Getting around
Getting Around Montenegro
Almost every planning mistake made in Montenegro comes from the same source: the country is small, so people assume it is quick. It is not. Mountain roads, a single congested coastal corridor and a shoreline that folds back on itself mean journeys routinely take twice what the distance implies — and unlike most places, the delay is not spread evenly. Knowing where it collects is most of what you need.
Updated 2026-08-15
Why the distances mislead
Look at Montenegro on a map and the whole country fits inside a couple of hours' driving. Drive it and the coast-to-mountains run takes about three hours, the road out of the bay takes an hour for a distance you could see across, and a summer afternoon on the coastal road can absorb any estimate you care to make. None of this is bad road; it is topography. The interior is limestone folded into ridges, so roads climb and switchback rather than going straight, and the coast has one usable route with towns strung along it.
The practical rule is to plan in hours rather than kilometres and to treat any figure you are quoted as a dry-season, off-peak, no-stops number. It is also why itineraries here work far better with two bases than with one — a single base means you spend the trip driving back to it.
The two shortcuts worth knowing
The first is the ferry across the narrows of the Bay of Kotor. Because the bay is a drowned river valley, its inner basins are joined by a strait only a few hundred metres wide, and driving around the inner bay to get from one side to the other is a long way for very little progress. A short vehicle ferry crosses the narrows continuously through the day and cuts that detour to a few minutes on the water. Anyone moving between the Herceg Novi side and Tivat or Budva should look at it before committing to the road.
The second is the railway. Montenegro has one line that matters, running from the coast at Bar up through Podgorica and on into the mountains, and it is not a curiosity — it climbs through the northern highlands on a spectacular alignment of viaducts and tunnels and it puts you within reach of the north without driving a mountain road. For travellers who do not want to rent a car, this is the single most useful piece of infrastructure in the country.
Cars, buses and what each is actually for
A rental car unlocks Montenegro more completely than in most countries, because the good parts are dispersed and the best of them are on roads no scheduled service uses. It comes with a real caveat: mountain roads here are narrow, frequently hairpinned and often lightly barriered, and a driver who is tense about exposure will not enjoy the drives that are supposed to be the highlights. That is a preference to be honest with yourself about rather than a competence question.
The bus network is better than visitors expect and covers the country properly — coastal towns frequently, the interior and the north on longer runs, all of it from bus stations that function as the main transport hubs of their towns. It is slower and less flexible than driving and it goes almost everywhere people actually want to go. A trip built on buses plus the railway, with one or two organised day tours for the roads worth seeing from a passenger seat, is entirely workable and quite common.
Taxis and ride-hailing operate in the larger towns and on the coast, and are a reasonable way to handle short hops and the awkward final leg to somewhere a bus does not reach.
Paperwork, and the language on the signs
Two small things smooth the driving. Carry an International Driving Permit alongside your national licence — it is inexpensive, obtained before you travel, and the kind of document that costs nothing until the one occasion it is asked for. And photograph the hire car from every angle at pickup, because the charge for damage nobody can date is the most common way a Montenegrin rental goes wrong.
The official language is Montenegrin, one of a group of mutually intelligible South Slavic varieties spoken across the neighbouring countries, and here it is written in the Latin alphabet — so road signs, menus and timetables are legible to anyone used to a Western European script, which is not true everywhere in the region. English is widely spoken in coastal and tourist areas and among younger people generally; Italian turns up around the bay for historical reasons. A traveller with no Slavic language at all will manage without difficulty.
A country with five neighbours
Montenegro shares land borders with five countries, and it is small enough that several major destinations across them are closer than parts of Montenegro itself — the old city of Dubrovnik is about an hour from the Bay of Kotor, Shkodra in Albania is a comparable run from the southern coast, and Mostar is a long morning away. Combination trips are the norm here rather than an ambition, and a great many visitors arrive overland rather than by air.
The main cost is queueing. Crossings are straightforward but the coastal ones back up badly in summer and around holidays, and a border wait is the one delay that no amount of local knowledge shortens. Build slack into any day that includes one, and check what your rental agreement says about taking the vehicle out of the country before you plan on doing it.