Walk on the wild side

With a diverse range of geographic, historic and cultural features along the way, the Peaks of the Balkans trail winds through breathtaking Montenegrin scenery to offer one of the most unspoiled hiking routes in Europe, says rudolf abraham

I FIRST VISITED SOME OF THE TRACKS and paths which would later become part of the Peaks of the Balkans trail, in the remote northeast corner of Montenegro, back in 2004. I remember the Ropojana valley as a hauntingly beautiful place, silent and still, with fingers of low cloud clinging to the surrounding crags and obscuring what would otherwise have been a breathtaking view of saw-toothed ridges and jagged limestone peaks. We followed a 4x4 track along the valley floor, then hiked up through the trees on a forest path to emerge on a grassy saddle above an elongated, slate-grey lake, somewhere on the far side of which lay the unmarked border with Albania.

The continuation of this path, I knew, led over a high pass to the Theth valley in Albania, but the border here was closed to trekkers and required a great deal of paperwork to negotiate. Once upon a time (in 1900, to be exact), the intrepid British traveller Edith Durham rode over this way from Theth village, journeying in disguise to avoid detection as this corner of the Balkans was still an outpost of the Ottoman Empire.

She described the nearby village of Gusinje as ‘the Lhasa of Europe’ in the book High Albania, her account of her journey. How nice it would be, I thought, if this route was one day opened up to hikers…

Fast forward a dozen years to 2016, and I was back in the Ropojana, writing the first English-language guidebook to the Peaks of the Balkans trail, which was published in 2017 by Cicerone.

The valley really hadn’t changed that much in the intervening years, I found. The only real differences were that I no longer needed to go and apply for a hiking permit at the police station in nearby Gusinje, and that, this time, the lake at the head of the valley had disappeared. (The lake owes its fickle nature to the fact that it’s fed only by snowmelt, with the water then gradually draining away through karst drainage holes.)

THE 200KM PATH CROSSES RUGGED, WILD AND STILL WONDERFULLY REMOTE REGIONS

The Peaks of the Balkans is a long-distance, cross-border hiking trail, stretching for just under 200km through the rugged, wild and still wonderfully remote borderlands of Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo. The route takes in some staggeringly beautiful mountain scenery, from peaceful valleys to lush pastures, glittering lakes, rocky passes, stupendous cliffs and national parks. It also passes through unspoiled villages, some of which seem to have been forgotten by time, and where food and accommodation are provided by a handful of traditional village homestays. It takes around 10 days to walk the whole thing, or you can dip into parts of the route and, in a couple of places, create shorter circuits. There are some excellent local tour operators offering knowledgeable local guides, as well as baggage transfers for those who don’t fancy carrying their own pack.

There’s plenty of cultural interest on the trail, too, from stone tower houses or kula (the best of these are in Theth and Plav) to diminutive village churches, mosques, and, on the Albanian part of the route, a handful of small concrete bunkers. These are some of the half a million built by Enver Hoxha across Albania between the 1960s and 1980s, now long abandoned and slowly being subsumed by the surrounding landscape.

With a couple of exceptions in Kosovo, where route-finding can be more of a challenge, most of the trail is well marked, using existing paths and 4x4 tracks that are not technically difficult. However, anyone setting off on the Peaks of the Balkans needs to be aware that these mountains are remote and subject to notoriously fickle weather changes – hikers need to be suitably kitted out with decent walking boots, and warm and waterproof clothing, even on short trails, and even in the summer.

APERFECT INTRODUCTION TO THE LANDSCAPES OF MONTENEGRO

One other thing every hiker will need on the Peaks of the Balkans (at least, if they’re doing a chunk of it which crosses a border) is a cross-border permit. These are issued as a matter of course by all three countries on the trail and the process of obtaining them is supposed to be perfectly straightforward – except that it isn’t.

While you can still go it alone and apply for permits yourself, my advice is to get a local agency to do it for you – Zbulo (zbulo.org) in Albania and Zalaz (zalaz.me) in Montenegro are both excellent and reliable and will arrange permits for you for a very reasonable fee. Both agencies were involved in setting up the trail in the first place so their knowledge of the area is unrivalled.

The idea behind the Peaks of the Balkans trail was to encourage sustainable tourism in these mountainous areas of Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo, bringing communities closer together across political borders and creating a sustainable income for the local population. The trail was set up by a German development corporation in tandem with local tourist offices and hiking clubs, and has been remarkably successful – due, in part, to effective marketing as well as the amazing scenery and uncluttered trails.

That inexplicable allure of travelling somewhere relatively new and undiscovered, or off the beaten track, has also no doubt contributed something to its popularity, with much of these borderlands off limits to foreigners until comparatively recently. And yet, despite the increasing number of hikers setting off on the Peaks of the Balkans trail, the area remains underdeveloped and unspoiled in comparison to many better-known European hiking trails. There were plenty of days hiking the route when I met no more than a couple of other hikers, and perhaps a shepherd tending his flock.

Since it’s a circular route, it’s possible to start and finish the Peaks of the Balkans in any of the three countries it passes through. My preference has generally been to start from the town of Plav in Montenegro, since it’s very easy to get to. In terms of public transport, there are around five buses a day from Podgorica.

From Plav, the route crosses Vrh Bora to reach the village of Vusanje, before following the Ropojana valley up into Albania, crossing the spectacular Pëjë pass and descending to the village of Theth. From Theth it crosses the Valbona pass and enters the Valbona valley, then crosses another pass on the border with Montenegro below Maja Kolata, Montenegro’s highest peak. It descends into Albania again, going through the tiny village of Çeremi and the remote

The bulk of the scenery on the Peaks of the Balkans is part of the Prokletije mountains. The name means accursed and this rather forbidding title was suitably evocative to have enticed this writer to go and visit the area in the first place, but in reality it doesn’t do the area justice. Contrary to its name, it’s a spectacularly beautiful and wonderfully hospitable place, with rushing rivers and villages surrounded by fruit trees and, frankly, looks anything but accursed. Recently, some locals have coined an alternative name for Prokletije: the Blessed Mountains, which, perhaps, is closer to the mark.

The Montenegrin side of Prokletije is a national park. The newest and still the least visited of Montenegro’s five national parks, this glacier-scoured landscape (the glaciers themselves are long gone) is bristling with spiky mountain peaks boasting suitably evocative names like Očnjak (Fang) and Koplje (Spear).

The flora of the Balkans is extraordinary, constituting one of the richest areas of plant life in Europe, and Prokletije is no exception, with many species that are rare or endemic. It’s also a fantastic area for wildlife, with, for example, 130 species of butterfly recorded just within the Prokletije National Park in Montenegro. To put that figure in context, there are only around 60 species of butterfly in the entire United Kingdom, a much larger territory.

I’ve been hiking in the mountains and national parks of Montenegro for more than 15 years, from the well-known peaks of Durmitor to the pristine forests of Biogradska gora, and there’s no corner of this incredibly beautiful little country that I’ve found more compelling than Prokletije. Hiking the Peaks of the Balkans trail is a hugely rewarding experience, and the perfect introduction to the rugged landscapes of this fascinating region.