Balkan Promises: Hiking the Albanian Alps

Chad Case for The New York Times

Clockwise from far left: Leaving Theth, Albania; Gusinje, Montenegro; looking out over Kosovo and Montenegro; people encountered during the trek. More Photos »

The seasons were changing fast, and the warmth I'd taken for granted had vanished as night mustered in the hills. I gathered the blanket around my neck and listened to the dogs barking below. It was now long past midnight, with only a few hours until the morning call to prayer.

Peter Grubb, the owner of an Idaho-based outfitter called ROW Adventures, sat in the corner flipping through maps under the lone working light bulb. We were in Room 305 of Hotel Rosi, a bright yellow block of a building in Gusinje, a predominately Muslim community in the former Yugoslav republic of Montenegro. South of here, a rocky trail climbed steadily into a vampiric maw of limestone peaks. Tomorrow we would follow that trail and slip virtually unnoticed into Albania.

That would have been among the stupidest things you could do had it been the 1980s, when Albania was the North Korea of Europe. From World War II until his death in 1985, the Communist leader Enver Hoxha hammered Albania into an oppressive hermit state. He extirpated dissent, outlawed religion and lowered the age for executions to 11. The "Great Teacher" hermetically sealed the borders and distanced himself from other Communists. "We have fought empty-bellied and barefooted but have never kowtowed to anybody!" he once howled at Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader.

Hoxha's final heart attack and the eventual collapse of Communism hailed the beginning of the end of Albania's isolation, and in recent years the once-tense border region separating Albania, Montenegro and Kosovo has become the kind of place you'd want to visit. Aid money, remittances and relative stability have helped create a middle class, and tourism in the region is beginning to boom. Guides take groups kayaking under stone bridges in Montenegro, hiking around Albanian archaeological sites and even skiing in Kosovo. New hotels are pumping fresh life into stale Communist hangouts, even if the water isn't always hot.

"If you want luxury, sorry, go to Paris or New York," Kela Qendro, a 33-year-old Albanian working for a small tourism company, told me later. "You come here to see the real stuff. The shepherd. The old woman picking pomegranates. You go up to villagers and they will invite you inside their home for the joy of meeting you."

Mr. Grubb, who runs about seven trips a year to Croatia, had long been fascinated with this less-developed region of the Balkans. About a year ago he learned of an intriguing new way to explore it — on foot.

The Peaks of the Balkans Trail, a project coordinated by the German Agency for International Cooperation and involving dozens of other groups (including women's associations, tourism offices and environmental nongovernmental organizations), formally opened last year as a 120-mile trek designed to foster tourism and teamwork among historically quarrelsome neighbors. The path literally links Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox enclaves, as well as Slavs and numerous Albanian tribes in three adjoining national parks, each showcasing the border region's inestimable beauty. Towering rock walls scream for thousands of feet into an unimpeachable sky. Farmhouses gather like asters in valleys. Wolves and lynxes pad through landscapes soaked in green.

There would be no real roughing it, since locals have turned ancestral homes into rustic inns offering beds, homemade cheeses, meats and brandy. Even wandering across remote, unmanned borders is now legal, thanks to a new permit system introduced last summer. Mr. Grubb needed only some roll-with-it travelers willing to be his guinea pigs before offering the trip for real. Seven gregarious Texans and I signed up.

Now, sitting in the hotel room, Mr. Grubb put down the map and sighed. He seemed restless. We were about to head deep into the Albanian Alps, better known as the cursed mountains, some of Europe's most glaciated peaks after the Swiss Alps and the highest summits of the Dinaric Alps. The whole trail could be hiked in about 10 days, but we had just 5 to do parts of it. Even so, there were big days and taxing climbs ahead. We would be among the first American-outfitted groups to wander into the maw, and in these parts, the order of things is more mystery than fact.

"This could be more cutting-edge than I thought," Mr. Grubb said, and he switched off the light.

Tim Neville, who lives in Oregon, writes frequently about the outdoors.

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