The single track road up to Umoljani flits self-consciously through the light and shade of Bjelašnica, a mountain and ski resort south of Sarajevo. The tar was only laid in 2005, 10 years after the war ended, and the smooth black coils unwind awkwardly over the creased limestone hills.
The minibus lurches to the left and stops. The passengers scramble up a snowy embankment and struggle 100 yards to a ridge where a dozen stone rectangles lie scattered like calcified sea-chests - these are the medieval tombstones of Bosnian-Christian settlers. The guide, crouching next to one of the lichen-covered stones, traces the engraved figures for us. They are 18-inches high and have been dancing, raised palm to raised palm, for almost 1,000 years.
A few climbing turns later and we reach Umoljani at 4,300ft. Fifteen years ago this village of 20 homes was destroyed by Serb paramilitaries. Now largely rebuilt its main attraction is the 500-year-old mosque and wooden tower next door. Both buildings escaped destruction. Locals will tell you that sometime before the war the Serb commander's son was cured of illness by the mosque's hodza, or holy man, and when it came to razing the mosque personal gratitude overcame ethnic contempt.
The new visitors are on a different errand. They are engaged in the ritual exchange of hard currency for soft exposure to the charms of rural life. An old woman with a charcoal headscarf and walnut cheeks has already begun draping hand-knitted socks and mittens along a snowdrift, ready to sell. The party will shortly troop a short distance to a simple mountain hut for refreshments.
If there is something particularly touching about the hospitality it is because, in Bosnia-Herzegovina's case, this rural life has trembled on the brink of extinction, mangled by paranoid furies. The country's Nobel prizewinner, Ivo Andrić, wrote about it in his somewhat prescient Letter from 1920: "In secret depths … lie burning hatreds, entire hurricanes of tethered and compressed hatreds, maturing and awaiting their time." This is something to ponder as you sip mountain coffee while listening to bouncy mountain songs.
The Balkan state's 22,000 square miles reflect some of the tensions: here and there posters of white skulls on red backgrounds warn of minefields. But largely it is a luxuriant panorama of gorges, green rivers, peaks like fever charts and undulating forest. Hence the new hopes for a marriage of convenience: international adventure travellers and a rural community that lost 90% of its livestock and 50% of its assets in the recent mayhem.
Companies have sprung up that offer hiking, cycling, rafting, and canoeing trips. One, the Sarajevo-based Green Visions, works with 20 villages, all of which supply food and accommodation to tourists. So far, so good: Green Visions offers 85 mountain walks and hasn't lost, in one way or another, a single customer. It is a record that impresses the locals.
"Most Bosnians come to the countryside just to drink coffee and smoke," sighs Tim Clancy, a russet-haired American ex-refugee worker who is one of Green Vision's founders. "They thought we were crazy when we said people would pay to go hiking."
Mr Clancy appears regularly on local television, re-stating this point (in reasonable Florido-Bosnian) to politicians tempted by quick-fix solutions like logging, dams, and five-star hotels.
Green Vision's man in Umoljani is Emin Fecit. A 58-year-old Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) sheep farmer in jeans and striped grey sweater. Emin has the lampbulb head, wiry frame and pale eyes of the Illyrians who trekked into Bosnia 2,000 years ago. Stacked outside the door of his mountain hut is a row of snappy plastic snowshoes. Emin's guests use them to pant 800ft up to view the summer-only settlement of Gradina and a sumptuous, if snow-covered, meadow called Studenji Polje (cold field).
Inside the hut, four women are dispensing noodle soup, a stew, salads, sweet pastries and a catherine wheel of filo pastry stuffed with cheese. The women have the heavier Slav build and sport white cotton dresses, embroidered waistcoats, gaucho pants, curly-toed leather moccasins, glittering headbands of brass coins, and filigree silver belt-buckles. Soon they will perform their extremely high-pitched songs, reminiscent of the Orthodox liturgy and the sound a man might make when falling down a liftshaft.
Emin, who is now wearing a doll-sized cotton mitre, is delighted by his new catering career. "We have achieved in three months what we expected to take three years," he declares through an interpreter.
Like the rest of Umoljani's population, he fled his house before the paramilitaries arrived. Since then only the older residents have returned. Part of Green Vision's mission is to create the economic conditions that will attract a younger generation back to a high-altitude, rural existence. Emin's cousin has been encouraged to start an organic farm and Emin now lets out two bedrooms.
Another byproduct might just be a slackening of the neurosis that haunted Ivo Andrić. Referring to the country's 14 separate administrations and three alternating presidents Tim Clancy says: "Tourism is one of the few levels where they sit together and are good buddies … It's not perfect, but it explains why there's a lot of momentum in this business."
Events seem to be heading in the right direction for Emin and the rest of the Bosnia-Herzegovina tourism industry. In February the European Union confirmed a reduction in peacekeeping troops from 7,000 to 2,500. In March British Airways introduced a thrice-weekly service between London and Sarajevo. Passengers on the inaugural flight included a group of inquisitive tour operators.
Whatever the psychological wounds, the country is in remarkably good physical shape. Castles have been patched up, mosques rebuilt, vineyards replanted and grenade craters smoothed over. In Mostar, where 5,000 homes and the iconic boomerang bridge were destroyed, an accordion player croons Mediterranean ballads in the newly cream alleyways of a precisely reconstructed town.
In Sarajevo, the 1,400-day blockade is now sufficiently distant to become marketable. Buy a pen manufactured from a recycled cartridge case in the Ottoman old town or nibble chocolate in Caffee Bodyguard. Squeeze into the 2,300-foot long suburban tunnel that kept the city's population supplied with food, petrol and weapons for two years. Or toast the future in the new, 1,100-sq metre brewery drinking hall, the water supply of which helped thwart the besiegers.
Things move on. In a Sarajevo coffee shop General Jovan Divjak, the broad-shouldered (and Serb) hero of Sarajevo's defence, has a new rivalry to brood on: "If you do not support Manchester United," he jokes, "I will keel you". And outside on the street, the plaque commemorating media workers killed in the fighting is tacked to the wall of a new shop – the brightly optimistic United Colors of Benetton.
Information for travellers
· BA flies to Sarajevo from Gatwick on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. From £158 return.
· There is a relatively cheap and efficient bus service in the country. The rail system is less comprehensive, but is part of the InterRail network and offers some spectacular journeys.
· The Bradt guide to Bosnia & Herzegovina (£13.99) is lucid and comprehensive. Thomas Cook's Sarajevo (£5.99) offers useful information in compact form.
Websites
www.bhtourism.ba
www.sarajevo.ba
