The Peaks of the Balkans Trail. Rudolf Abraham

      

      THE PEAKS OF THE BALKANS TRAIL

      MONTENEGRO, ALBANIA AND KOSOVO

      by Rudolf Abraham

      JUNIPER HOUSE, MURLEY MOSS,

      OXENHOLME ROAD, KENDAL, CUMBRIA LA9 7RL

      www.cicerone.co.uk

      About the Author

      Rudolf Abraham (www.rudolfabraham.co.uk) is an award-winning travel writer and photographer specialising in Central and Southeast Europe. He is the author of over 10 books, including the first comprehensive English-language hiking guidebooks to Montenegro and Croatia, and his work is published widely in magazines. He first visited the mountainous borderlands of Montenegro and Albania in 2004, having already lived and worked in neighbouring Croatia in the late 1990s – and has been a frequent visitor to this little-known corner of Europe ever since.

      Other Cicerone guides by the author

      The Islands of Croatia

      Walking in Croatia

      The Mountains of Montenegro

      Torres del Paine

      St Oswald’s Way and St Cuthbert’s Way

      © Rudolf Abraham 2017

      First edition 2017

      ISBN: 978 1 85284 770 8

      Printed by KHL Printing, Singapore

      All photographs are by the author unless otherwise stated.

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

       Route mapping by Lovell Johns www.lovelljohns.com

      Contains OpenStreetMap.org data © OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA. NASA relief data courtesy of ESRI

      For Tamara and Ivana

      Acknowledgements

      First and foremost I would like to thank Endrit Shima and Ricardo Fahrig at Zbulo and Vlatko Bulatović at Zalaz for all their help, support and enthusiasm during the time I researched and wrote this guide, for which I am extremely grateful. It’s people like you who help make this such an amazing part of the world to visit, so a very sincere faleminderit shumë and mnogo vam hvala to all three of you. Thanks are also due to Ahmet Reković in Plav, Pavlin Polia and family in Theth, Vucija Martić in Plav, Armend Alija and family in Babino polje, Montor Bojku in Pejë, Emma and Ben Heywood in Virpazar, Hayley Wright in Herceg Novi, and Nicky Brown at Black Sheep and Germania for generously providing flights to Pristina on my last trip to Prokletije. And to my wife Ivana, with whom I first fell in love with Prokletije in the early noughties.

      Updates to this guide

      While every effort is made by our authors to ensure the accuracy of guidebooks as they go to print, changes can occur during the lifetime of an edition. Any updates that we know of for this guide will be on the Cicerone website (www.cicerone.co.uk/770/updates), so please check before planning your trip. We also advise that you check information about such things as transport, accommodation and shops locally. Even rights of way can be altered over time.

      The route maps in this guide are derived from publicly-available data, databases and crowd-sourced data. As such they have not been through the detailed checking procedures that would generally be applied to a published map from an official mapping agency, although naturally we have reviewed them closely in the light of local knowledge as part of the preparation of this guide.

      We are always grateful for information about any discrepancies between a guidebook and the facts on the ground, sent by email to [email protected] or by post to Cicerone, Juniper House, Murley Moss, Oxenholme Road, Kendal LA9 7RL, United Kingdom.

      Register your book: To sign up to receive free updates, special offers and GPX files where available, register your book at www.cicerone.co.uk.

      Front cover: Maja Kolata from the 4WD road above Çeremi, Albania (Stage 3)

      CONTENTS

       Map key

       Overview maps

       Route summary table

       Introduction

       Geography and geology

       Historical summary

       National parks and nature reserves

       Wildlife and plants

       Climate

       When to hike

       Getting there and around

       Accommodation and food

       Public holidays

       Language

       Money

       Phones, internet and electricity

       Cross-border permits

       Local tour operators

       Where to start/finish

       Variations, transfers and highlights

       Trail markings

       Maps

       Equipment

       Water

       Safety in the mountains and what to do in an emergency

       Using this guide

       The Peaks of the Balkans Trail

       Stage 1 Theth (Albania) – Valbona (Albania)

       Stage 2 Valbona (Albania) – Çeremi (Albania) via the Prosllopit Pass

       Stage 3 Çeremi (Albania) – Dobërdol (Albania)

       Stage 4 Dobërdol (Albania) – Milishevc (Kosovo)

       Stage 5 Milishevc (Kosovo) – Rekё e Allagёs (Kosovo)

       Stage 6 Rekё e Allagёs (Kosovo) – Drelaj or Restaurant Te Liqeni (Kosovo)

       Stage 7 Restaurant Te Liqeni (Kosovo) – Babino polje (Montenegro)

       Stage 8 Babino polje (Montenegro) – Plav (Montenegro)