Sultans Trail Section 3 Budapest - Belgrade (in 33 stages)

Section ST3 of the Sultans Trail runs through Transdanubia in Hungary and Vojvodina in Serbia. An alternative section passes through Slovonia in Croatia. The area belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary until, at the Treaty of Trianon in 1920, the southern land was ceded to Yugoslavia and Croatia.
The region has been inhabited by Hungarian tribes since the 10th century, who, under the Árpád dynasty, developed into a powerful Central European Empire. When the Ottomans expanded their realm towards western Europe, the Hungarian aristocracy had no answer and was defeated; the country was split into three: Transylvania in the east, the remnants of the Kingdom in what is now Slovakia and the Turkish-occupied south, through which section 3 of the Sultans Trail passes. 
For more than 150 years, battles raged in this occupied zone, until after the second Siege of Vienna, under a common pack of the Dual-Monarchy, the tide turned, and the Ottomans had to retreat to the Sava River. Southern Europe, from Belgrade onwards, stayed under Ottoman control for decades more. At this stage of the trail, we will whiteness the expansion and contraction of the Ottoman Empire in Europe. The land we travel through has seen minarets come and go. We will follow in the footsteps of stately envoys, traders, tax collectors, religious leaders and armies. We will see the land of the people whom it affected: peasants who sometimes had to deal with the dual rule of Hungarian nobles and Ottoman magistrates in their villages, relocated Croatians, Serbians, and Germans who often repopulated the empty and depopulated areas. We will meet Croatian and Serbian mercenaries in the service of both parties, as well as Crimean Muslim Tartars in the service of the Catholic Polish king who came to Vienna's aid. We will meet the people of the puszta's end and enjoy their food and wine.