Over the past few years, the Peaks of the Balkans trek has become increasingly popular, but it still isn’t very well known. We first heard about the Peaks of the Balkans trek from a podcast, and also from a German couple we met in Nepal and thought it sounded like our kind of adventure. Unlike our previous trips, this one was incredibly difficult to plan. As we began to research this trek on the internet and local library, we found very little information, so I thought it would be a good idea to share some things we wish we had known before planning this trek. Although we were unable to complete the entire trek, due to sickness and weather issues, the information provided here should help anyone plan for a trip to the Balkans. So without further ado, here is a list of things to consider before hiking the Peaks of the Balkans.
1. Decide if you want a guide
Although Liz and I did the trek by ourselves, I could see how some might find a guide helpful. The Albanian language, is very difficult to learn, and the majority of Albanian’s don’t speak more than a few words of English. If you get an English-speaking guide, then you’ll be able to communicate with the locals through your guide, which is one of the best parts of this trek, you also won’t have to worry about getting lost, which we did on many occasions. The obvious downside of this it the cost. Some friends of ours looked into the cost of a guide and they told us that it would cost them about 1,800 Euros per person, so for budget travelers, this won’t be an option. However out of the few people that we saw on the trek, no one had a guide.
2. Planning Your Route
For this trek, I would highly recommend getting a guide book and a map. All we had was a map that established a very ambitious 10 day itinerary. When I first ordered the map, it was out of stock, and it shipped from the Czech Republic, so if you get this map, order it long before you start your trek. At the time we did this trek, there were no English guide books in print. The only guide book I could find was in German, and my German is pretty rusty, so we decided to just stick with the map. There is an English guide book now, I haven’t used it so I don’t know if it’s any good, but it is probably better than nothing. (Note, these are not sponsored links, I just wanted to show what little information is currently available). Having a guidebook and a map will help you plan where you want to start, what dates you’ll cross borders (which is needed for the permits), and any side treks you may want to do. There are many entry points to this trek. The main airports surrounding the region are in Dubrovnik, Tirana, Podgorica, and Prishtina. For us, it was easiest and cheapest to fly into Tirana.
Although most itineraries I’ve seen usually establish a 10 day trek, I would highly, highly recommend giving yourself more than 10 days. Liz and I have hiked in many countries, and extensively throughout the United States, and compared to where we have been, many parts of the terrain are rugged, and untamed. Additionally, the route can be hard to find, non existent or completely eroded, and the elevation gain and loss between towns is significant. This makes the 10 day itinerary very ambitious and unless you’re in incredible backpacking shape, you’ll be hiking for 11-14 hours per day on most days. I caution this because we are experienced hikers, and the route was much more difficult than we expected. Also, this itinerary doesn’t allow any room for sick days (everyone we met on the trek got sick), route finding, or poor weather. It also doesn’t account for the occasional, very welcomed midday break when a family invites you into their home for drinks and to chat.
3. Getting Your Permits
Once you have a pretty solid itinerary, the next step is to get your border crossing permits. Throughout the trek you’ll cross the border between Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro and in order to do so, you need to get permits, so get your passports ready! I would highly recommend using https://zbulo.org/. They arrange all of your border crossing permits through the border police for a small fee. You’ll need to submit the form at the very minimum 1-2 weeks before your first border crossing. After you fill out the first set of forms, you’ll receive another email with additional steps, it took about 2-3 hours for this email to arrive. This email links to another form for you to upload a scan of your passport photo (first page) and for payment through PayPal. For two people, crossing borders three times, it cost us 40 Euros. Although we never had to actually show anyone our permits, we spoke to another couple who did. They told us that when they crossed one of the borders, the police came running after them to check their permits. So I would strongly recommend getting the permits.
4. GPS and Directions
We brought a GPS on this trek, and I think that if we hadn’t we might just be stranded somewhere in the Balkans right now. Some portions of the route have no markings, and other portions are very well marked, maybe even too well marked. Throughout the Balkans there are many, many routes, and they intersect each other, and often times, the marks of the route are indistinguishable from the marks of the other routes. At one point in our trek in Kosovo, I hadn’t looked at the GPS for some time, and we just kept following the marked trail. By the time I had looked down at the GPS I realized that we were far off our trek, and we needed to backtrack. We decided to take a shortcut through some really wet, swampy grass which really wasn’t a good idea, especially considering that some parts of Kosovo may still have land mines. On the other hand, there was another time that the GPS took us straight up a steep mountain pass with no visible route, it wasn’t until we were about one third of the way up that we started to see the markings. Another portion of the route was closed off because it led straight off a cliff. Additionally, due to the terrain and harsh weather, some portions of the route have been eroded, so following the GPS tracks is crucial, but you can also find shortcuts if you talk to locals. I found the GPS tracks on this blog.
5. Translation Difficulties
I love learning languages, it is something that is incredibly fun for me. I really wanted to learn Albanian before our trip, but unfortunately the resources for learning it are scarce. I tried learning Albanian from multiple sources, but it would have been better if I had been more dedicated. There are a few good YouTube videos to help you learn, and a few apps, but I never really learned more that a few phrases. However, many youth speak some English, in fact, one girl we met in Millishevc was basically fluent, and she has never even been to an English speaking country. If Albanian is too tough to learn, than if you know bits and pieces of other languages you can get by. Some people speak a little Italian, others speak some German. On one occasion we were in a hotel in Peja, Kosovo, and the receptionist did not speak much English, and I obviously didn’t speak Albanian. However, after talking with her for a little bit, I learned that she spoke Spanish, and I speak decent Spanish, so anytime we had to talk, we just communicated in Spanish.
6. Money Problems
Get Euros before your trek, I cannot stress this enough. I never advocate carrying around a big wad of cash when traveling, but for this trek, you need to. Each night you are there, you’ll need between 20 and 30 Euros per person per night. We paid 20 Euros most nights, 25 one night, and 15 for another night, but I wouldn’t count on 15. The money usually covers lodging, dinner, breakfast, and often a packed lunch for the next day. This is a subject that I really wish I knew about before starting the trek. If you take the Lake Koman ferry and begin in Valbona, the last place to get cash from an ATM is in Bajram Curri (pronounced bye-rom tsurry). Unfortunately, you can only get Lek, the currency of Albania from the ATM, and it’s only accepted in Albania. It would be significantly better if you can get Euros beforehand, since those are accepted in all three countries. I had to find an “alternative” method to get Euros. I asked a teller at the bank in Bajram Curri how I could get Euros and she directed me to a man who took me in his car down the road to another man sitting on a chair on the sidewalk holding a gigantic stack of bills. As I saw the man approach I quickly did the Lek to Euro conversion to make sure that I wasn’t being swindled. From an American perspective, trading money from a man on the street seems like a sketchy transaction, but he was very honest and the exchange rate he offered was very close to what I estimated, so I accepted the exchange.
7. Internet
Unlike the Annapurna Circuit, you probably won’t get any access to internet on this trek. I usually wouldn’t consider this to be a problem, but we were not aware of this before we started, and so we didn’t come prepared. The only thing we wanted the internet for was to look at the weather forecast for the remainder of our trek, and book our flight to Italy after the trek. If we had known about the lack of internet beforehand, we would have researched these items and booked our flight before beginning.
8. Transportation
I did a significant amount of research before our trip on Trip Advisor and other blogs such as Uncornered Market. Which turned out to be very beneficial. One of the topics that is very difficult to research is transportation. Luckily I was able to arrange all of our transportation from Tirana to the start of our trek, before we got on the plane. I booked this segment of our transportation through komanilakeferry.com. It cost a total of 40 Euros to get Liz and I from Tirana all the way to Valbona via shuttles and the Lake Koman Ferry, I didn’t have to pay anything until I arrived at the Ferry terminal.
9. Bring Some Snacks
Throughout the portion of the trek that we did, there was only one place that we encountered where we could buy food that wasn’t provided by the guest houses, it was a restaurant in Rugova Camp. Additionally, not all guest houses provide a packed lunch, and even when they did, it would usually consist of white bread and this cheese that’s sort of like feta, but extremely sour. So we recommend that you bring some snacks to have for those days when you’re ravenous from all the hiking or for when you just can’t manage to choke down another piece of that cheese. Also, I would highly recommend bringing a water filter.
As I mentioned earlier, most everyone we met on the trek got sick, we don’t know if it was the water, the food or the flu, but I’m inclined to think it was the water. Cows and other livestock wander around throughout this region, and I can’t help but think they might be contaminating the water, or at least our systems aren’t accustomed to the water in this region. So if we go back again, we’ll definitely bring a water filter.
10. Timing is Everything
We began our trip in early September, and if we could do it again, we definitely have started it earlier in the year, probably early to mid August. The locals tend to spend the summers in the mountains, but as the weather begins to turn in September, they leave the mountains for lower elevations so their children can go back to school, and because the weather is miserably cold and snowy in the winter. Although we didn’t get any snow, we did have to hike through a miserable rain and hail storm up and over a 7,300 foot mountain pass. It was really challenging, and we were soaked from head to toe. If we had gone earlier in the year, we may have avoided most of the bad weather. Additionally, since the locals tend to leave the mountains in late August or early September, we had a very difficult time finding lodging in Millishevc. Although we did end up staying with a very nice family there, they had possibly the only available guest house in that town, and they were planning to head back to the city the next day. Weather can be unpredictable in this region regardless of the time of year, so hard shell pants and a hard shell jacket are recommended. We left our hard shell pants at home, and regretted it.
Conclusion
We really enjoyed the Peaks of the Balkans trek. If we could do it again, we would have gone earlier in the year, probably early August. We would have also given ourselves at least two weeks so we could do some side treks and to allow for poor weather and illness. We would have brought a water filter, hard shell pants and snacks, and we would have been more proactive about following the GPS tracks. Out of the 40+ countries that we’ve visited, I think I could safely say that the people of this region are some of the nicest, most welcoming, and helpful people I have ever encountered. As beautiful as the landscape is, what really makes the trek special is the people.
