On April 4, 2026, Saturday dawn woke me up, flashing with the most beautiful reflections of the early morning sun. A beautiful, clear and sunny morning promises a beautiful hiking adventure, which is to visit the trail from Dubovik to the Šanik – Njeguška Trešnja (Donja) spring. In order to walk this beautiful trail, but also to write down one of the valuable stories, the team is composed of: my little one, Ilija Đurović, Snežana Didanović, and the expert consultant for beautiful historical stories and toponyms is Niko (Jošov) Martinović, while our friend Gojko Padalica had numerous commitments and could not join us.
Our trail leads along the following section: Dubovik – Dubovička osoja – Bale – Čulice jama – Mramor cave, Austrian road (Lašor and Pećinice), Vrćenik – Štacija – Austro-Hungarian – Aluge – Donja Trešnja and Šanik spring, and sometimes you can also find a toponym like Ošanik. This trail is about 11 kilometers long. The names of these toponyms preserve work, hardship, movement, summer cottages, water and memories of the highlanders. Anyone who knows how to read such names will discover a deeper face of Lovćen.
We left the car next to the nearby road that leads to Njeguši and the villages of the Katun district. Our journey began. Provided with water and the necessary equipment, we set off on a well-paved hiking trail, which is still used today, because it is used to transport firewood. The mountain is Bajica (fairytale) and with the first steps it is evident that this will be a beautiful experience. The mountain breathed peacefully, as if it were preserving some old story that has yet to be told. On such mornings, one feels that the mountain does not welcome everyone equally, but only those who approach it with respect. Each trail on Lovćen has its own name, but also its own nature, its own untold stories. From the first steps it was clear that this trail has not been forgotten, but that it still serves those who know its value. Such trails have a special power, because they connect the life of the past with the steps of today. On them, a person does not only pass through space, but also through the patina of time.
In the smaller valleys there are numerous populations of primroses (Primula vulgaris and Primula veris), plants that are very medicinal, but also decorative. They are very present on this trail and greet us with their beauty, their spreading yellow flowers. We continue step by step. After 700 meters of trail, on our left we come to the toponym Bale. There are numerous valleys and ravines, an old, small house, covered with tiles (on two sides), with a crossbar over the door, abandoned long ago. Around it are two more small stone ruins, mountain flowers have bloomed around the house, although it is still cold. In such places, spring acts as a renewal of what time has begun. A flower next to a stone has a special beauty, because it combines fragility and duration. Everything around the toponym Bale gives the impression that life has stopped here, but has not disappeared.
The house, the silent guardian of this beautiful estate, built of stone, testifies to the fact that this katun, just a few kilometers from Cetinje, was alive in every way. This house seems to have been woven from a fairy tale, it exudes that old patina where every ancestral stone, hand-shaped by a master, would tell us at least one beautiful story. Sweat, hope and the homely measure of life remained in every wall of such katuns. When we look at them today, we are actually looking at a school of survival in stone.
Niko (Jošov) Martinović testifies to us that the first agricultural products arrived from these beautiful valleys – doca, now pastures – when Cetinje was gaining its first outlines of industrialization and economic development. The city needed to be supplied with onions, tubers, cabbage and other agricultural products. Today, young mountains have taken root in these valleys, and the forest is slowly taking over this beauty of the katun. Without such valleys and without the hands that cultivated them, Cetinje would not have been able to develop its first city functions. What is now covered with young mountains was once the lively economic hinterland of the Royal Capital. Each load of onions, tubers and cabbage was part of a larger process of the city's emergence.
In the immediate vicinity, a limestone rockery, next to the road, a small bistierna, built by the skilled hand of a builder, with a poured concrete bed, and behind the bistierna, a natural, more than two-meter-deep, stone ravine. Nature played and played with this beauty. In such a rockery, water has always been a condition of life and survival. That is why bistierna and ravines had a special place in the everyday life of the highlanders. People gathered around the water, made arrangements, and measured time and travel.
We continue our journey. We hear the snorting of a horse through the mountain, and soon a young man catches up with us, greeting us and riding his horse continues towards the mountain. The horse passes through the rocky terrain very quickly and nimbly. From the left and right, I am drawn to the beauty that adorns these areas. Meeting the horseman seemed to take us back to an earlier time in these areas for a moment. There was something primal in that scene: a man, a horse, a stone and a mountain. Such images most faithfully show that Lovćen is still alive today.
We reach a toponym called Mramorna jama – cave. I approach the entrance, which is partially walled off with stone at the ends. I think it could have served as a shelter for shepherds who lived on these beautiful slopes, but also as a place where flocks were confined at night. I don’t dare to explore this unusual cave – cave without equipment. Such openings in the karst always arouse the imagination and make one wonder who stopped in front of them. Caves and caves in the mountains were often shelters, boundaries or signs of resourcefulness. The Marble Cave seems like a place that has not yet fully told its story.
We continue along this path, which is not that demanding. We reach the part where the road forks, there is the toponym Čulice (left), and to the right we are led by the Austro-Hungarian road. The road is very spacious, wide on both the left and right sides, and we are still accompanied by valleys and ravines. In the distance, the Lovćen massif under the snow seems at times unreachable, but it is all an optical illusion. The Lovćen massif is constantly changing its face as you approach it. Then one realizes how powerful the mountain is in relation to its fragility.
Numerous drywalls have been erected to protect against livestock from straying, and the path now slowly climbs uphill. Step by step, a Saturday morning was created to explore this beautiful path to the end. The massive Vrćenik plateau stretches out before us, and slowly, step by step, we reach this part. There is the toponym Štacija – an Austro-Hungarian, beautiful, stone-hewn Austro-Hungarian station where soldiers and engineers stayed who monitored the work of the cable car from Kotor to Cetinje and provided support in the event of any downtime or breakdown. Vrćenik opens up as a plateau from which the entire logic of movement, supervision and connection of this region can be better understood. The Austro-Hungarian station was not created by chance, but in a place from which multiple directions could be controlled and monitored. These stone buildings combine the precision of an empire, but also the hardships of the local man who had to process and carry that stone.
The building is now, unfortunately, roofless, with several beautifully designed rooms, with a bastion that still holds water and looks impressive. You can see from the remains of the tile that it was covered. From this toponym, there is a beautiful view of the panorama of Cetinje, but also of Lake Skadar. It is clear that the Austro-Hungarian army knew very well where to place its strategically important military and civilian facilities. Where the footsteps of soldiers once echoed, today solitude and wind reign. Although it has been destroyed by time, the building still preserves the dignity of its former purpose. In places like this, history is not in books, but in the wall, the opening, the remains of the tile and the water in the bastion. A person in front of such buildings feels how fleeting both empires and people are, and how fierce the rocky terrain resists everything.
Niko (Jošov) testifies and tells us that Bajica Stevo (Jovov) Marinović also worked as part of this Austro-Hungarian station, on whose property it was built. Behind the fortress itself, a small stable that was for horses can be seen and recognized by the modern sheet metal, which the locals must have used in some past decades. Unfortunately, the roof has collapsed. Behind each such toponym there are specific people, names and destinies that must not be forgotten.
It is clear that this trail is rarely used today, but it has, I can safely say, strong potential. We take our first break here to refresh ourselves and get some strength, but also to take some nice photo shots.
camera. I think about the highlanders who walked and walked these paths, sharing their lives, their joys, loves, struggles and sorrows in some segment of the past decades, but also centuries. These paths were their connections to the world, but also the paths of everyday survival. Today, when we walk them for pleasure, it is important to remember that people once walked them out of need and work.
We continue our journey towards the toponym Aluge. Before we reach the dense and rich young beech forest, on the hill we can see where there was a stone quarry that the Austro-Hungarians used to pave the sides of numerous paths, to keep them from falling apart, but also for natural stone platforms for artillery guns. Each extracted stone had its own purpose in the path, retaining wall or military infrastructure. Such spaces show how much nature here was both an ally and a challenge.
The harsh karst did not prevent the military goals from being achieved, and the locals had to work by force or by will. Even today, after more than 100 years, the paths hold their own, and the borders and dry borders are covered with moss and patina, as if you are passing through some time epoch or a kind of dimension. Time has covered them with moss, but it has not taken away their shape or purpose. This is the best proof that stone, when wisely arranged, is more durable than many grand plans.
The path slowly descends and goes up, and the toponym is Aluge. While we are walking along the path we come across a foreigner. We talk to her, she says her name is Inna, she is German, she has been in Njeguši for two days and on both days she has been touring the hiking and caravan trails of Lovćen and the areas below Lovćen. The conversation is pleasant, she says it is her first time in Montenegro, but that she is delighted with its beauties. Sometimes foreigners see the beauty of what we have better than we do.
After talking to her, we continue through Aluge. On the trail itself, we come across a very young yew (Taxus baccata). From my experience from previous trail tours, there is certainly a yew population nearby, but I will investigate that another time. Yew in places like this always attracts special attention, because it belongs to those species that carry both botanical and symbolic value. Its discovery on the trail opens up the possibility that this area is richer than it seems at first glance. Such plants require additional attention and more serious field monitoring.
We continue on, jumping over a few beech trees, while Ilija Đurović and his skiff tirelessly remove branches and young shoots from the trail, but this is what our Ilija does every time we go to the mountains together. The Aluge are beautiful, a carpet of dry beech leaves has covered these valleys and spaces.
We come to a part of the abandoned Njeguš katun Trešnja (Donja). An old stone house surrounded by numerous valleys testifies to the beauty of the katun. What attracts the eye is, next to the road itself, a beautiful ravine, I would say like a mountain eye, full of water. The reflection of the sky and the sun shimmers in it, like a mountain mirror, tempting us to stop and simply fall silent before nature. Ravines in the mountains always have a special place, because they combine water, sky and stone. Such scenes seem almost unreal, as if nature has gathered its full measure of beauty in a small space. In front of such a mirror, a person pauses not because he has nothing to say, but because he feels that everything has already been said by the scene itself.
As I observe this pond full of water, I notice that a small newt (Lissotriton vulgaris) is slowly waking up from hibernation. This is a testament to the pure water and the magical combination of nature that occasionally reveals to us the secrets and magical paths of our nature that we do not appreciate enough. In this small pond, hidden from the world, an entire life is reflected. The presence of the small newt shows that even seemingly modest water places can be precious habitats. Nature often reveals its greatest value to us in such small phenomena. What many people overlook, hides an entire world within itself.
On the same path, another sluice gate was once started, but for some reason the master and builder who was working on it stopped the work and did not finish it. After a break on this path, past this magical and mystical mountain mirror, we continue on. Even unfinished works in the mountains have their own story, because they testify to intention, need and interrupted plans. One wonders what interrupted that work: bad weather, poverty, illness, departure or some other hardship. And such traces, although unfinished, remain part of the history of the area.
At the very exit from this trail, the Šanik spring stretches out before us, sometimes we also encounter it as Ošanik. From a distance, you can already hear the clear waters of Podlovćen erupting from it. Otherwise, this terrain is quite rich in water, which is especially reflected in the numerous smaller springs that emerge from the edges, sometimes from the ground itself. Water is constantly present here, both as a phenomenon and as a blessing of the space. In karst areas, each spring has great significance, because it gathers life around it.
After refreshing ourselves with clear, cool mountain water, the path takes us to the Jovovića katun, which is two to two and a half kilometers away from the Bukovica katun. A small stone house, and next to it a storage room that may have been a warehouse during the Austro-Hungarian occupation, but there are also clearly visible traces of a cable car with iron bars that still stand today. The traces of the cable car in these areas act as scars of a major infrastructural undertaking. They remind us that Lovćen, in addition to its natural and symbolic greatness, was also a place of serious technical interventions. Today, these remains stand as a combination of history, industry and a mountain environment.
From here the road branches off to Trešnja (Gornja), to Bukovica (katun), as well as the hiking trail that leads to Podjezerac and the Mausoleum on Lovćen itself, and the trail that leads to Njeguši. Here, compared to many other trails, hikers are rarer, or they are occasional groups passing through. Such forks always show how connected and branched this area was in terms of life. Each of these directions led to someone, to a house, katun, water, work or guard. That is why mountain trails are the network of life in a region.
It is quite windy and cold in this area, and the view that stretches out over the Njeguš panorama is both beautiful and magnificent, and nothing can ennoble a person like the power of the mountain. From such places, the view serves not only for enjoyment, but also for understanding the space. Only from the mountain can one see more clearly the connection between villages, katuns, waters and road routes. The Njeguš panorama then becomes both a landscape and a story from the history of the space.
After resting and seeing these beauties, we return along this trail full of beautiful impressions. The trail is now in a constant decline, which is natural. However, it is still cold, so the vegetation has not started to grow stronger. When the mountain leaves, it is increasingly difficult to see and notice, which is why this trail is very interesting and valuable. Returning along the same trail always reveals something that was not noticed on the way up. The same stone, the same boundary and the same bends look different when you approach them from a different angle. That is why hiking trails are never exhausted in one pass.
We must preserve the natural treasures we have, because these are unique ecosystems. This trail is like a part of a fairy tale told for this and future generations. As difficult as life was for the highlanders in this area, it also had a beautiful note of peace and tranquility that we do not have today in the 21st century. Preserving such areas also means preserving what we inherited from previous generations. They preserve not only plants, water and stone, but also traces of work, survival and identity. Whoever loses the feeling for such spaces easily loses the feeling for their own homeland. That is why such trails should be recorded, described and repeated, so that they do not remain only in the memory of a few.
Again, on the way back, we met Njemica Inna almost at the same place, who told us how much Montenegro had left a particularly beautiful and precious impression on her, and showed us the path she planned to visit tomorrow. Nature has given us so much as a legacy, it is ours to transform these beauties into values that we should preserve. Such encounters confirm that the natural heritage of Montenegro has the power to leave a deep impression even on those who see it for the first time. It is up to us to give this beauty both content and protection, and a story that will preserve it. Beauty without care easily becomes just a fleeting impression.
After this trail, I was already thinking about the next one we would visit on the slopes of Lovćen, but let it be a secret, because every secret needs a moment and time to shine with its beauty, just like this story. Lovćen always leaves another trail untold and another stone insufficiently read. That is why people return to it, not only for hiking, but because of the need to better understand the space to which it belongs. Every new path along its slopes brings a different image, another trace and another question. And perhaps that is precisely its greatest beauty, which is never revealed all at once.
