After a few days in Belgrade, we decided to take a day trip to Djerdap National Park.

Our main goals for this trip were:

1. See and experience the Serbia away from the city
2. Visit the Golubac Fortress
3. Hike the vantage point overlooking the Iron Gates that we’ve seen all over social media

The Plan

According to Google, the route from Belgrade was straightforward:  two hours to the Golubac Fortress and another hour along the Danube River to Djerdap National Park.

Here’s a map of our route:

Driving Outside the City

While Bill drove, I did a little ‘drive-by shooting’.  Here is a pic from a little village we drove through:

I don’t know why but I was surprised to see farms and crops that reminded me of Minnesota.  Well… except for the huge mountains of course!  We saw lots of corn and sunflower fields.

Below is a pic from the countryside:

Golubac Fortress

After we drove out of the city and through the countryside, we approached the Golubac Fortress.

This fortress is perched along the Danube River, standing guard as the river narrows.  It was originally built in the 1500’s and has been highly sought after by the Ottoman’s, Bulgarians, Hungarians, and Serbs over the years.

It was around 12:30 and we decided not to stop.  Instead, we would stop on our way back since we thought it would be super cool to see it at sunset AND we wanted to make sure we got our hike to the Iron Gates overlook in.

Here’s a pic of the fortress during the day as we drove by:

SPOILER ALERT:  Our forthcoming hike lasted longer than expected, so we didn’t make it back here in time to go inside.  However, here’s a pic from the other side as we drove by later in the dark:

The Danube River

Once we got to the Golubac Fortress, the rest of our drive followed very closely along the Danube River.

The Danube begins in Germany and runs through ten different countries before ending in the Black Sea.  Also, the river represents the border between Romania and Serbia, at least where we were driving.

Here are a few pics we took from the road where you can see Romania on the other side of the river:

The other interesting thing was the road was super close to the river.  It was also often level with it too!

Here are a few pics to show you how close we drove to the river:

Tunnels

Another thing that stood out to us was the number of tunnels we had to drive through during this trip. Here’s a cool pic of one of the many tunnels we drove through, which then lead into another tunnel:

Djerdap National Park

By early afternoon, we arrived in a small town called Donji Milanovac to check out the park’s information center.

At the info center, we pointed to a (famous) picture of the Iron Gates asking for directions to take that picture.

The helpful young girl did her best to give us instructions in English. She basically said to continue along the road we were on, and the trailhead would be right after the fourth tunnel we go through.  She also said the trailhead and Iron Gates overlook were super easy to find and we couldn’t miss them. PERFECT!

SIDE NOTE: she was clearly embarrassed by her lack of fluency in English but WE were more embarrassed by our lack of ANY fluency in Serbian.  We pretty much only knew how to say ‘hello’, ‘yes’, ‘no’, and ‘thank you’.

Just in case we needed a map to reference later, we took this pic at the info center before we left:

Hiking Goals

This is a pic of the rock outcrop we wanted to hike to get the BEST (and famous) vantage point of the Iron Gates.  It is where we thought all the best photos of the Iron Gates were taken and we wanted to see it firsthand:

Once we parked our car (basically anywhere along the road where you can find a spot) and paid the guy at the trailhead to hike, we checked out the posted trail map & signs and evaluated our situation.

According to the sign at the trailhead, the Veliki Strbac hike was about 7.6 km and would take about 4-5 hours.  Since it was about 2:00, we’d finish the hike around 6:00-7:00pm and be back to the Golubac Fortress in time for the sunset around 8:00 pm.

Also, I will confess that I didn’t think this 7-8 km hike was going to be that difficult.  I mean six months prior we hiked the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim which was 17-18 miles and about a mile of elevation gain (see Bill’s cool video of that hike here).

Spoiler alert:  I greatly underestimated this hike AND how out-of-shape I was!

The Hike

Here is a pic of us at the beginning of the hike:

The first few kilometers is basically a straight 15-20% incline.  It got the heart pumping fast, strong, and early.

Once the trail leveled off, we came to a fork in the trail.  There was a sign that said there was something 0.6 km to the left but we weren’t sure what it was.  It also said the Veliki Strbac trail was to the right so we continued to the right.

Here’s a sign for the trail we took – the Veliki Strbac:

SIDE NOTE: signage here didn’t ever say how far you’ve gone or how much further you have to go.  It just let you know what trail you were on or where to go to follow it.

For the next 2.5-3 hours, we continued at a pretty steep and steady incline.  Also the trail took various forms:

The trail variations were:

• flat, open, and wide enough to fit a car
• scrambling over limestone rocks trying to be sure to stay on the trail
• bushwhacking through chest-high weeds, not seeing your feet, and hoping you were still on the trail
• shaded dirt dirt paths about a foot wide in the woods
• sun-drenched, open, grassy knolls
• steep, rocky paths at the edge of steep dropoffs

Unfortunately, we didn’t take any pictures while bushwhacking through chest-high weeds.  I suspect it was during these portions of the hike where I earned the 50+ mosquito bites that ended up below my knees and itched and oozed like crazy a couple days later.  In retrospect, I should’ve expected a more challenging hike and wore long pants for protection.  I also should’ve invested in some bug repellent!  Hindsight is 20/20, right?

Here are a few pics of us on the trail:

Land Mines (not figuratively)

Believe it or not, during our hike, I wasn’t thinking about the possibility of encountering poisonous snakes, deadly spiders, or infectious bugs.

I was, however, bothered by the never-ending swarms of mosquitos buzzing around my head.

More importantly, though, I was concerned about unknowingly stepping on an old, undiscovered land mine from the war in the 1990’s.  I would half-jokingly say as we were hiking, “Don’t step on any wires…”

Turning Back

At about 5:00, we still weren’t at the top, and according to Bill’s estimation, we had about a kilometer or two yet to go.

Unfortunately, I was dealing with cramping in my toes, feet, ankles, shins, and calves AND we had serious concerns about running out of daylight.  We didn’t have our flashlights or headlamps.  More importantly, we weren’t super interested in walking through a Serbian forest in the dark anyways.

While disappointing, we decided it was best to turn back and descend back down the mountain to the car.

It took us about an hour to get back to that aforementioned fork in the trail.  Since we knew we had plenty of daylight to get back to our car at that point, we decided to see what was down that other 0.6 km fork.

After walking about 15 mins, we came upon what we were after the whole time…

The Iron Gates overlook!!!!!

The Iron Gates

We reached the overlook around 6:30 so the lighting for pictures was not ideal and we were facing into the sun that had started setting.

From this vantage point, I could imagine ships of warriors approaching to conquer land like in Game of Thrones or something.  I also imagined Viking ships entering fjords even though we were very far from Scandinavia.

Despite the less than ideal lighting, I think a lot of our pics turned out pretty nice:

Here’s a pic I thought was cool of Bill on the overlook framing up a shot of the Iron Gates:

Return to Belgrade

It took us about 30 mins to get back to the car, and it was so nice to sit down and take my hiking shoes off.

As you saw above, we passed Golubac Fortress after dark (around 8:00 pm) so we didn’t stop.

We enjoyed a peaceful drive back to Belgrade with a sense of satisfaction that we hiked more than most people AND we got the view we were after.

Thanks for reading about our journey through Djerdap National Park and happy and safe travels!