Our last bus journey was so memorably awful that I really wasn't looking forward to another one.

But today's was the polar opposite of Friday's journey. The bus was a proper bus, as opposed to a glorified minibus. It wasn't full to the scuppers. We could sit together. The temperature was sensible. Such a different experience...

But to start at the beginning. We walked to Banja Luka's bus terminal in the midst of a splendid sunrise:



We paid KM 2 per person to exit the waiting area and access the departure bays (which you want to do fairly early on, as it's smoky inside, and it's also hard, from the waiting hall, to keep tabs on which buses are arriving -- unless you can understand the announcements, which we can't).

When the bus rolled up, we paid KM 2 per bag to put our rucksacks in the luggage compartment. Then we were onboard, and departing promptly, with ample time and space to comfortably demolish our mortadella breakfast buns.


The route was magnificently scenic -- an unexpected bonus. These photos are poor quality, having been snapped on the fly, through mucky windows, and always subject to unwanted reflections, but they give some idea of the deep gorges and mountain vistas we travelled through:









You can see from the pictures that there's snow about... And when we arrived in Travnik (after three hours and 20 minutes on the road, the 20 being the unscheduled extra time occasioned by a diversion), it was clear that it had snowed here earlier, and there was an unwelcome amount still lingering.

Our apartment is spacious and simple:




As we stood sussing things out, the call to prayer sounded... We've not heard this since leaving Malaysia, and it was quite a moment. There had been mosques in Banja Luka, but we hadn't heard evidence of the daily presence of Islam that the call to prayer represents.

Here it made us feel as though we'd entered another cultural zone, and this was underlined by our first exploratory walk. Many of the buildings remind you of Turkiye. Many of the women wear hijab. You see signs for things like boza and lokum. There had been a palpable cultural shift between Zagreb and Banja Luka, and there has definitely been another one between Banja Luka and here.

The absolute first thing we did was visit the Ivo Andric Memorial Birthplace Museum, which is just minutes from our accommodation. It was his Bosnian Chronicle, after all, that put Travnik on our itinerary in the first place:






But we also spent a fair amount of time just wandering, frustrated (in my case) by the slipperiness of snow-turned-icy-slushy, but still entranced by this atmospheric place and the way a dusting of the white stuff and a wrapper of mist had made it even more resonant:









In terms of cuisine, we popped in to the Royal Cafe and Patisserie for coffee and exquisite little creamy, chocolaty fruit things. One of the problems of this part of the world is that smoking is permitted in cafes, so we never want to linger too long. Still, with a price tag of KM 10 (GBP 4.40) for everything you see on the table, you really can't complain.


And we called in at the supermarket on the way home for a bottle of Mostar wine, another round of those yummy preserved capsicums, and a couple of local cheeses:


We end the day very glad to have got here safely and comfortably, and looking forward to some snow-free explorations tomorrow.