Uvac, Zlatar and Mileševa Loop: 2-Day Road Trip

Two days and about 640 km buy you the strangest corner of Serbia: the looping Uvac meanders, the largest colony of griffon vultures in the Balkans, a boat ride into an ice cave, the highest and coldest plateau in the country, and the most reproduced fresco in Serbian art. The loop runs Belgrade - Zlatibor - Nova Varoš - Uvac - Sjenica - Mileševa - Belgrade, and it fits a weekend as long as you sort one thing before you leave.

That one thing is the boat. You can’t turn up at Uvac and get on the water: the reserve’s own manager, Rezervat Uvac in Nova Varoš, asks visitors to book in advance, and the boats leave from three separate landings an hour of mountain road apart. Which one you ring decides where you sleep and how early the alarm goes off. The prices are posted and refreshingly small - 10,000 dinars for a whole 12-person boat, or 1,000 dinars a head if you join one - but nobody explains the geography until you’re already driving.

Is two days enough for Uvac?

Yes, but pick your Uvac outing deliberately rather than at the trailhead. The reserve sells a combined trip - boat out, Ice Cave, climb to a viewpoint - that runs four to six hours. Take the long version and you’re back at the car at four with Pešter, Mileševa and 286 km still ahead. Take the short one, or the plain three-hour cruise, and day two lands you home at a civilised hour.

Two days also suits what this corner is. No queues, no ticket halls, no coach parks; it’s shepherds’ country with a nature reserve in the middle. For the greatest-hits version of western Serbia - the Šargan Eight railway, Drvengrad, the Drina canyon - our 4-day western Serbia loop covers that gentler trip.

You need your own car, and not just for convenience: there’s no public transport to a boat landing or a viewpoint at all. Our guide to car rental in Serbia covers deposits and why nearly every car here’s a manual, and driving in Serbia explains the tolls: no vignette, ticket in, pay by distance.

Day one: Belgrade to the Zlatar lakes

Leave after breakfast. The A2 “Miloš Veliki” motorway (E763) takes the pain out of the first half: it runs 150 km southwest from Belgrade, and the final section to Požega only opened in July 2025, punched through the hills by the Laz and Munjino Brdo tunnels, roughly 2.8 km each and the longest road tunnels in the country (published lengths differ by a hundred metres or so, because each is twin-tube and the bores aren’t equal). It isn’t the slog it used to be, right up until the motorway stops dead at Požega and hands you back to a two-lane road through Užice.

It’s a cheap weekend by Western European standards: two days self-driving, with a mid-range room, a couple of restaurant meals, fuel, tolls and the reserve fees, starts around €130 a person.

Break at Zlatibor, about 220-230 km and three hours out: eat and fill the tank. Our Zlatibor guide covers the Gold Gondola and Stopića Cave if you’d rather stay the afternoon.

From Zlatibor it’s another 33 km, about 45 minutes, down to Kokin Brod, where the dam of the Zlatar lake sits within sight of the main road. It’s the softest introduction to the Uvac lake system: catamarans run for a minimum of two hours at 7,000 dinars a boat (3,000 per further hour) or 700 dinars a head, passing the Čolovića stene cliffs where the vultures perch.

Around you is Zlatar, a pine-covered range between Nova Varoš and Prijepolje that tops out at 1,627 m and carries four artificial lakes. Serbs come here to breathe: at 1,237 m there’s a 330-bed rehabilitation hospital trading on the mountain air. Nova Varoš, your base, has about 7,500 residents and the pace to match.

Where to sleep on the loop

Day two is decided by how far you sleep from the Krstac landing, where this loop gets on the water.

Nova Varoš is the default: on the day-one line, a quarter of an hour from the Zlatar dam, and 41 km, about an hour, from Krstac in the morning. Fine for a boat at ten.

Sjenica is the move if you want the early departure. Driving on from the dam takes about an hour instead of fifteen minutes, so it’s close to a wash - you do that hour in the evening and wake up 7 minutes from the landing. The town is plainer; you’re trading the nicer evening for the earlier boat.

Zlatibor is the comfortable option - more hotels, better food, a promenade to walk off dinner - but Krstac is 78 km and nearly two hours away, which eats the morning whole. Where to stay in Zlatibor sorts through those beds if the hotel matters more than the early meander.

The Uvac boat trip: what it costs, and where it leaves from

The reserve manager publishes its own price list, which is rare here. Entry is 100 dinars for adults and 50 dinars for ages 8 to 18; the Ice Cave costs 150 dinars on top for anyone over eight. On the walking routes the official instructions have you buying the ticket from the ranger on site, and the page says nothing about cards for the boats, so bring dinars.

This loop uses Krstac, or its twin landing Markova Ravan, both 5-6 km from Sjenica: that’s the side of the canyon the road home runs through. Two trips leave from there:

• The cruise. About 12 km of lake, vulture-watching, the Ice Cave, back by boat. Around three hours, 10,000 dinars per boat - a boat takes 12 people including your guide - or 1,000 dinars per person joining a departure.
• The cruise plus a viewpoint climb, up to Molitva, Ravni Krš or Veliki Vrh: 13,000 dinars per boat, four to six hours. Joining individually, it’s 1,000 dinars a head for the Molitva version, where you walk the roughly 6 km back yourself, or 1,400 for Ravni Krš or Veliki Vrh with a boat ride back.

A third landing, Rastoke, sits 12-13 km and 16 minutes from Nova Varoš: same boat, same price, wrong side of the canyon for this loop.

The Ice Cave (Ledena pećina) belongs to the Ušak system in the canyon wall, and you walk roughly 700 m of it from the landing. It’s cold in there in August, so take a layer. Prices checked against the official site in August 2026; confirm before you go.

Book by ringing the office in Nova Varoš on 033 64 198, weekdays 08:00 to 16:00 - a few days out in July and August, and check the boats run at all in the cold months. Our Uvac canyon guide has the background on the reserve, the vultures and the cave.

Molitva or Veliki Vrh: the viewpoint you can actually reach

Here’s the thing nobody tells you. Molitva is the viewpoint on every postcard, including the one at the top of this page, and it’s not a drive-up. On foot from Krstac the reserve puts it at about 6 km each way, three and a half to four hours there and back at an easy pace. The cheap trick is the combined trip above: 1,000 dinars a head buys the boat out and the climb, and you walk that 6 km back along the shore instead of paying for the return leg. Quoted walking times differ wildly online because people start from different places, so ask where your walk begins before you agree to a price.

Veliki Vrh is the shortcut if you’re skipping the boat. The reserve lists a trailhead at Gornje Lopiže you can drive to, about 500 m from the viewpoint - a stroll, not a hike - with roughly another 1.5 km on to Ravni Krš. The catch is the approach: 39 km and around 80 minutes from Nova Varoš, an average under 30 km/h. An hour of driving for a five-minute walk is the honest shape of Uvac; the views are ridiculous and the access never quite is.

Day two: across Pešter to Sjenica

From Krstac it’s seven flat minutes into Sjenica, and the change of scenery is abrupt. Canyon country stops and the Pešter plateau begins: a bare karst tableland between 1,150 and 1,492 m, grazed by sheep and almost empty of people. Peštersko polje, the field at its heart, covers about 50 km² and is reckoned the largest field in Serbia and the highest in the Balkans. Since 1 May 2006, 3,455 hectares of its wet peat bog have been a Ramsar wetland of international importance - peat bog on karst is a freak of nature, and it’s the only place in Serbia where Montagu’s harrier nests.

Sjenica sits at 1,026 m, one of the highest towns in the country, and the plateau’s party trick is the cold: below freezing on an average of 134 days a year, first frost in late September, last in early May. The coldest official reading in the municipality, -39 °C, came from Karajukića Bunari on 26 January 2006, beating the -38.4 °C measured in Sjenica in 1954. Locals call the plateau the Siberia of Sandžak, and they aren’t being poetic.

All that grass and cold pays off in one delicious way. Pešter lives off livestock, and its dairy is famous across Serbia: Sjenica cheese (sjenički sir), the lamb, the pršut. Buy it where the sheep are, not in a Belgrade supermarket. With a spare day, Novi Pazar and the UNESCO monasteries around it are 56 km east.

Mileševa and the White Angel

Turn west and drop off the plateau toward Prijepolje: 44 km that take about 85 minutes, which tells you everything about the road. Mileševa stands in the valley of the Mileševka, the stream running right past the courtyard wall.

King Stefan Vladislav founded it between 1234 and 1236, and the first layer of frescoes went up in the 1230s. One of them is the White Angel, seated in white robes at Christ’s empty tomb: the most reproduced image in Serbian art, and startling in the flesh, paint nearly eight centuries old and a face that looks like someone you might meet.

The building has had a violent life. In 1236 Vladislav brought the relics of his uncle Saint Sava here from Trnovo in Bulgaria, and in the 1590s the Ottomans took them to Belgrade and burned them publicly on Vračar hill - which is why the Temple of Saint Sava stands where it does. Some historians place the coronation of the Bosnian king Tvrtko I here in 1377; the Ottomans set the place alight in 1459; an 1863 restoration reshaped the church. It’s a working monastery, so the usual rules apply - modest dress, hours that bend around services, no photos inside - and our guide to Serbia’s monasteries sets out what to expect at the door.

The drive home, and the motorway that isn’t there yet

From Prijepolje it’s 286 km back to Belgrade, about four and a half hours: over the hills to Užice, then onto the A2 at Požega. Leave by mid-afternoon in summer, when the motorway into the capital fills with returning weekenders.

One footnote explains the whole trip. The unbuilt final leg of the A2, Požega to Boljare on the Montenegrin border, is 106.3 km of planned motorway that would run straight across the Pešter plateau near Sjenica, and the hardest stretch alone calls for 72 bridges and 10 tunnels. Build that, and Uvac becomes a comfortable day trip from Belgrade - with everything you liked about the emptiness going the same way. For now the mountain roads are the filter, and that’s why you’ll have a viewpoint to yourself on a Saturday in June.

What to know before you go

• Cash and a full tank. Beyond Nova Varoš and Sjenica the plateau is thinly settled: most villages sit on the rim of the field, some only lived in over the summer.
• Season. May to October is the window: boats run reliably, tracks are dry, vultures are up on the thermals. Winter is spectacular and hard, and winter tyres are legally required from 1 November to 1 April when there’s snow or ice.
• Book the boat first. It’s the only fixed appointment on the loop, and it dictates your bed, your alarm and your viewpoint.
• Take the small car. The reserve says the Gornje Lopiže trailhead is reachable by car, motorbike or even bicycle, so you don’t need a 4x4 - but a big rental buys you nothing on roads this slow.

Two days, 640 km, one phone call. Get that order right and the loop hands you the two images southwest Serbia is made of: a river bending back on itself under a griffon’s wing, and an angel painted eight hundred years ago at an empty tomb. Browse our other Serbian routes to bolt it onto a longer drive.