Montenegro: A land of colours A 'Thought bubbles by ruthie' piece

Montenegro, known in its mother tongue as Crna Gora, translates as ‘black mountain’. But you’d be wrong to associate this former Yugoslavian nation with dark hues. As I stood at the Mausoleum von Bischof Danilo in Cetinje looking out to Mount Lovćen, the ‘black mountain’ in the Dinaric Alps that gives the country its name, my brother interrupted my mindful sun-soaked gaze to remark that the mountain was in fact grey. I partially accepted his pernickety point, but neither grey nor black does the mountain, or in fact the mountain’s namesake country, justice. Without meaning to evoke the title of a certain novel, the shades of grey are endless; you’d need a vast palette to capture the hues of Mount Lovćen, or any other part of Montenegro’s scenery for that matter.

The varying grey and black shades encircling the South Eastern city of Bar coalesce together in well-formed diagonal lines and run horizontally along the land until they tilt into, and emerge from, the glistening sea. Once at Montenegro’s 80 km stretch of Adriatic coast, the blues of the sea and the sky meet in simple companionship unless quietly interrupted by fortified villages on small islands, such as Sveti Stefan. In these spots, the strong blues take a detour through cream coloured rocks, terracotta roofs and conical green trees before reconnecting with the sky. And when the sky above Montenegro is transformed by the setting sun, so are the grey or black - or however you want to call them - mountains. The textured peaks which enclose the coastal towns are soaked in a deep pink, which both accentuates and softens the varying shapes of the mountains’ surfaces. In Kotor, the pink glow peers over the shadow of the mountains on the other side of the bay and lights up its parallel peaks, leading to dramatic contrasts. Further down the coast eastwards, if hiking back from the secluded beach of Bigovica at the right time, the entirety of the surrounding mountains are bathed in pink, yellow and orange illuminations. But the most spectacular sunset spot of all is perhaps from the top of the Besac fortress looking out to the town of Virpazar and the Balkans’ largest lake, Skadar. The breathtaking panoramic view from this Ottoman fortress keeps evolving as the sky turns into an array of pastel tones before mellowing out to give way to glorious mirrored reflections in the water.

The sandy coloured reeds and green lily pads in Lake Skadar provide an enjoyable break from the deep blue of the immense body of water. Poking through the still surface of the water, the reeds stand tall awaiting the water lily season when Skadar blooms with perky white flowers. Whilst we weren’t there to see the water lilies, we caught Montenegro when its wisteria flowers were at their finest. The carpet of lilac petals delicately shading the terrace at the Citadella in Budva is an unforgettable foreground to the view of the old town and coastline behind. And whilst the display of summertime wild flowers in Biogradska Gora national park in the north of the country must be spectacular, there was something quite magical about being on our springtime hike in solitude, and waking up the next morning to pine trees laced with snow. Circling Lake Biograd in the national park, the forest treats you to sights of cloud-scratching trees embraced by thick green moss and collages of lichen which grow from a floor of wild garlic, dainty flowers and a generation of shedded winter leaves.

Although Montenegro is all about nature, according to many locals, its man-made sites are also worth a visit. The interior of the immense gold domed Church of St Jovan Vladimir in Bar depicts religious scenes through gold leaf and vibrant colours, against a backdrop of a deep, dark blue. The Cathedral of Christ’s Resurrection in Podgorica is an equally impressive sight to behold, standing proudly just streets away from grey and beige communist apartment blocks and a stone's throw from the turquoise flowing water of the Morača river. The vividly painted interiors of these fairly modern religious sites (the former completed in 2016 and latter in 2013) can only hint at how the faded cave frescoes at Ostrog Monastery would have appeared in their heyday in 1667. To behold the cave frescoes, a hike from Ostrog train station zigzags you through rich woodlands with seas of pink flowers and through open green fields where you get a glimpse of the white monastery nestled in the carved out orange-brown-grey-black rock high above. The awe-inspiring monastery smiles down at you from miles away until you reach its welcoming archways.

Montenegro is a feast for the eyes and a country full of colours, contrasts and surprises. If there is one snapshot from the trip that can sum all of this up, it is this: having travelled on the second day of our trip on the incredible northbound train ride from Podgorica, high above the Morača river, whose turquoise water echoes up the rocky canyon to reach passers by on the railway, we arrived in Kolašin. We left our cosy red velvet chairs in our little carriage to step down from the train into what felt like the middle of nowhere. With no taxis, people or shops in sight and a dark grey sky hanging above us, we turned around to wave our train off on its onward journey. And there, almost beaming from the tracks, was a perfectly formed rainbow. A perfect metaphor for what was to come on the rest of the trip.