Thanks to Miroslav Fa, a local GPS enthusiast, Garmin users have access to a full, free set of topo maps of Serbia and Montenegro, which can be installed in Garmin MapSource as an additional map pack.
With his permission I have hosted them here as a free download:
DOWNLOAD Setup-Srbija-Topo-20-ver-0-99.exe- 70Mb) - please go easy with my bandwidth, don’t download this unless you really think you need it - it’s a big file. Hotlinking is not permitted.
Notes:
To install, simply run the .exe file and install in the folder of your existing MapSource installation. No unlocking required. Topo data may only be visible at a zoom of 10km and below, so don’t be surprised if the map seems blank when you first install it! This data can be uploaded to a Garmin GPS device via MapSource, again, no unlock codes required. However, the files are quite big, so if you have a small memory on your device like me, you will only be able to install a few sections.
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This set of topographical maps is just that - ONLY topo information is included, presumably taken from the freely available NASA Shuttle Radar TopoGraphy Mission data. This means you have JUST the topographic features of Serbia and Montenegro - no roads, trails, just contour data (isohypses) and elevation tags.
But it’s a start, and it’s great for mountain climbers and hikers who want to get out there and explore, and who are comfortable as long as they have a feel for the terrain.
So thanks to Miroslav once again for his hard work, and we hope you’ll find this useful.
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Hi,
I run a project called Cross Carpatia - it’s aim is to bike all Carpathain ridge from Bratislava to ? - we thought Carpats end on Danube in Porta Fero, when we finished this epic after 9 years, only to find out they now Carpats extend into Serbia. So this is where we go on Aug. 22.
I would appreciate any useful info, if any of you want to join us, you are welcome.
Robert
Thanks a lot for the map of Serbia!!!
Great job! I’ve bought in Serbia the maps for Garmin but isoipses are only each 100 m elevation.
I’m interested to get in touch with the guy who did this job in order to develop some new cartography jobs, could you give me a contact email?
Thank you very much!
Guy
Hi Guy.
Yeah, the guy that made these is called MIroslav, but I don’t really know him personally, the only contact I had with him was via the GPS Srbija forum - his profile is http://www.gps-srbija.com/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=249 so I guess you would have to register for the forum to send him a PP (private message). Let me know if you have any trouble, and also I would be interested to hear what you did. I know Garmin’s maps only have basic topographic data, but I guess they would get very bulky if they had the kind of detail these maps do. Still, we all yearn for some REAL topo maps of Serbia, but I think they will be a long time coming, since the Army still has the monopoly on those!
I’m considering buying a Garmin GPS sometime in the future (BTW, never buy Magellan). Are these maps loadable into any Garmin model, or just certain ones? I’ve hiked Suva Planina and Stara Planina and hope to be back in a few years to hit some more trails. These maps would be a great blessing and I want to make sure I spend the money on the right GPS to be able to use them.
Chris, sorry, I missed your comment. These maps are loadable into any Garmin model that links to MapSource on the PC, I’m guessing that’s all of them. If you can test somehow though, that would settle the matter! I’ve loaded these into a Legend and a Vista, no problem. I don’t know much about Magellans, I am a Garmin man too, even though some things annoy me about Garmin.
Wow, you don’t meet too many foreigners hiking around Stara/Suva Planina! How did that come about?
My wife is from Nis, and every few years we go to visit her family there. We have two kids and they also get to know their relatives, cousins, etc. We live Arizona and I love hiking here all the time. I have topo maps of Suva Planina and Stara Planina, but it would be nice to have that in a GPS so I can plot out some of the trails for when we’re out there. Some of the trails in the Suva Planina area aren’t marked very well, and are old roads, so it’s easy to get off trail and be on an old road out in the middle of nowhere.
I think I’m going to buy a Garmin Oregon, but not right away. I need to save up some money first, as they’re a more expensive model. Once I get it, I’ll download the topo here and let you know how it turns out. Looking forward very much to getting back to Serbia now to try this all out.
Ok, I recently bought a Garmin Oregon 450t and have downloaded the Serbia topo mapping from here. It turns out now that Garmin has a new program to manage tracks and waypoints called Basecamp. I think that Mapsource can still be used with an Oregon to install some maps, but it doesn’t seem to be available anymore from Garmin. Does anyone know where I can get a version of Mapsource to download and try to install these maps, or is there some other way to install them on my Oregon? I’ve connected the Oregon to my laptop and tried to drag and click the image files to it, but that doesn’t seem to be working. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Chris, unfortunately I am not too clued up - when I bought my clunky old Legend, MapSource was what you ran it with. I imagine that you could find an, ahem, “unofficial” copy of MapSource on a torrent site, for example I see one here http://isohunt.com/download/153934405/mapsource.torrent
Not advocating piracy (oh, hell, OK, I am), but I figure if Garmin aren’t supporting MapSource any more (typical monopolist behaviour) then you’ve gotta do what you can.
I imagine that these maps should load into any bog standard install of MapSource. As for converting from MapSource images to Basecamp, surely Garmin should provide something to do that, they don’t expect people to buy all their maps again, do they? Or DO they..!
I ended up loading the maps into my Garmin with mapsend20. It turns out that you can also read these maps with Basecamp, which would be very helpful if you want to plot out a route along a trail you intend to follow and then upload it into your GPS. You may or may not be able to also upload the maps themselves into your Garmin with Basecamp, but since you can do that anyway with mapsend20, it doesn’t seem to much matter. FYI to anyone who may have encountered the same software issues I did with my recent Garmin purchase, turns out they’re not much of an issue at all. Looking forward to my next trip to Serbia to continue exploring Suva Planina and then get over to see Djavolje Varos.
Oh, of course, I didn’t think of that, been a while since I did any Garmin “hacking”. Yes, MapSend will upload Garmin maps straight to your device. There are also a number of other devious programs around for cracking Garmin maps and editing them and all sorts, but we won’t get into that!
Still haven’t seen Đavolja Varoš, a crime!
Nice! This is perfect. I have a Garmin eTrex Vista HCx and I’ve been dying to get my hands on some topo maps for Serbia and Montenegro (I live in Belgrade at the moment). I don’t have a cable handy, but chris mentioned you can view these in BaseCamp. How were you able to do that? My BaseCamp doesn’t like any of the file extensions that that exe creates.
once I downloaded all the Srbija topo20 files, there weren’t any extensions. I have a folder called SRBTopo20 that has a bunch of files in it that it says are disc image files, but they don’t have any extensions. I think if you go to the “Tools” menu and under “Manage Map Products”, you may be able to find a way there to open those images up in Basecamp. Sorry, it’s been months since I did this so i forgot what I did exactly. I do have the SRBTopo20 folder in my Garmin folder, so that might also help Basecamp find it.
No worries, thanks anyway for the info. The reason I had extensions and you didn’t is because I default to have Windows show me file extensions, most of them are .img files though.
Interestingly, I have a folder of Antarctica topo information in the same area that the Serbia stuff is and BaseCamp automatically knew about that.
Perfect! I was able to get it all installed. My computer is 64-bit, so the default install directory is C:\Program Files (x86)\Garmin for BaseCamp and stuff. I created a C:\Garmin and put MapSource in there along with the Serbian topo maps and it recognized them perfectly. I was able to get them onto my GPS, now I’m ready to go, thanks!
Well done guys for getting this sorted out - by the time I noticed the discussion you had already found the solution! Happy trails - hope we will see you in these parts soon?
Markowe, do you live in Serbia or just come here for biking often? I’m American but I live in Belgrade. I don’t mountain bike but I’ve been dying to get out and hike some when the weather clears up a bit more.
[...] Montenegro for my type of GPS unit (score!) that was put online (but not created by!) Mark over at MTB Serbia and I’m seriously fixing to get out and explore some of the terrain around here. With all [...]
Oh, missed your comment before I commented on your blog. I’ve been living in Serbia for almost 15 years and go mountain biking when I can, though that’s been a bit limited the past year and a half with the arrival of our son. I don’t do SO much hiking, but do enjoy it - we did Durmitor two summers ago, which was fantastic. Also the Trešnjica Canyon (near Valjevo) a while back. What’s the story with Belgrade? Sounds like you are making the most of being here anyway
Mark, can you see my email address? Send me over an email and we’ll meet up at some point.
Hi, I installed the topographic maps of Serbia and Montenegro, and have been very pleased with the result. The only improvement that I would like to have would be if these contours could be made transparent so they could overlay my existing road mapping. Is this possible and if so, can someone advise me? Thanks
Does anyone know if the Serbia contour map is compatible with the contour maps at http://openmtbmap.org/download/#contourlines? Thanks
markowe,
I’ve got my topo of Serbia loaded into my Garmin GPS and I’ll be making my first trip back to Serbia with that this summer. Very much looking to doing another hike (or 3) on Suva Planina and also seeing Djavolja Varos.
Speaking of which, this may not be the proper forum, but I’ve been trying to plan a hike at Djavolja Varos and the info on the internet is kind of sparse. The official website has nothing in terms of maps. I found a GPS route from wikiloc that is a 7 mile round trip hike from Prolom Banja to Djavolja Varos. From what I could tell, this looks basically to be some kind of dirt road.
Do you know anything about this or any other hiking options in that area? We’re thinking of maybe staying at Prolom Banja and doing that as a hike, but I wanted to try get additional info to see if that’s ok to do (concerned that it might be across private property). I’m also wondering if there are other trails or hiking options at Djavolja Varos that might preclude the need to add 7 miles to a hike.
Thanks for any info you might be able to provide or point me to. If you prefer, send me the info to my email if this is to much clutter to ask here.
Once I make the trip, I’ll be happy to share as much info as I can gather to help get the info available to whoever might want to make this or any other trip to Serbia.
Chris
hi,i am from timisoara,and i want to make a trip with mtb in vrsac mountain,with my friends this weekend,please send me a link with some routes in this area,for gps,i prefer gpx or kml files.thx
Hi - see here! http://www.freebiking.org/Atlas/VBG/vrsac_trekovi.html
Though Vršac mountain is not really that big, so you can’t get lost, but maybe you will find some nice routes to ride! Enjoy!