The following are some of the ways to get in touch with each other:On the hillside, to my right are stone bunkers cloaked in mist. They are just a few meters from the ridgeline that marks the border between Albania and Kosovo. To my right, the view was not only clear but stunningly beautiful.
I’m able to see back down to the tiny mountain hamlet of Gacaferi, where I’d slept the previous night, to look across the deep greenery of Deçan Gorge beyond, over dense pine forests and grasslands that pop with pink and yellow wildflowers, and gaze all the way to the 2,461m summit of Çfërla and the rugged peaks of western Kosovo’s Accursed mountains.
The Via Dinarica Kosovo is a 13 stage 75 mile hiking trail. The route connects up with the Via DinaricaThe Balkan Trail runs from Slovenia to Albania. The Kosovo section opened in 2015, but was recently remapped and relaunched as part of a three-year, £1.2m project funded by the Italian agency AICS.
There was a Yugoslav barracks in Gacaferi during the Kosovo war – the brutal conflict between the Kosovo Liberation Army (known locally as the UÇK) and Slobodan Milošević’s Yugoslavia, which ended with an aerial Nato bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999. UÇK fighters used to launch surprise attacks over the border ridge here, and arms were smuggled into Kosovo for use by liberation fighters.
The barracks has long been gone. Gacaferi’s few residents fly both the Kosovo and red Albanian flags on their houses. The locals tend their sheep, and welcome guests who share travel stories and eat burek or Rugova cheese at the picturesque guesthouse.
Uta Ibrahimi is my mountain guide. Uta founded Butterfly Outdoor AdventureShe was also the first person from Kosovo to climb Mount Everest, having done so in 2017. She is also the first Kosovo-born person to have scaled Mount Everest in 2017, having done so. Ibrahimi will become the first Balkan woman to climb all 14 8,000-metre mountains in 2025 when she stands on the summit of Kanchenjunga, an 8,586-metre mountain in the Himalayas. Uta received a hero’s welcome when she returned to Pristina’s airport. Uta: “I did this for myself and also for my country.” “Not just to see the Himalayan views.”
I arrived at Pristina’s capital a few days earlier. I walked through new cathedrals, past centuries-old churches and statues of Bill Clinton. Brilliant, bizarre brutalist architecture draws the gaze here – most notably the National Library of KosovoIt is made up of a cluster exposed concrete blocks, caged by metal and topped with domes.
The Via Dinarica connects the municipalities of Peja, Deçan and Junik in western Kosovo. To start our adventure – hiking a 40-mile stint of the Via Dinarica – we drove to the city of Peja, behind which the Accursed mountains rise like fortress walls.
Stage three began with an alpine view of green slopes and sunny skies. The red and white waymarkers led us up narrow paths to the 2,403m Hajla peak on the border of Kosovo & Montenegro. On one side the ridgeline drops sharply to the Balkan pines in Kosovo and across the green valleys towards the mountains of Albania. The other side has a nearly vertical drop to Montenegro via a rugged and exposed limestone cliff.
As alpine choughs flew above, I ate spinach-burek on the summit, next to star-shaped edelweiss. We slept at ERA Lodge, a homely wooden mountain cabin run by Fatos Lajçi, a passionate conservationist. “Everything you see in Europe is here,” said Lajci; wild boars (including the endangered Balkanlynx), brown bears (including the endangered Balkanlynx), wolves, etc. This lynx is at serious risk of extinction, but has on occasion wandered by Lajçi’s camera traps.
A shepherd led his flock in songs of love, lost heroes, and the like as we left. We then rejoined Via Dinarica via a newly constructed section. As we descended into a meadow our boots were brushing wild strawberries and carrots.
Not until a few weeks later did we reach Kulla Guesthouse In Milishevc we encountered another hiker. The building was built to look like an ancient stone tower. Here, we gorged on köfte, washed down with rakı, “for digestion”.
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Soon, the border with Montenegro became the border of Albania. We walked by memorials to fallen UÇK soldiers. Mist and heavy rain obscured the view. However, limestone monoliths were visible and wildflowers sprinkled colour against the cloudy sky. When we reached Gacaferi the sun shone on the goats and tractors of this remote village.
I would bug Uta with stories in the evenings. She is full with stories; she tells of the crampons that were given to her as a Valentine’s gift, of the poles that were dropped in danger at 8,000 metres, of loved ones who died on mountain tops or during wars; of the summit days at festivals and of the ecstatic moments of dancing.
Ibrahimi, who was 15 at the time of war, speaks with an infectious positivity. She says, “We were forced to stay indoors for three months during the bombing. You never knew whether it would be your last day.” “We had no choice but to jump over walls in order to escape the police. That whole idea, of waiting for that moment they will come – and who knows what they will do to you – it just made us stronger and more willing to live. When you are free you will see no limits.
We set our sights from Gacaferi on the 2,656 metre Gjeravica. The peak is a massive mountain surrounded with heart-shaped mountains lakes and patches or snow. This side of Accursed Mountains has a more dramatic appearance than the border to Montenegro. The gentle green is replaced with fierce grey. We hike along limestone slabs adorned with lichen above the 2,400 metre mark. A Kosovo flag is flown on the summit above the trig point with the Albanian double-headed eagle. There is a metal marker with a UÇK head, and a view over Kosovo’s flatland. The route down is beautiful, passing along the Gjeravica Lake and through fields of blueberry shrubs, before arriving at a grassland dotted with yellow flowers.
The soft beauty of this country is found in the mint that you can smell in meadows; the whinchats sounding on the hillsides, the fluff from the edelweiss flower on high ridges and the warmth in guesthouses with their burek, coffee and other refreshments.
Uta says, “People want a place that is quiet, wild, and without roads.” It’s a place to explore.
The trip was organized by NaturKosovo. Five-day journey on the Dinarica Kosovo via Butterfly Outdoor Adventure costs €590If you want to know more about, click here. Adventures for nine days from €990The price includes transfers, meals and accommodation. The Via Dinarica Kosovo The project is being implemented Volontari nel Mondo RTM You can also find out more about the following: CELIM In collaboration with Utalaya Foundation, Club Alpino Italiano, AITR, CNSAS You can also find out more about the following: AICS
