Albania....friendly Albania....beautiful Albania

Albania....friendly Albania....beautiful Albania

I woke very early (I'll have a word with that cockerel later) in a seemingly utopic, very rural, very isolated verdant mountain valley. For a brief moment the steep, jagged mountains carpeted in dense, green woodland that towered impressively all around echoed with just the sound of silence. I was of course still half asleep, the family of the farmstead where I was staying were already busy (things start very early in Albania) in the kitchen preparing breakfast, their sheep were wandering around doing "sheep stuff", the turquoise coloured mountain river thundered in the distance and smoke was rising willowy from the chimneys of the couple of other wooden roofed houses that call this unspoiled valley home. And, there was the sound of my still happily snoozing, fellow intrepid trekkers.
Wandering around the lovingly planted fields of the farmstead, with it's rustic outbuildings I looked back to soak up this scene of bucolic, mountainous nirvana. Just a handful of scattered traditional farmstead homes occupy the valley floor, out of which rise sharply The Accursed Mountains of northern Albania, a sight I'd be wishing to see for many years. I was here at last, and everything seemed just perfect. This was definitely a "glad to be alive" day.
Seeing me wandering around, the owner of the farmstead (Deda our host) came out to greet me with a bottle of his Raki, a rather potent home-brewed (and home grown for that matter) clear brandy. It is the Albanian way to start the day with a shot of Raki (they say it's good for the digestive system for one!), so "when in Rome?" I thought to myself reinforced with the lame excuse that it would rude to refuse. Toasting each other's health thus the day began and I have to admit I felt more than a bit smug being able to enjoy a bit of the famed Albanian Highlander hospitality and friendliness I'd read so much about all by myself.
I felt like I'd been here in Nderlysa a lifetime, but in fact our group of trekkers had arrived just the night before after trekking through the Boga Valley, then up and over the Diagonal Pass to then descend sharply through forest into the delightful Kaprea Valley below.
It's the beginning of June 2010 and I'm here in the far north of Albania with a handful of adventurous trekkers on Walks Worldwide's "research and reconnaissance" trek into the Accursed Mountains that border Montenegro. We're not the first group of trekkers here by a long shot, but the locals tell us wherever we go that this is the first time they've encountered a commercial trekking group coming to the north with a UK Trekking Operator. Whether that's true or not I couldn't say. Although throughout the entire trip we didn't actually encounter a single other person trekking on the trails we followed, and could count on one hand the number of "foreigners" we actually met during our time in Albania. Of course people come here trekking. If they didn't there'd be nowhere to stay for one! But, not many come here that's for sure compared to other places in Europe and the rest of the world for that matter. For me trekking is naturally a pleasure and something I've been doing around the world for over 30 years, but it's also my business too and amongst my "Trekking Industry" mates, not a single one had been trekking in Albania, and as we do like to score "brownie points" against one another by going to places the others haven't, Albania is currently mine and Walks Worldwide's "brownie point".
Back to Albania. What a wonderful country, and what fantastically friendly and welcoming people. It's a country of contrasts from the ultra-modern, chic bars and cafes of the capital Tirana, to the isolated, remote, rural north where life (in spite of my depiction of a rural idyll) remains hard, especially in winter. However, it is the determined, stoic, hard-working nature and character of the people of the north that makes them such a pleasure to meet.
Throughout our trek in the Accursed Mountains we had to constantly keep reminding ourselves that we were in fact in Europe. Life for the local people we found to be similar to life in remote Himalayan villages for example. Our new friends, the family in Nderlysa being a good example. Our host, Deda, the father of the family runs a small farmstead. Self-sufficiency is an absolute necessity to survive. The family keep around 40 sheep, a few cows and grow all the seasonal vegetables they need. They have electricity from a local hydro-powered source and the freshest, mountain purified spring water you could wish for. For them their nearest shop is almost 5 hours drive away, and it's not a straightforward 5 hours at that either. They must either walk out the way we walked in or drive a perilous, appallingly bombed out, single track, rocky mountain road to connect with the outside world. It's the only way in and out really and until this improves it certainly also keeps all but the most intrepid of tourists away too. During the snows of winter the inhabitants of the valley are effectively cut-off and from October to early May the younger children of Deda's family go and live with relatives in the northern city of Shkodra. For those adventurous tourists that do venture into the Accursed Mountains, until things change there remains a place that is a seriously special, preserved part of Europe. In fact life is so tough here that many of the families that live in the valleys of the Accursed Mountains have either left for good, or return only in the summer months.
Deda and a few other farmstead owners in Thethi Valley however realised that the right sort of tourism would be a good way of preserving the traditional way of life for the valleys, as well as providing a great experience for their visitors too and converted parts of their farmstead to provide accommodation. With the aid of grants Deda has created two western European style bathrooms, with showers, sit-down toilets, wash basins and hot water, as well as simple bedrooms for visitors to sleep in. One can only imagine the sight of beds, tiles, toilets, plumbing materials etc coming over that dodgy mountain road!
For us as visitors it was both a privilege and a genuine travel experience to stay in farmsteads like Deda's along the way. Virtually everything we ate was grown or raised on the farmstead, and prepared by the family in their small kitchen. We certainly ate well and hearty! Absolutely delicious sheep cheese, home-made and freshly baked bread, vegetables straight from the garden that tasted like vegetables should, succulent meats, chunky soups and copious amounts of Turkish style coffee and fragrant "Chai", a tea-like brew made from the herbs that grow on the mountain slopes.
The Accursed Mountains themselves are truly spectacular. Seemingly impenetrable, jagged karstic peaks, broody and looking more like they are 4000m high than 2500m, as they rise so abruptly and sharply from the low valley floors. Trekking amongst these hostile looking mountains is quite challenging, steep ascents to passes, but efforts usually rewarded with incredible panoramic views, along with that self-satisfaction of knowing that you're trekking off the beaten track and have these incredible mountains and valleys almost to yourself and you feel like you've earned the right to be here. The Accursed Mountains are the realm of the committed mountain trekker and most certainly not for those that seek leisurely walks. Neither is this a place for those that feel the need to be ensconced within some sort of artificial tourist bubble either. This is the Accursed Mountains, it's real and it's alive. You live it and you feel it as it really is. Anyone who cannot cope without western European life will hate it. As our guide Florian told us, Albania would be at the top of the list for friendliness and hospitality, but at the bottom for infrastructure. I would add to that, that the north of Albania and especially the Accursed Mountains would also be at the top for scenery too.
Perhaps it is this that makes Albania special. Europe's secret place for real adventure travel. Even in Tirana there isn't a McDonalds yet.
I'll certainly be going back to Albania to explore further for my own holidays time and again now. Although I dearly love being in countries such as Nepal and India, like many I don't have the time (or the money!) to go to these long-haul exotic sounding places that often nowadays. So, it was great to discover somewhere "exotic" closer to home that can provide such genuine and very, very different cultural and travel experiences, where you really feel like an intrepid traveller and not just another run of the mill tourist.
Albania is of course changing fast in it's towns and cities, but I suspect it will be sometime yet before The Accursed Mountains of the far north become unrecognisable from what our first ever trekking group experienced and when and if it changes, that is of course up to the locals to determine anyway.
All the same, even modernised Albania remains delightfully Albanian as we found at the virtually brand new terminal building of the one and only International Airport for our departure. After checking in for our flight home we could tell from the computerised arrivals board that our flight would be delayed as the incoming plane was clearly well behind schedule. The computerised departures board showed our flight to be departing on time. The "Duty Free" shop was of course closed and as our scheduled departure time grew nearer the computerised departures board told us it was time to start boarding a plane that had still not yet arrived.
In brief....Albania rocks!