Scattered across the meadows and forest edges of Bosnia and Herzegovina are thousands of carved medieval tombstones called stećci, great blocks of limestone shaped like chests, slabs or little gabled houses, some plain and some carved with spirals, vines, crescent moons, hunting scenes, dancers and raised hands. They date mostly from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, and together with sites in Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia they were inscribed on the UNESCO list in 2016 as the Stećci Medieval Tombstone Graveyards. Borak, near the village of Burati in the hills above Rogatica, is one of these graveyards, a cluster of stones lying among the grass where they have stood for six hundred years or more.
Nobody fully agrees on who carved them or what all the symbols mean, and that mystery is part of their power. Some have inscriptions in Bosnian Cyrillic, speaking in a plain, direct voice about the dead man who lies beneath. Visit quietly, do not climb on the stones, and take time to look at the carving in slanting light, when the reliefs come alive.
The country around is high and rolling, the edge of the Romanija plateau, with pine and beech forest, open pasture, haystacks and small villages of steep-roofed houses. Sokolac, thirteen kilometres away, and Rogatica, a little closer, are the local towns, with fuel, shops and simple cafés where you will be offered strong Bosnian coffee in a copper džezva. The war of the 1990s left deep scars in eastern Bosnia, and they are still visible in abandoned houses and memorials; in remote areas, stick to roads and marked paths, as some ground was mined and not all of it has been cleared.
For riding, the roads between Sarajevo, Sokolac, Rogatica and Goražde are a pleasure: winding, often freshly surfaced, with forest and long views, and light traffic away from the main routes. The descent toward the Drina at Goražde is particularly good. Winters are cold and snowy up here, so the season runs from late spring to autumn. Try ćevapi, burek or a slow-cooked lamb from a roadside grill.