Duration: Full day – approx. 10–11 hours
Countries: Bosnia & Herzegovina ↔ Serbia (start in Sarajevo or Belgrade)
Starts / Ends (direction): Sarajevo → Belgrade or Belgrade → Sarajevo (reverse itinerary available)
Route: Sarajevo • Višegrad • Andrićgrad • Drina River Valley • Drvengrad • Mokra Gora • Tara National Park • Belgrade (or vice versa)
Group size: Small group (max 8 travellers). Can be booked for more persons as private tour.
Travel style: Scenic transfer with cultural, historical and landscape sightseeing
Difficulty: Easy — light walking and relaxed scenic driving
Departure Time: 8:00 AM (free pickup at guests address)
Price: From €135 per person (seasonal and group flexible pricing with discount)
Inclusions:
• Hotel pickup and drop-off
• Comfortable air-conditioned vehicle
• All entrance fees (see inclusions)
• Professional English-speaking driver/guide
• Scenic drive through Eastern Bosnia and Western Serbia
• Local insights about culture, history and landscapes of the region
• Small-group experience for a relaxed journey
Experience the perfect blend of history, culture, and landscapes on our Sarajevo to Belgrade Connecting Tour, a scenic door-to-door journey linking two of the most fascinating capitals in the Balkans. This full-day transfer tour between Sarajevo and Belgrade transforms a simple travel day into a rich cultural experience through the remarkable regions of Eastern Bosnia and Western Serbia.
Instead of travelling directly between the cities, this tour allows you to explore some of the most unique destinations along the route. From the historic town of Višegrad and its famous UNESCO-listed bridge over the Drina River, to the cultural complex of Andrićgrad, and further into the picturesque landscapes of Western Serbia, the journey offers a deeper understanding of the history, culture, and natural beauty that define this part of the Balkans.
While the tour operates in both directions — Sarajevo to Belgrade and Belgrade to Sarajevo, this itinerary highlights the journey starting from Sarajevo. Regardless of the direction, the experience remains carefully designed to combine comfortable travel with meaningful stops along the way.
With Funky Tours, travelling between cities becomes more than just transportation. It becomes a memorable journey through the heart of the Balkans, where every stop adds a new story to the road between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.
During the winter season, certain experiences included in this tour may be subject to availability due to weather conditions and seasonal schedules.
The Šargan Eight heritage railway, one of the highlights of Western Serbia, operates on a reduced winter timetable and may not run on all travel dates. Similarly, the Drina River boat cruise is generally not available during the winter months. Visits to Tara National Park may also depend on snowfall and road conditions.
Because of these seasonal limitations, the winter tour price is lower than the summer rate, and some entrance fees are not included. When weather or operational conditions do not allow certain activities, the itinerary is adjusted into a scenic Sarajevo–Belgrade transfer with carefully selected stops, ensuring that the journey remains enjoyable and culturally enriching.
PEACE OF MIND by Funky Tours policy ensures 100% guest’ satisfaction and hassle-free experiences when booking and conducting tours and holidays with us. Learn more about our Peace of Mind policy.
By far, per listed itinerary (7 stops), this is the most diverse connecting day tour between Sarajevo and Belgrade. Having tons of beautiful stops and outbound costs, always aiming at great travellers experiences, this tour in comparison to other means of travel, is the best optimised cost-benefit service you can get on the market. We guarantee it.
Among other outbound costs mentioned, such as Šargan Eight train ride or visit to Drvengrad village, we can’t pass by and skip beautiful Drina river cruise or visit National Park Tara.
Simply, perception of grandiosity of the UNESCO site of Mehmed Paša Sokolović bridge, can’t be experienced by just walking across it, and taking few photos from a side. You must go under it. In the same time, at Višegrad, we enjoy to help local boat businesses thrive.
National Park Tara’s most beautiful viewpoint is not accessible by asphalt road, part of it is macadam. We don’t mind detouring several tens of kilometre, and putting bit more amortization on our vehicles and gas costs, for our guests, to probably once in the lifetime, enjoy the amazing views from Banjska Stena.
If you ever get into situation where you are comparing products on the market, please don’t judge them by the price only, take a deeper look into what you get in return, aka: “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
Departure Times Daily at 7.45 AM.
Pickup Locations This is door-to-door tour-transfer, so we pick you up at your address.
Activity Note: This is a full-day tour covering the most beautiful and scenic parts of East Bosnia and West Serbia. You will have a chance to experience a boat ride on the mesmerizing Drina River and ride in the famous Šargan eight train. This tour is adapted to all ages and is not physically demanding.
After departing Sarajevo in the morning at 7.45 AM, we’ll take approx. 45-minute ride to reach Rogatica and the first stop of the day, Borak Stećci necropolis near the Burati village. This hidden gem deep in the misty forests of East Bosnia was recently inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage. We will discover the unique history of the Medieval Bosnian Kingdom and figure out why these blocks of limestone are scattered all around Bosnia and Herzegovina. The cemetery is hidden in the forest, so a bit of hiking is required to find them. Read more about the Stećci phenomenon in a BBC article.
Later, we ride for one more hour through mountain parts of Bosnia before we meet up with the turquoise Drina river canyon and arrive at Višegrad.
Višegrad is home to UNESCO heritage too, an Ottoman time bridge built in 1577. by the Grand Vizier Mehmed Pasa Sokolović. The UNESCO summary: “The unique elegance of proportion and monumental nobility of the property as a whole bear witness to the greatness of this style of architecture.” is definitely a reason to visit such a beautiful place.
The book: “Bridge Over Drina” by Bosnian and Travnik born, World famous Nobel Prize winner, and Yugoslav writer Ivo Andrić, has given most of the glory to this fantastic place and we surely recommend you to read this novel before coming to this region and for this tour. This way, you can better understand the historical importance of this area from both a local and a global perspective.
As soon as we see the Bridge and take the river cruise through the amazingly green Drina River, we’ll explore the stone town of Andrićgrad (eng. Andrić town). Small, stone-made town, recently built, named and dedicated after novelist Ivo Andrić. The site also interprets the story of once glorious and successful Yugoslavian cinematography from the perspective of one of the best local directors – Emir Kusturica.
As soon as we finish the story of Višegrad, we’ll continue driving towards the east Bosnian border and, on the way, will pay a visit to one of the most important Serbian Orthodox monasteries, Dobrun Monastery. Initially built in 1343 with frescoes preserved until today is the ideal stop to learn more about local history and enjoy the fantastic nature surrounding it.
Later on, time to cross the Bosnia to Serbia border, and as soon as we do, we will enter the fantastic area of the nature park of “Šargan-Mokra Gora”.
The first stop (for lunch possibly) will be the ethno village of Drvengrad (eng. Timber Town), also know as Küstendorf and Mećavnik. Village-town was designed by the movie director Emir Kusturica for his movie “Life is Miracle” and the design won the “Philippe Rotthier European Architecture Award” from the Brussels Foundation for Architecture.
Why the place looks out of this world? Why it won one of the most prestigious awards in the world of architecture? The best is to come with us and see it for yourself.
After lunch, at Drvengrad, we are about to take a train ride, but not just any train ride; we will do the famous “Šargan Eight”.
The Šargan Eight is a narrow gauge (760mm) steam railway initially built in 1925., famously called Ćira (Chira). Once, it used to connect Sarajevo and Belgrade, and the name “eight” origins from the pure shape of the track, which, if looked at from the sky, looks like the number 8.
It was famous for its impressive engineering, which enabled it to rapidly climb a height of 300m over a short distance of 3.500m, whereas the total length of the railway today is 15.440m. Stunningly, all of that was achieved by passing through 22 tunnels and five bridges. Quite fantastic stuff, even on the global scale of rail and train engineering at the time, but the most amazing for us is that we are going to experience this story. Today the train, after it was closed in 1974, is again reopened for tourist reasons but also for true lovers of old-school steam train engineering. Simply exciting and stunning.
Read more about Bosnian Gauge also known as “Bosnaspur” or “Bosnische Spurweite”.
As soon as we end the fantastic train ride, we’ll continue toward Belgrade. On the way, we will stop to explore the tremendous region of one of Serbia’s most beautiful National Parks – National Park Tara.
National Park Tara (declared in 1981.), with its biological diversity, is one of the most amazing areas in the whole of Serbia, offering great nature experiences, stunning views, hiking and trekking opportunities, unique Picea Omorica, vast animal diversity, and many other ways to fully enjoy life.
One of the most important stops will be the stunning viewpoint of “Banjska Stena,” which offers a fantastic panorama of Perućac Lake on the Drina River, which naturally borders Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.
Generally, after Tara National Park explorations, the rest of the roughly three hours rides to Belgrade will take us through Bajina Bašta town with a last short stop at “House on the Drina“, where at the end of the day, we hope to be in Belgrade no later than 8 pm.
What Do I Need to Bring?
Funky Tours is Totally Fantastic!!!
The support staff in the office are super friendly, knowledgeable, helpful, and responsive. They custom designed our tour where we met a group a few days in, and left a few days before it was over, and FT organized every transfer seamlessly. If you’re going to the Balkans, go with Funky tours!
Funky Tours did an amazing job helping us to organize our time in Bosnia and Herzegovina
We did a total of five different trips with Funky Tours. The company was a delight to work with and every single one of our tour guides was fantastic.
We usually like to make our own plans while traveling but this company made it so easy and affordable to visit this magical part of the world.
Great way to travel from Belgrade to Sarajevo
This was a really enjoyable tour, although it was a long day. There were just two of us on the tour – me plus a really nice guy from the US.
Adis picked me up promptly at the appointed time in Belgrade. Our small group of three got on well and we talked and laughed a lot. It was very interesting talking to Adis and hearing him talk about life in Bosnia. We had a couple of breaks which worked well.
The tour is the reverse from the Sarajevo to Belgrade tour and so we had quite an early lunch in Serbia to ensure we were on time for the ride on the Šargan 8 rail tour. This was good as you could order quite big meals like pizza but I was able to order a homemade-tasting vegetable soup with bread which suited me fine.
For me I guess the highlight was Višegrad as I read the Andrić novel several years ago so it was fantastic to see the bridge. Another great moment was when we entered Sarajevo at the end of a long but very interesting day!
Thanks to Adis who kept us safe – and entertained – throughout our journey.
Best tour ever
Amazing tour and guide. No complaints. Would recommend to anyone. Don’t know what else to say ………………………………………………………..
Finally got to see parts of serbia
They say the journey through life is an interesting one. So was this one into Serbia.
Stephen was a great guide, he explained historical facts on all points of the tour in thorough detail, I am grateful to be sitting next to him throughout the tour.
He also gave me standing elevation by saying i am a local, as I have been to Bosnia 3 times. But he said there is one more procedure left… to smoke a cigarette. Haha i am just kidding about the smoking bit and so was he.
We discussed personal stories from life and we also discussed music as well during the end of the tour. Its good to have a guide that does not just talk about history but one you can have general discussions with during the journey, when there is no history to talk about.
