevića Tara Bridge, from 1940, at the junction of the Žabljak, Mojkovac and Pljevlja roads, where a zip line also crosses the canyon nearly 150 metres up.

A kilometre downstream of the bridge stands the 14th-century Monastery of the Archangel Michael, which the Žabljak tourist board says once had a copyists’ school. National Parks lists two more monasteries in the valley, St George’s at Dobrilovina and the Dormition at Dovolja.

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Crna Poda and Đavolje lazi

Upstream, between Bistrica and Dobrilovina in Mojkovac municipality, lies Crna Poda, a 20-hectare black pine forest at about 950 metres with trees around 400 years old, according to the Mojkovac tourist board. Just below it, at Đavolje lazi, the river squeezes down to 2 or 3 metres, which the national tourist board singles out as a real test for kayakers.

The side canyons of the Sušica and the Draga

The Tara doesn’t come alone. From the left it’s joined by the Sušica, which, according to the Žabljak tourist board, cuts its own canyon 15 km long and up to 700 metres deep. Between 1919 and 1939 rails ran along its floor to haul out timber, which was then rafted all the way to the Danube, and there were eleven watermills of which only a few stone walls survive. On opposite rims sit the hamlets of Nedajno and Mala Crna Gora, in sight of each other yet 16 km apart by road.

From the right comes the Draga, an 11.2 km tributary that rises below Ljubišnja and carves a canyon up to 800 metres deep, with two waterfalls and the Turska glava spring near its mouth. Its lower stretch falls inside the national park.

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Going down the river

The most intense way to see it is from below. Tara rafting is run by agencies, National Parks recommends going between early July and mid-September and the national tourist board puts a day at around €70 per person. The water, it warns, stays below 15 °C even in summer.

Fishing needs a National Parks day permit. On the permitted stretches in Žabljak municipality you can fish from 8am to 5pm and keep three trout of at least 25 centimetres, and Mojkovac’s tourist board points to an 8 km fly-fishing zone further upstream.

When to go

The national tourist board places the canyon in spring and summer. In spring the snowmelt gives the river its strongest flow, while in July and August the water is calmer and rafting is safer. The board even mentions January trips with the river at 5 or 6 °C, strictly for the hardy. For a bed nearby, Žabljak and Mojkovac are the practical choices or, if you come in from Bosnia, Plužine, close to Šćepan Polje.