Bajina Bašta is a town with about 10 thousand inhabitants and some 20 thousand more living in the surrounding hills. The oldest part of the town with symetrical terraced houses dates from the end of the 19th century. The owners of the houses were pety traders and artisans who made up the majority of the town’s population.

Rača monastery is situated on the banks of the small river Rača, in the vicinity of Bajina Bašta. This medieval monastery was founded by the Serbian king, Dragutin Nemanjić. During the Ottoman period, the monastery was one of the most important cultural centres for Serbian people. Rača monastery was renowned for secretly copying Serbian literature in order to maintain cultural legacy. During World War II Rača monastery kept Miroslav’s Gospel, the largest and the most important 12th century document of Serbian literature. It was saved from being burnt by being hidden under the stone plates of the monastery’s altar.

Perućac is a tourist village on the right bank of the River Drina, 13 km away from Bajina Bašta. In the vicinity there is a large hydroelectric dam where the Drina Lake, 54 km long, begins. Its magnificent canyon stretches all the way to Višegrad. There is probably the shortest river in the world. It is 365 meters long and many say that the Vrelo River is the “One-year-long River”. It is rich in trout and after a short river flow and beautiful waterfalls it flows into the Drina River.

Boarding is below the dam in Perućac with the ride taking in the most attractive part of the Drina below the falls of the Vrelo River and with a few rapids thrown in. Journey takes two to three hours depending on water levels. In the old days it was called Drinus, and people gave it a name Zelenika and Zelenka (the green color of water). The River Drina surrounds Tara from the northwest and north sides and represents the longest river in the Bajina Basta municipality with its 60 km length. The Drina is formed by the confluence of the Piva and the Tara rivers at Scepan Polje village in Montenegro 433 meters above the sea level with a total length of 345.9 km. Drina is one of the cleanest rivers in Serbia.

The town of Bajina Bašta is famous for the house perched on a rock in the middle of the River Drina which the Serbs also call Zelenika (zelena meaning green in Serbian). The house has been balancing on the rock since 1969 and the idea for it came from a group of young swimmers who wanted a more comfortable place to rest. According to folk tales, the reason for the rock being situated in the middle of the Drina is down to Serbia’s most famous epic medieval hero, Marko Kraljević. Wanting to go to the other bank of the Drina without getting his famous horse’s hooves wet, he throw a huge rock right in the middle of the river so his horse Šarac could jump between the riverbanks, stepping only on the rock in the river. If you look closely, you can still see Šarac’s hoof prints on the rock!