Today I was going to be daring and try to venture to the southern Serbian town of Novi Pazar. This town has always fascinated me since I fist started reading about the region due to its entrenched Turkish culture.

As the Ottomans began to lose Montenegro to the west and Serbia to the east, Novi Pazar was part of a land bridge linking Kosovo in the south to Bosnia in the north thus maintaining a geographic bloc remaining under Turkish Ottoman control. This land bridge came to be known as the Sandzak

Even after the end of the Ottoman empire the town has maintained a strong Turkish culture in its architecture and is one of Serbia's few predominant Muslim regions.

The problem with modern day politics is Novi Pazar is now cut off from direct access from Nis in the south by Kosovo which has declared independence. Serbia does not recognize this autonomy thus land connections are somewhat problematic.

I'd spent a long amount of time seeing if I could get a bus in and where to connect to next. Another problem with Novi Pazar is that its not on the tourist trail so very few visitors other than locals come here. It was quite difficult finding any bus information online to get in and out

Yesterday I was able to get my bus ticket at the Nis bus terminal for 1530D ($18) so at least I knew I could get in. There are direct buses from Belgrade so getting in was not so much the problem. Getting out I wanted to continue to Pristina Kosovo where I am finding very little and conflicting information online

As Serbia does not recognize Kosovo I didn't want to go in, get any passport stamps, and try coming back to Serbia as this will cause problems. I planned a route so that I only have to go into Kosovo once and not back into Serbia. Thus I had to head round to Novi Pazar as my last destination in Serbia before moving into Kosovo

The bus was 10am so I didn't have to rush. The weather is slowly warming back up the more south I go. On the bus the driver collected 100D ($1.20) for the bags again and there were no police on the bus this time

It was a 4.5 hour bus ride driving thru lots of little towns. At first he went north on the highway back to Belgrade for about an hour then cut across back down to Novi Pazar to avoid driving all around Kosovo.

There were vast flat farmlands and interesting churches for the first half of the journey before it changed to mountain valleys as we headed deeper into the south. This reminded me of Bosnia where there were small farming communities along the side of mountains.

As we neared Novi Pazar I wasn't sure where to get off until the signs started appearing. Once we got into town he stopped by a market for people to get off not at the bus terminal. He told me to get of here as well so I had no idea where I was