Peaks of the Balkans Trail

The Peaks of the Balkans Trail is a recently-opened 192km (120 mile) trail, a thriving symbol of the new-found peace in this region, its planning co-ordinated by the German Agency for International Co-operation. It winds through an area of superb and typically sheers and spiky limestone peaks and cliffs which separate lonely valley communities. It passes through Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro, once a dangerous and tense region and a historic tinderbox but now a quiet backwater, through three national parks and Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim areas.

This is demanding walking in high and in places remote mountains, come prepared. You can stay in inns and homes, so no heavy backpacking is needed.

See www.peaksofthebalkans.com. See also our Accursed Mountains (Albanian Alps) page.

Also see an excellent article by Tim Neville in the New York Times.

Our friends the Oranginas walking group from the Netherlands used Vlatko Bulatović (www.zalaz.me) to guide them, and were very happy.

The Balkans are only just recovering from their turbulent twentieth century, and tourism is slowly drawing people into this intriguing area. If you’ve already been hiking here, we would love to hear about it (and see the pics!).

In order to truly appreciate the history of the landscape you will pass through (as well as the many problems it currently faces) it is worth having a guide. Good Books include The Albanians: A Modern History by Miranda Vickers (just published, at the end of August 2013). An account of the journey of American soldiers trapped behind Nazi lines has also recently been released – The Secret Rescue, by Cate Lineberry. More travel-minded books include The Accursed Mountains: Journeys in Albania, by Robert Carver. Whilst primarily focusing on the north of the country, it also includes his time in Tirana, and is a generally interesting and entertaining account of Albania. To really get under the skin of this intriguing country, try the literary works of enigmatic Ismail Kadare, whose efforts to avoid the trouble with the Hoxha regime have produced a corpus of works defined by their opacity. Drawing heavily on the Balkans’ history and folklore, his oblique approach has defied labels of dissident or conformist, and perhaps in doing so has confirmed his place as Albania’s most important contemporary writer.

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