The Uvac doubles back on itself through bends of almost 270 degrees, sunk 300 metres into limestone in southwestern Serbia. Loops like these are what slow rivers draw on flat ground, and that is exactly where this one drew them. The land was lifted afterwards, and the river held its course and cut downwards instead of swinging sideways, carrying a lowland shape into a gorge. Softer bands in the rock gave way faster, which tightened some of the bends until they almost close on themselves. Molitva is where you see it. Forty-five minutes of steep, unshaded path end on a small railed platform with nothing between you and the drop. Pale rock, flat green water, and a drop you do not credit until you are standing on the edge.
At water level it all disappears. The boat starts on the wide calm arm of the reservoir where the floating houses are moored, then noses into the gorge and the walls close in. From down there you lose the pattern entirely — no loops, no shape, just one blind bend opening into the next. Partway along, the boat ties up and a stairway drops into a hall of stalactites where the cold arrives within a few steps. The ledges above all this hold the largest colony of griffon vultures in the Balkans. In the cold early hours they sit hunched and motionless on the rock. Then the air warms, one tips off its ledge, spreads, and stops flapping altogether, riding the rising column without a beat and turning below you close enough to hear the wind come off it. A griffon's feet cannot grip prey, so it kills nothing and eats only what is already dead. It does not find that by searching the ground. The birds spread out over dozens of kilometres and keep each other in sight. When one drops into a descent the others read it and follow, and the signal carries outward until dozens are converging on a carcass the first bird found alone.