It’s a small country just below Croatia formally a part of Yugoslavia.
Before I’d even found this out for myself, I’d agreed to go along.  The first part of plan was to catch a easy jet flight from Gatwick to Dubrovnik well this is where it all started to go wrong, I got my lift to the airport and duly strolled past the check in desks watching all the people looking and commenting about this weirdo with boat on shoulder and paddle in hand, me!

I met up with the others and we proceeded to create chaos as we checked in, once this was done we were all then told to go and wait over there as all our bags “kayaks jam packed with padding kit” are overweight.  The former Gestapo check in guy now wants us to take all our kit out of our boats, and check it in as additional luggage at additional cost, not the best thing to suggest to a bunch of hard up kayakers. In the middle of this the fire alarm now sounds and we have to evacuate the building boats and all. I cant explain the utter chaos and confusion now as we all try to squeeze though the little tiny fire exit with all the check in hall passengers, all their baggage, and us with our boats.  Fire alarm over we make our way back to the check in desk with twice as many bags that now have to be weighed in again!  Now we’re late so we all run round to the outsized conveyor and load the boats and kit through the little black hole down to the plane. We now have 10 minutes to get through security and make our way to the plane that’s parked just about as far away as you can get! After being x rayed and frisked it’s now a sprint to the gate and we all make it with only seconds to spare, dripping with sweat we all find a seat and have a count up, yep theirs 13 of us and it’s the 13th of May Oh!!! That explains a lot!

We Land at Dubrovnik airport Croatia, all our boats and kit are loaded into a mini bus and trailer and we’re off across the border in to Montenegro we stop at a petrol garage to get some drinks and food this is where I find out the 200 Euros I got out of the cash machine at the airport are not Euros, its Croatian currency and it’s not accepted over the border, another strike against the lucky 13.
After a 3½ hour journey over the bumpiest ever tarmac roads and a hairy dirt track on the side of a mountain, where at some points sitting on the back seat all I could see was road or sky, luckily it was dark! We met up with 2 land rovers for the final part of our journey, the trailer is hitched up to one of them and we transfer all of our kit over and are driven down the 3K off road track down to the river and Kamp Grab situated at the bottom of the 1300 meter deep Tara gorge our home for the next 4 days and nights. Its now 2 am and we’ve been travelling for about 14 hours and all had enough so we all find or beds and fall straight asleep.
We wake the following morning and are greeted by the fantastic scenery of the gorge and beautiful turquoise blue of the river Tara and breakfast. The plan for today is to paddle the 18k stretch normally rafted. We get kitted up and into the land rovers for the off road trip traversing the side of the gorge to the get in. We all gently seal launch ourselves in off the sandy beach into the cool blue water and ferry glide across the river to warm up and loosen up. The first 8k is high volume alpine grade 3-4 with large standing waves and very few holes that need avoiding, the speed of the river took a bit of getting used to for all of us as we negotiated our way down taking one set of rapids at a time. This took down us to Kamp Grab where we stopped and gathered our thoughts and had refreshments. The following 10k is slightly smaller with a beautiful water fall just after the camp. The get out is at a bridge in no man’s land between the Montenegro and Bosnian border posts.

Day 2 we planned to do the full 76k of the Tara gorge, something I wasn’t looking forward to in my little tiny play boat. This meant a 5.30 wakeup call,  bleary eyed we loaded the land rovers and were taken to the minibus parked at the top of the gorge for the 3 hour drive to the get in, outstanding scenery as we drove up to the Durmitor National park for those that could keep their eyes open for the long drive.  From the get in the river is alpine grade 3-4 for about 2-3k until just past the Đurđevića Tara road bridge crossing the gorge some 135meters above the water. After this it clams down to a fast flowing grade 1-2 with the odd grade 3 rapid, it took about 2 ½ hours to get to the first and only marker we were given ‘Radovan Luka’ a small hotel on river left the only building in the gorge.  Sometime after this we had lunch, cold and tired we all got out of our boats for a well needed stretch and to eat the massive door step sandwiches we had been provided with. Refreshed we got back in to our boats and after a short paddle we are all taken in ore at the beautiful fairytale Sige Bajlovica waterfall, appearing to come out of nowhere the water flowed through moss and fern covered rocks before it cascaded down into the rich blue water of the Tara. This is the sort of thing you would expect to see in some far flung tropical paradise but no it was in front of us, photos taken we pressed on worried that we would not get back to camp before dark. About another hour or so later we reached the familiar sight of the get in form the day before, and before we knew it we had paddled the 8k section from that day and were back at camp. I would have never believed that we could have completed this long paddle in around 6 hours including our lunch stop but well worth it for the fantastic scenery in the gorge.

Day 3 We fancied a change of scenery and decided to paddle the Piva. This is dam released 10k section of river to the confluence of the Tara. With one of the possible 3 hydroelectric dam turbines running the water release is around 80cumecs more than enough for our group.
With all 13 boats stuffed into a small box trailer or tied to the roof of the land rover our hosts decided to speed around the campsite at 70 mph to check that nothing would fall off on the drive up to the get in, once this safety check was complete we were off.  The get in is a steep down hill track to the side of the dam and not the easiest of walks with boat on shoulder. The river is crystal clear blue grade 3-4 and one of the nicest rivers you could ever hope to paddle, the rapids are longer, steeper, and more rock infested than the Tara with much shorter breaks between them. This is one of the best rivers I have paddled and would go down in my top 10 ever favourite rivers ever a sentiment echoed by most of the group. I’d like to go back and do this again with 2 turbines running, something the others were not so keen on. Back to camp for a spot of lunch and a beer then a couple of us went for a play on the features overlooked by the camp until we couldn’t paddle any longer.

Our last day was an early start for those that wanted to do the 8k section we had paddled on the first day before breakfast, and a lie in for the rest. With the lack of the morning sun to melt the snow on mountains up stream meant the river was a good 6 inches lower than the days before but just as much fun.
With the kit was laid out in the sun to try and dry it off and avoid any further excess weight charges,  we cleared out our bunk rooms. 
Bags packed and boats loaded into the trailer one last time we said good bye to our hosts, who could not have been more helpful or put their selves out more to run us and all our kit around their country sorting out permits to paddle the gorge and border crossings.

If you plan to do a trip to this region I would recommend using provided transport or hiring a 4x4, as the roads to the rivers are steep and loose made dirt tracks. There are plenty of rafting company’s that will welcome paddlers and provide good accommodation and food on both the Montenegrin and Bosnian sides of the Tara. We stayed at Kamp Grab part of the Anitra travel agency. www.tara-grab.com these guys can’t do enough for you and will tailor make a trip to suit you whether it be rafting, kayaking, jeep safari, mountain biking or quad biking.

See more photos from my gallery here

The Tara River emerges from the confluence of the Opasnica and Veruša Rivers in the Dinaric Alps of Montenegro, flows 144 kilometers northward and converges with the Piva River near the Bosnian border to form the Drina River. The Tara River cuts the Tara River Gorge, the deepest canyon in Montenegro and Europe and second deepest in the world after Grand Canyon, at 78 kilometers in length and 1,300 meters at its deepest.
The canyon is protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and is a part of Durmitor national park.
The Tara River is also the largest European supply of drinking water