The route
Anticlockwise from Tivat or Podgorica: coast south, inland to the lake, north through the mountains, back down the Piva or the Tara, and out along the bay.
| Stage | Distance | Driving | Nights |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tivat → Kotor / Perast | 20 km | 30 min | 2 |
| Kotor → Lovćen → Cetinje → Budva | 90 km | 3 h with stops | 2 (Budva or Petrovac) |
| Budva → Sveti Stefan → Bar → Ulcinj | 95 km | 2 h | 1 |
| Ulcinj → Lake Skadar (Virpazar) | 75 km | 1 h 30 | 1 |
| Virpazar → Ostrog → Plužine (Piva) | 130 km | 3 h 30 | 1 |
| Plužine → Šćepan Polje → Žabljak | 90 km | 2 h 30 | 2 |
| Žabljak → Tara canyon → Kolašin | 85 km | 2 h | 1 |
| Kolašin → Podgorica → Tivat | 140 km | 2 h 30 | — |
That is 620 kilometres and ten nights. Compressed to eight it still works; below seven you are driving rather than travelling.
The two stages not to combine
Virpazar to Plužine and Plužine to Žabljak are each a full day, and people try to do them as one. The Piva road runs through a long series of tunnels and averages about 40 km/h; Ostrog needs an hour and a half including the walk. Doing both in a day means arriving in Žabljak after dark having seen the inside of a car.
What each stage is for
- Boka — the bay, Perast, the walls, the boat trips
- Lovćen and Cetinje — the mountain road and the old capital, in one day
- The southern coast — Sveti Stefan, Stari Bar, the twelve kilometres of sand at Ulcinj
- Lake Skadar — pelicans at dawn and a wine cellar afterwards
- Ostrog and Piva — a monastery in a cliff and a drowned valley
- Durmitor — the ring road, Black Lake, and Tara rafting
- Kolašin — Biogradska Gora and the way back
Fuel, cash and signal
Fill the tank in Nikšić before Piva and in Žabljak before the Durmitor ring — there is nothing on either. Take cash from Podgorica onward; the north is not reliably card-friendly. Expect no phone signal in the Piva tunnels, on parts of the ring road and in the Tara canyon.
When
Late May to early October. Outside that, Sedlo pass and parts of the ring road close with snow, and the loop has to be shortened to the coast and Kolašin. September is the best month for it: warm sea at the start, stable mountain weather at the end, and half the traffic of August.
The car
A normal hatchback does all of this. Nothing on the route requires four-wheel drive. Check the hire agreement for the gravel-road exclusion — the loop itself is paved throughout, but several of the good detours off it are not.
