"The rest are now making attempts to break the encirclement and get out of Shali and make their way towards the mountains, " he said.

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As the car wound around a tight bend, the Mexican police officer who gave me a ride pointed off towards the rugged green mountains just ahead.

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Today, however, a range of newly popular active sports are reinvigorating the former battlefields, as travellers discover a world of ice-blue rivers, rugged hills and thick forests, which unfurls south from Karlovac to meet the vertiginous Velebit mountains that rise up towards the coast.

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Head 35km down the B-road, passing Batak (the site of a famous 19th-century uprising against the Ottomans), and continue deeper into the Rhodope Mountains towards Dospot.

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Beyond the capital, rugged Alpine mountains rise to the north and west, the Pannonian plains stretch off towards Hungary in the east and the the Adriatic Sea lies to the south.

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We continued our climb towards our final pass at Jashyl-Kol, where the mountains were black and glaciers loomed.

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It is a journey that ascends through mountain pastures towards the barren heights of the range, peering deep into valleys and gorges and up to raw and rocky mountains.

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