Strolling the Peaks of the Balkans, a Trekking Route With Neighborhood At Its Core

I’m awoken by the sound of cowbells clanging outside my bare-boned wood cabin in Dobërdol, a high mountain settlement in northern Albania. Through the window, slightly fogged from the chilly morning air at 5,700 feet, I see the culprits: five chestnut-colored cows munching on grass just feet from my bedside, their bells and tails swinging away.
I make the short and frigid walk across the guesthouse lawn to the breakfast room, maneuvering around a dozen or so hikers’ tents pitched in the grass. Yesterday’s 10-mile trek from Çerem to Dobërdol is still fresh in my mind: dusty dirt trails edged with wild blueberries I couldn’t resist picking and patches of willow gentian, their petals so intensely purple they matched the berry stains on my fingers. The forests of pine, beech, and spruce in these parts are thick enough that the daylight dims inside of them; the valleys dizzyingly deep as they fold in on themselves.
It’s mid-September, and only 7 a.m., but breakfast is already in full swing, not an empty seat left at the tables squeezed into the cozy timber-framed room. The Kurmekaj brothers, our hosts, are frantically grabbing four plates apiece from the kitchen, loaded with fried eggs, sausage, fresh sheep cheese, and cucumber-and-tomato salad, a fixture on the Balkan plate. I do my best to duck out of their way as the door behind me swings open and more trekkers pile in.
This is my fourth day of ten on the Peaks of the Balkans trek, a 119-mile inn-to-inn circular trail across the long-disputed borderlands of Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro, through what’s called the Accursed Mountains—a name whose ominous origins supposedly lie either with the devil, war, or travelers cursing the range’s unforgiving terrain, depending on who you ask. Conceived in the early 2010s as a cross-border peace and tourism project, this trail was meant to reconnect mountain communities that had been splintered by war, create livelihoods, and give residents a reason to remain—or return—to villages hollowed out by conflict and emigration.
By those measures, it has been remarkably successful. A late 2025 study published in the Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism estimated that roughly 43,000 hikers now walk the trail each year—up from regional estimates of roughly 20,000 in the pre-pandemic era—injecting more than €25 million ($27.7 million USD) annually into mountain regions where family homes, shepherd settlements, and seasonal villages have increasingly become guesthouses for trekkers. But that success is also beginning to crowd some of the places that the trail was created to support, as a growing number of travelers takes interest.
Ricardo Fahrig of the Albania-based adventure travel company Zbulo, which has been running Peaks trips since the trail’s early years, helped me piece together my own self-guided route on these trails. He says the contrast between busy Dobërdol and the quieter terrain I’m soon to enter after breakfast gets to the heart of the issue. “It’s not the number of travelers on the Peaks of the Balkans trail,” he tells me, “but rather the distribution. Some sections remain sparsely visited, while others, like Dobërdol, struggle with volume during a relatively short season”, a period from roughly June through September, with some hikers continuing into early October.
After breakfast, just a few steps down the trail from the guesthouse in Dobërdol, the clatter and congestion of the morning fade immediately. So do the other trekkers, flowing like a stream up the steep green lip of the expansive bowl-shaped valley we all woke up in, then onward to Milishevc, Montenegro, the usual stop after Dobërdol.
All except two. Stef Van Dam, a seasoned Dutch thru-hiker I’d met on my second day on the trail, falls into step beside me on the cattle-worn traces of the route we’ve chosen to take instead. He, too, is detouring off the official trail. Whereas I’m headed for the heart-shaped lake below Gjeravica, Kosovo’s highest peak, he will peel off later to summit it—“the peak of the Peaks of the Balkans,” he calls the mountain.
At the empty pass marking the Albania-Kosovo border, 1,600 feet of ascent later, we collapse onto the same rock—for all we know, Van Dam is munching his apple in Albania while I air my blisters in Kosovo just next to him. From up here, this border is steeped in irony—a line so invisible we have to guess at where exactly it’s drawn, yet a matter that has been fought over, fortified, closed, and redrawn for more than a century.
Ahead, a narrow dirt track just below the Kosovo side of the pass continues along the contour line, snaking through the treeless and boulder-strewn landscape. To our left and many mountain miles away, we spot the village of Junik where we’re both planning to sleep that night, me in a gueshouse and Van Dam in his tent somewhere nearby. As if marking the spot, a golden eagle circles in the unblemished autumn sky above it.
“This is exactly what I came to this trail to find,” Van Dam says, the first to interrupt the silence. “I wanted something quiet, more remote than other trails in Europe. I’ve found it here.”
Having myself walked a few of the more notably crowded European trails, including the Camino de Santiago, I know what he means. Besides the two of us and the eagle riding the thermals overhead, there isn’t another soul in sight.
By late afternoon, after Van Dam and I part ways below Gjeravica. What appeared as a scattering of rooftops no bigger than a thumbnail now reveals itself in the distinct forms of summer homes and traditional katuns, seasonal shepherd settlements composed of simple huts and stone-walled livestock pens.
At Guest House Tofaj, a three-story stone-and-wood construction with a chimney signaling that tonight’s meal is already being made, nine-year-old Renaja does the talking for three generations of women who meet me in the garden. Her mother and grandmother stand smiling beside a plate of sugar cookies that spell out “wellcome.” With a grin, I eat the extra “l” and press my hand to my heart—a universal sign of gratitude in these mountains.
The family has only recently begun welcoming trekkers into their home, and they radiate the kind of excitement that comes from still being delighted by every single arrival. Renaja leads me to my room for the night, tucked on the third floor beneath the A-frame eaves. Downstairs, pizza bakes in an old wood-burning stove while Renaja’s mother and grandmother set a long table for the dozen or so guests still dribbling in.
The old highland idea of besa—that a house belongs not only to its owner, but to God and to the guest—is coming to life before my eyes. Or, as Fahrig, who first came to these mountains in 2012, later puts it: bukë, kripë, zemër, an Albanian expression meaning “bread, salt, and heart.” “The material offering may be simple,” he says. “The welcome is what makes it memorable.”
The following morning, I continue deeper into Kosovo, eventually rejoining the main Peaks of the Balkans route. Now, it’s Montenegro on the other side of the invisible line I keep crossing. Over the coming days, the trail shifts between empty mountain passes and occasional stretches of asphalt—the latter one being a reason, Fahrig says, that many trekkers truncate this section entirely. He estimates that places such as the Rugova Gorge—a river-carved passage whose 2-3,000-foot-deep limestone walls bear stone-blasted tunnels, a frothy emerald river, and viewpoints at every turn—currently receive around 30 percent or less of the traffic funneled through Dobërdol.
In Drelaj, where this dramatic gorge opens into a wider pastoral valley, skipping Kosovo begins to feel like missing the point. This quiet highland hamlet is embraced on all sides by forested mountains. Across its green curves and garden plots are chalet-like summer homes built out of wood and stone, each boasting a balcony or porch turned toward the mountains and the mosque whose slender minaret rises at the center of it all.
After a day of sharing the trail with more cows than people, passing by deserted villages, and hugging a gully’s edge on a heavily eroded and unpaved fire road, I eventually spill out of the forest onto asphalt that ends in Drelaj. My guesthouse, Konaku i Malsorit, is tucked just to the right of the minaret. An Albanian flag (this part of Kosovo is majority ethnic Albanian) whips in the breeze above the two-story home and its garden, ripe with peppers, tomatoes, onions, and maize.
My host Blendi Lajqi tells me his family fled Drelaj during the 1998-1999 Kosovo War after their home was burned by Yugoslav and Serbian forces. He was six years old. After the war, the family moved to Peja, the nearest major city, and for around two decades, he says, the house and the land they left behind here were “dead, no longer a home.” The creation of the trail gave his family—and others in the village—a reason to return and reinvest in what they left behind. Looking around at it now, “dead” is hard to imagine.
The room I’m sleeping in, now completely redone into what could easily be a fully functioning apartment, once served as a makeshift hospital for the Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK), the ethnic Albanian guerrilla force that fought the Yugoslav and Serbian forces during the war. Here, he tells me, Lajqi’s mother and aunt cared for the wounded.
Many hikers arrive knowing almost nothing about what happened here, he says. But for those who make a point to learn about it, the history of this region gives different weight to this trail—and the intention behind it. The guesthouses along the Peaks aren’t simply infrastructure for hikers. “It’s brought life back to the land and the house where my family lived until the beginning of the war,” Lajqi tells me. “When we opened the guesthouse, our home became a place where people from all over the world could come, stay, eat, talk with us, and experience our way of life. For me, there’s something special about that.”
Few people, however, have watched tourism reshape these mountains as long as Skender Selimaj of Hotel Rezidenca Quku i Valbones in Valbona, Albania. When he and his brother Alfred returned from the United Kingdom in the early 2000s, after leaving Albania during the period of communism, the high-walled valley hemmed in by jagged limestone peaks still revolved largely around subsistence farming. In 2004, they opened Restaurant Rilindja—meaning “rebirth” in Albanian—without knowing whether enough travelers would come to sustain it. Then, in 2009, Selimaj helped clear the passes toward Theth and Çerem and carried some of the first wooden trail signs into the mountains himself.
As in many locations along the Peaks of the Balkans route, the influx of tourism has since reshaped the Valbona Valley. The single-day hike over Valbona Pass to Theth has become one of Albania’s most popular mountain routes, which is also why my self-guided Zbulo itinerary intentionally bypassed it. Even with the trade-offs, Valbona has benefited. Farmers can now sell cheese, meat, eggs, and milk locally at better prices. Families have new income, while local children, Selimaj says, sometimes grow up speaking English simply from meeting travelers from around the world.
Selimaj, who spent years working as a mountain guide and in mountain rescue, still spends his free time exploring the terrain he grew up in, though he’s faced the fact that solitude is increasingly difficult to find. Where he once expected wild goats and empty mountains, “everywhere you go, you see somebody,” he says. He doesn’t wish tourism away; he has seen too clearly what it has done for local livelihoods. What he does want is a Valbona that remains clean, green, and recognizably local, where old stone houses and family-run businesses aren’t crowded out by large-scale outside development.
For Fahrig of Zbulo, the answer to the newfound business isn’t necessarily fewer trekkers. What he hopes to preserve on this trail are “living communities rather than places shaped entirely around visitors.” Doing that, he argues, means spreading trekkers more evenly: encouraging hikers to continue through Kosovo, directing some traffic toward quieter alternatives just beyond the busiest passes, and steering repeat or more adventurous trekkers toward newer alternative long-distance routes like the 225-mile High Scardus Trail that traverses the remote and mountainous borderlands of North Macedonia, Kosovo, and Albania.
In Kosovo, some of that work is already underway. Lajqi is part of a volunteer effort with other guesthouse owners and tourism businesses to create more natural alternatives around paved sections of the original route without cutting the villages themselves out of the trail—the other risk of making changes. “The best solution is not to completely change the original trail,” Lajqi says, “but to offer more choices, preserving the connection between the villages while also giving hikers the kind of mountain experience they came for.”
Over the days that follow, I keep moving west, circling back towards Theth. Each day brings with it another 3,000-foot pass to scale, another cucumber-and-tomato sandwich to enjoy once I get there, along with a steady mix of surprise, (some) stress, and plenty of solitude. Occasionally, I get lost when my GPS stops working or the orange dots and red-and-white striped trail markers disappear, and yet I always find my way. I walk, at times, with no one, and in other moments with dozens of travelers. Sometimes, it’s just me and cowbell-clanging bovine. I keep going like this, collecting these little moments and memories, until, on the 10th day, I pass a bunker, the crumbling Cold War-era concrete mushrooms built by communist dictator Enver Hoxha, and realize I must be back in Albania.
By the time I approach Theth—the end of my route—I feel like I’ve walked through both versions of the Peaks: the one overwhelmed by its own success and the quieter version still there available alongside it.
For my final night on the trails, I hike into Bujtina Kometa, a guesthouse in the quiet hamlet of Okol situated roughly a mile-and-a-half from central Theth. A mezze spread of marinated chicken, seasoned potatoes, olives, tomatoes, soft cheese, and tzatziki for dipping lands on the table, all prepared by our host Ermira and her family. The thing about these trails is that even if you go your own way by day, you’ll find yourself breaking bread with familiar faces by night. Every person around the table, I realize, is someone I’ve met somewhere along the trail—people I’ve shared miles with over the last 10 days as our paths kept crossing.
Ermira’s father tops up our water and hints at honey-soaked fruit for dessert; woodsmoke from a neighbor distilling homemade raki drifts through the low-lit dining room. Van Dam, seated across the table from me now, reaches for another forkful of potato dripping with tzatziki. The busy center of Theth, with its tour buses and day-trippers, still feels worlds away.
For one more night, these Accursed Mountains and all they carry—the besa, the borders, the beauty, and the stories etched into them—envelop us, proving that wide-open spaces and quiet still have their place in these mountains.

How to do it
The complete Peaks of the Balkans circuit covers roughly 119 miles (192 km) across Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro. Most hikers spend about 10 to 13 days completing the full route, though shorter itineraries of 5 to 8 days often cut or bypass certain stages. Most routes involve 5 to 8 hours of hiking per day, typically covering 8 to 17 miles with significant elevation gain and loss.
Getting there: Fly into Podgorica in Montenegro or Tirana in Albania, transferring via shuttle or 4×4 to trailheads in Theth, Valbona, or Plav.
When to go: The core trekking season runs from June through September, but is increasingly stretching into October. Late June through August generally offers more reliable pass conditions, though the trail can get busy. Early June can still mean snow lingering on the highest passes, while September is the sweet spot for favorable hiking weather (peak traffic proves that everyone knows this). Early-to-mid October can be beautiful for experienced hikers willing to gamble on shorter days, colder nights, and the occasional burst of snow; later in the month, high-altitude guesthouses begin winding down, and do not reopen again until early May or June.
Who to go with: Albania-based Zbulo offers guided and self-guided trips (with logistics arranged, but no guide) ranging from 8 to 12 days. These include cross-border permits, guesthouse reservations, meals, luggage transfers, and route planning. If you’re traveling independently, be sure to secure your date-locked cross-border permits at least two weeks before hiking, or have an agency like Zbulo secure them for you.
Where to stay: Accommodation ranges from family-run guesthouses and homestays to simple mountain huts, cabins, and small hotels. In remote sections, expect basic rooms—sometimes shared—along with hearty home-cooked dinners, breakfasts, and often a packed lunch for the following day. Budget roughly $25-55 USD per person per night depending on the room and whether meals are included. Book ahead in high season, and carry plenty of cash in Albanian lek or Euros in small denominations; card payments and ATMs are scarce in the mountains. In May and other shoulder-season periods, it is possible to arrange rooms on the fly, but from June through September—especially in bottlenecks like Dobërdol and popular stops such as Theth and Valbona—it’s smarter to book several weeks ahead. Camping is also possible on parts of the route, including at some guesthouses that allow trekkers to pitch a tent for a small fee and use facilities or buy meals. You can arrange your accommodations directly with hosts over WhatsApp using contacts found through Google Maps, social media, or the official Peaks of the Balkans App; many are now available on platforms like Booking.com as well.

Source: www.cntraveler.com