Destination: Poland

LONELY PLANET'S OFFICIAL ITINERARY INFORMATION

Itinerary: The Eastern Marches

THREE WEEKS / KRAKÓW TO SUWALKI

This 1200km trip is most easily done by car (allow two to three weeks), but it’s also possible by public transport (which will take about four weeks). It would also make an interesting bicycle tour (six weeks for the whole route).



Poland’s most popular attractions lie along the Gdansk–Warsaw–Kraków–Tatra axis that runs north–south through the middle of the country. If you want to get off the beaten track, head for the eastern marches, the borderlands running along the frontier with Ukraine and Belarus, where few visitors bother to venture.

Starting from Kraków, head towards the southeastern corner of the country, perhaps stopping off at the unusual site of Bóbrka, home to the world’s earliest oil well. Make for Sanok, which has its skansen (open-air museum of traditional architecture) and icon museum, and devote a couple of days to exploring the remote and beautiful Bieszczady National Park.

Turn north, and follow the back roads to the beautiful Renaissance town of Zamosc by way of Przemysl and its quirky Museum of Bells & Pipes. Continue to Chelm, where you can explore the chalk tunnels beneath the town square, and then on to Lublin with its small but attractive Old Town.

Now strike out north through the rural backwaters of eastern Poland to the pilgrimage site of Grabarka, with its sacred hill of 20,000 crosses, before making for Hajnówka and a few days back in the tourist mainstream at Bialowieza National Park.

Then it’s north again to the provincial city of Bialystok, which provides a base for visiting the wooden mosques near the Belarusian border and the mysterious wetlands of Biebrza National Park.

Finish off with a short trip north to the lake resort of Augustów, which has a leafy canal. From nearby Suwalki you can catch a train back to Warsaw, or on to Vilnius.

Travelling to Poland?
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