EXOTIC ESCAPES

Bosnia for Families

Built for children: swimming under waterfalls, a zip line, horses, rafting, and a cable car at sunset.

11 Days / 12 NightsSarajevo, Mostar

FROM$2,500per person

The trip

Built for children: swimming under waterfalls, a zip line, horses, rafting, and a cable car at sunset.

Bosnia is the easiest country in Europe for a Muslim family to travel in, and the reason is dull and wonderful: nobody has to ask. Halal is the default in the butcher, the bakery and the restaurant, the adhan carries across every valley, and no waiter needs a special explanation. This eleven-night route is built around what children actually enjoy. A small boat takes you under the Kravice waterfalls to swim. There is a zip line and an adrenaline park at Javorov Do. There are two hours on horseback in Blidinje among horses chosen for being calm. There is rafting on the Una, a cable car up Trebevic for the sunset, and a forest walk to the Skakavac falls. Between them sit the things that make it Bosnia: the Tunnel of Hope, the Old Bridge at Mostar, the dervish house at Blagaj, and Lukomir, a village at 1,495m that is still living as it did in the fourteenth century.

Nobody has to ask whether the meat is halal. For a family with young children, that single fact reorganises the whole holiday.

Day by day

Every day, already considered.

Prayer, dining, and where you rest, planned into each day, so you are never caught out.

01
DESTINATION
Arrival in the valley
Met at Sarajevo airport by your driver and guide, transferred to the hotel, and the rest of the day free to find your feet in Bascarsija.
02
DESTINATION
Coffee, the Tunnel, and a tree-lined walk
A guided walk of Bascarsija beginning the way Bosnians begin, with a cup of coffee. Then the Tunnel of Hope, dug under the airport during the siege, and an afternoon at Vrelo Bosne, at the end of an avenue of 726 trees planted in 1894.
03
DESTINATION
The highest village, and the zip line
Lukomir on the Bjelasnica ridge, a fourteenth-century stone village at 1,495m where you meet the families who still live there, then Javorov Do for the zip line, the adrenaline park and the stone amphitheatre in a sinkhole.
04
DESTINATION
A forest walk and a cable car
Thirty minutes north to Nahorevo, then a ninety-minute forest trail to the Skakavac waterfall and a picnic in the trees. Back in the city, the cable car up Trebevic for the sunset over Sarajevo.
05
DESTINATION
South to Herzegovina
Down the Neretva with a stop at the Jablanica battle memorial and museum, then into Mostar and a guided walk of the old town, ending at the Old Bridge.
06
DESTINATION
Swim under a waterfall
The Kravice falls, 28m high and 120m wide, with a small boat that takes you underneath them to swim. Then Pocitelj, a restored Ottoman village on a hillside, and Blagaj, where the Buna comes out of a cliff beside a sixteenth-century dervish house.
07
DESTINATION
Two hours on horseback
Into Blidinje Nature Park to ride with an instructor on horses chosen for their temperament, so a first-timer is up and riding within minutes. Then lunch and a visit to a working homestead at 1,200m making cheese or pine-needle preserves.
08
DESTINATION
North to the clearest river
Four and a half hours north through the Bosnian interior to Una National Park, then into Bihac, once an Ottoman frontier fortress, for a guided walk along the river.
09
DESTINATION
Rafting day
A full rafting day on the Una, graded so that children can join, then lunch, free time and dinner at the accommodation.
10
DESTINATION
A waterfall in the middle of a town
Back east with two stops: Jajce, where the Pliva falls 20m through the centre of the old royal town, and Travnik, the Ottoman viziers' capital for 150 years, once called the European Istanbul.
11
DESTINATION
A day of your own
Free in Sarajevo: the bazaar, the Islamic Arts Museum, the copper workshops, or simply an afternoon of coffee and nothing.
12
DESTINATION
Homeward
Breakfast, free time until the transfer, then Sarajevo airport for onward flights.