We proudly present a documentary film about the making of the Trans Dinarica Cycle Route and the team behind its creation. You’ll also meet some of the friendly and warm-hearted people encountered along the way, and all eight countries crossed by this epic cycle route, born in 2024.

Trans Dinarica is a vision, it’s a big picture

“Trans Dinarica is a vision, it’s a big picture, it’s an idea … I think it was never there just to exist immediately, it was there to be developed,” said one of our friends and project partners, Thierry Joubert from Sarajevo, in an interview for the film. But even before that — before the idea — there was a dream. 

The dream of a mountain biker in love with his Soča River Valley. Jan Klavora, born in Tolmin, the exact starting point of the Trans Dinarica, has dreamed for many years of extending his joyrides from western Slovenia to the southwest, to Croatia and beyond. There are places (and people) that all of us involved in the Trans Dinarica project are a little bit in love with. Alex Crevar, the main protagonist of the documentary, lived in Sarajevo (and later elsewhere in the Balkans) in the post-war period, and created stories for world-known newspapers and magazines.

Exploring (and filming) eight countries

It took a lot of will, brainstorming, countless emails and also financial resources to get the project off the ground. Things started to fall into place when the right people flocked, and in 2022, the GoodTrail team, which had quite a bit of experience planning cycling routes in Slovenia and the surrounding countries, outlined the first so-called route corridor. It connected places less known to tourists, national parks, places we loved and, above all, roads away from the main traffic routes. We then corrected, expanded and shrunk this plan countless times under the supervision of the main cartographers, Matic Klanjšček and Andrej Bandelj, and in the spring of 2023 we set off on our first fieldwork to an unknown area in southern Serbia, where the route was supposed to enter from Montenegro. But we were calm because we were accompanied by an experienced cyclist and also the creator of many cycling routes, Jovan Eraković from Belgrade. You will also meet him in the film.

There were five more such expeditions in 2023-2024: to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Croatia, Slovenia, North Macedonia, Kosovo. In addition to the most important digital material – the GPS tracks with all the crucial information for cyclists — a full external drive of videos was also created. Our support van driver, photographer, mechanic, bike repairman, and cameraman Matevž Hribar captured the beautiful nature that wanted to stop us behind every new hill; did many interviews with hospitable locals; and sometimes, if we weren’t too hungry after our all-day schedules, some delicious meals. We apologize for eating a lot of them like hungry wolves without recording.

Hours of cutting behind the computer

What to do with all these gigabytes? We delivered a whole dumpster of material to the production company Karata Film; the guys also then made interviews with our core team and after countless hours of cutting and clicking (thumbs up, Matic Ritonja, Aliash Tepina and the team!), a half-hour documentary was created about how Dreams are now available to everyone … including you. 

We hope you enjoy watching the story, and then have the chance to enjoy it even more on your bike, following in our tracks. As we have written many times: if you’ll enjoy your cycling adventure even a fraction as much as we did creating it, the Trans Dinarica’s mission is accomplished. Here you go, enjoy.

Behind the scenes gallery