The British prestigious newspaper “The Guardian” has recently
published the article written by Ben Lerwill, describing his adventure in Albania starting in the high peaks of Accursed Mountains, continuing along the trail of Kosovo and Montenegro.
Albania is offering many kinds of tourism, including the adventurous tourism, for all people who love hiking trails, climbing and outdoor lovers.
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| Rocky road … trekking in the Accursed Mountains. Photograph: Ben Lerwill |
A short summary of the Ben’s Lervill article for the Guardian:
The hiking begins a few hours’ drive to the south, with an
ascent of Albania’s highest point, the 2,751m Mount Korab. Functioning as an
appetiser to the week’s main walk, the climb is a long, hot slog. The slopes
are full of grasshoppers and buttercups. We pass only tough-faced, welly-booted
shepherds. There are snow patches in the higher cols. At the summit, just to
muddle the multi-country element further, the panorama reveals the cushion-soft
valleys of western Macedonia.
The Korab walk takes most of the day. Radomire, the
trailhead village where we start and end, is a cluster of minarets, cheap beer
and unsealed roads. All its bathroom taps are left on round the clock, even in
the local bar, which baffles me until it’s explained that the plumbing wouldn’t
cope with the pressure of being turned off. And like the water, we keep moving.
By nightfall we’ve mini-bussed into Kosovo, ready(ish) to begin the hike
proper.
When we arrive into Valbona Valley at the journey’s end, the
sun is fierce overhead. Albanian flags flutter from village rooftops, flashes
of red and black against the unforgiving grey of the hills. There is more to
come from our trip – time in the capital city Tirana and a sailing along Lake
Koman, the latter an accidentally lovely product of a Chinese-built dam – but
this is where we take our boots off.
It’s funny the memories that stay with you from a journey
like this. Mighty horizons and forested slopes. Doorstops of sheep’s cheese for
breakfast. And a tatty plaque, on top of a big mountain, adrift in a sea of
Balkan peaks."
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