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If you like Scotland, you will like Slovakia - exceptionally scenic, slow to smile, somewhat resentful of better-off neighbours. Even before it became a separate nation, not one in twenty visitors to the old Czechoslovakia had ever ventured into this long mountainous Eastern region, close to the meeting-point of Austria and Hungary at one end, and Russia and Poland at the other. And independence is not likely to change that in a hurry. For Slovakia is certainly no cliché of Blue-Danube jollity. It is a minor-key masterpiece, subtle, solemn, haunting. It could even be called hard work.

A first glance suggests nothing much except for skiers, hikers and mountaineers. It is when you look closer that you see the cultural mosaic of Slovak, Magyar and gipsy, the medieval town squares, the wooden villages and painted churches, the folk art, the ice-caves, the fossils and relics, indeed whole realms of history and prehistory waiting to be discovered around this wide-open country so new to tourism.

The cuisine is... er, yes well, moving right along there, you’ll do better with the castles. Some of these are famous ruins like Cachtice, home of Countess Báthori, who tortured six hundred young girls to death and bathed in their blood, claiming it kept her young. Others are finely-preserved Gothic wonders like Trencin or Krásna Hôrka. These scattered castles add character and distinction to the landscape, all the way from the Danube plains up to the legendary peaks of the High Tatras, still the home of the wolf and the lynx, and the undisputed glory of Slovakia.

Short of flying up to Poprad, there is no quick way into the Tatras from Bratislava, which is your likeliest starting point. This is just as it should be - a graduated ascent, winding gently through the White Carpathians, then moving up between the densely forested slopes of the Fatra range, and finally, with wonder and awe, emerging into the fabled steeps of the High Tatras themselves.

Your companion along most of this route is the river Váh, whose valley you will largely be following. Unlike the Danube. which has never been anything but a dull, swirling brown, the Váh twinkles with a satisfying blueness. You join it somewhere near the popular spa-town of Piestany, and continue up past the magnificent ruin of Beckov, perhaps a curtain-raiser for Trencin, whose lofty castle merits a good break in a long day’s drive.

But it is after Zilina that you really get the mountain scenery you came here for. The Northerly detour to clifftop Orava - to some the most scenic château of all - is a big temptation. Otherwise, press on East under the rounded feminine contours of the Low Tatras, perhaps taking the ski-lift to Chopok or calling in at the exquisite wooden church at Sväty Kriz. And then suddenly the Váh is no more, for you have reached its source on the first rocky slopes of the High Tatras, and your ears are starting to pop while approaching - yes - Poprad, the central junction for all expeditions to the peaks.

It happened to be overcast as we drove steeply downhill into the town centre, staring at nothing ahead except a whole lot of depressing workers’ flats. But then, as the road levelled out, there came a celestial vision. High above a carpet of cloud, higher than you can imagine, four giant peaks hung suspended in soft focus, the distant snowfields bathed in pale peach light by the hidden sun. These peaks, which included Gerlachovsky, at 8630 ft. the highest in East Europe, can of course be viewed much closer from the well-kept lakeside resort of Strbske Pleso - almost near enough to touch, it seemed. Yet I have never quite rejected the theory that mountains should keep their distance. The clear, detailed panoramic view from the lake is satisfactory. The misty apparition soft as thistledown above Poprad is satisfying.

In these remote places, there is some pressure on accommodation, especially as the Hungarians love to come up here, having no mountains of their own. So you won’t be surprised if you may have to settle for the classic Graham Greene hotel room with a struggling 10-watt reading lamp and a radio old enough to be giving you La Paloma or Charmaine. (Actually you can sometimes get this without a radio, for even in the modern hotels, dinner is liable to be accompanied by a piano-and-fiddle duet that is pure Mitteleuropa.)

But then, just where you least expect it, there is opulence. The Hotel Polana at Javorina may only be 4-star, but its annexe, an incredibly preserved hunting lodge, must qualify for all the stars in heaven with its three huge apartments reflecting the comforts of another age. Yet even here the attention is not on the hotel, but on the view from it. It is here that the Tatras take on the full rugged grandeur you have been secretly hoping for. The map-contours tell us that these are not the highest altitudes, but those crags are so mighty and so monstrous, rearing up far into Poland (for we are on the frontier), the vista so wide, the depth so staggering, that here must surely be the supreme peak of the Tatras, the true eagle’s nest.

East of Poprad, you experience a decisive cultural shift, for this was Tartary. The wooden churches look more Romanian, and fewer and fewer people seem to understand your fractured German. Yet certain well-kept old towns here look much more German than they should : a legacy of the 13th century when Westerners were encouraged to fortify this area - known as the Spis region - against the Tartars. Kezmarok will probably be the first of the Spis towns that you visit, but its tranquil charm will not be enough to hold the attention long, when you know that Levoca is just down the road. One-time capital of the Spis region, Levoca still projects a confident air with its fine facades of burgher houses facing on to the great church of St. Jakub, rich in remarkable gilded altar-pieces. Yet for me, even Levoca does not quite match Bardejov, possibly because Bardejov is older and also more remote, heightening the effect of otherworldliness. It would be hard to imagine a more authentic Gothic survival, every feature in place around the long cobbled square lined with original gabled houses - arched portals, vaulted ceilings, decorated beams - leading down to the splendid church of St. Egidius, opposite the old town hall, now a fascinating museum of icons.

But those fairy-tale town squares should not delude us that we’ve stepped into Wonderland. This is a rough mountain province, full of miners and redundant armament workers who certainly don’t live in quaint little Hansel-&-Gretel homes - far from it. And that’s quite apart from the gypsies. At one restaurant, a gipsy boy of about nine suddenly dodged past the doorman and rushed up to our table to try and sell us flowers. His face was a terrifying mirror of the smash-and-grab life. No child this, but a premature malformed adult. The doorman put him out, with apologies for having let him in. That is perhaps symbolic. These gypsies are not exactly intruders, for they have been here centuries, yet they make their presence felt in ways that have little to do with crystal-gazing or violins round the campfire.

In Slovakia, East can mean very East. Out beyond Bardejov, more horizons invite one’s curiosity but my companion, a Slovak born and bred, purses her lips. The Austrians called it Klein Russland (Little Russia.) You may feel like calling it Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia, though I doubt it. At any rate, it has usually been somewhere to get out of. At the unhappy ending of the first Czechoslovak republic in 1938, these Ruthenians, already trapped in medieval poverty, began to hear rumours that shocked even them. Among other things, it was not looking like a very good place to be a penniless Jewish teenager. Which is why a certain Jan Ludvík Hoch - born in these bare hills - soon slipped across to Hungary and then to England, where he would live on to become the most controversial tycoon of them all. He was the late Robert Maxwell.

Try to arrive in Bratislava after dusk, for the castle will be at its floodlit best. At other times, you could be disappointed by this rather dull imitation of the old Viennese masterpiece that burned down soon after Napoleon passed through to sign the treaty of Pressburg. (The name reverted to Bratislava in 1918 after it had been so rudely interrupted.)

Still, it’s probably the first thing you’ll go to see, as it is now the National Museum, yet I think its best exhibit is the view out of the window - South across the Danube, or East overlooking the pedestrianised Old Town which can feel pleasantly like half an hour of Prague. The Old Town is only a fragment of the Bratislava that was, and you are never more than a couple of turnings from trams rattling past the long Baroque avenues of the later city. It should really be enjoyed as a triumph of the miniature - little Mozart houses with iron lanterns, stucco palaces with Renaissance frontages, convents, courtyards, cloisters, minor museums of armaments, medicine, wine... But is it a capital ?

The Slavín Hill, a little to the North, presents a soaring view over the city, with the river in the distance. It’s well worth climbing on foot, through a charming quarter full of old mansions, many of them still residential if they have not been converted into small colleges. (Dubcek lived on this steep, winding slope.) At the top, you’ll certainly want to linger over that wide panorama dominated by the castle, still imposing if not at its best by daylight. Yet for the rest - and there’s a lot of it - you are really looking at scale rather than style, all the signs of a major port with chemicals, textiles, engineering... But is it a capital ?

Perched high on a suspension bridge, the Café Bystrica was designed about forty years ago - apparently by someone who had been looking at too many space-comics. A pill-shaped concrete structure, it is not without elegance, yet its flying-saucer contours make it seem like a pastiche of Soviet modernism. But this evening, we are in the only place in town not overlooked by the Café Bystrica - in other words, inside that little narrow band of glass, gazing out.

Maybe all cities look better over a half-litre of Pilsner that is rated scandalously expensive at 65 pence. The unusually bright sun would have something to do with it too. Upstream to the West, the Danube is a ribbon of gold disappearing into the gentle rolling Carpathians. The dazzle on the water is hypnotic and for a moment I am lost in Ruritanian thoughts. But suddenly there is another beam of light from somewhere nearby. I look directly across towards the Old Town battlements. The sinking sun has just caught the tower of St. Martin, topped by its gold-painted replica of the crown of Hungary. And this tiny pinpoint of bright gold, suspended in mid-air above the cathedral where Hungarian kings were crowned for centuries tells me all I need to know about capitals.

'Just back from Slovakia, old boy.' No doubt about it, in the cocktail point-scoring league, this one is a comer, a freshly-minted destination that almost nobody else will have been to. Not that I mind travel-snobbery, but what first drew me to this region was something rather less obvious - a symphonic poem called ‘In the Tatras’ by Vitezslav Novák that had been beckoning to me across the craggy wastes for twenty years. This is not everybody’s music. It can sound like the slow parts of a horror-film. (But remember the influence of Central Europe on Hollywood.) Indeed I had always felt that those strings were being touched by fingers of ice, and kept trying to interpret it as the music of the frozen mountain tops. But now it all makes much more acoustic sense. For I have discovered that the real peak of the Tatras is in fact hundreds of feet underground.

Slovakia sits above a huge network of caves, some of the greatest anywhere. Drop by drop for untold millions of years, the mountain streams have hollowed out the limestone and carved these wondrous secret kingdoms far below. Dobsiná, the biggest of the ice-caves... Belianska with its great falls of stalactites... Bystrianska of the famous curtains... and now we are in the Demanovká valley - not far from that little wooden church - and stepping down to the first of nine levels in what is surely the finest of them all, the Cave of Liberty. Quite ordinary caves are often decked with elaborate lighting to create special effects. Significantly the lighting here is simple and functional - no artificial aids needed to dramatize the slow, wonderful artistry of water. Stalactites and stalagmites are only the beginning of it. Vast avenues and terraces pass through surreal cities of rock. Whole cathedrals have crystallized out in these dark, silent depths, crowned with turrets, majestic domes and giant organ-lofts of massed pipes. Fantastic chandeliers reach down to touch frozen lakes. And all around are groups of strange, mythical figures that might be chessmen.

Sometimes the limestone-grey is shot through with gold or deepening red as rare alloys run and fuse together into more outlandish patterns. And it is not fanciful to see living forms among these rocks - the unfolding petals of a lily, the waving tentacles of an octopus, even the suggestion of human limbs - for we are witnessing some indefinable force of creation, and these are nothing less than the dreams of the Gods.

And so, with Novák, we are truly in the Tatras, deep inside their immortal bosom, and there have never been so many fingers of ice, perhaps waiting for us to go before they start to play invisible harps. There is music here anyway, for many of those hollow stalactites can be played like tubular bells, while one of Janacek’s operas is known to have been inspired by a journey through this very cave. And I am glad of a little help from musicians when such great natural phenomena so clearly defeat the humble pen.

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