Peaks of the Balkans

18 min read

The Peaks of the Balkans is a ~180 km loop through the Accursed Mountains, the range Albanians call Bjeshkët e Nemuna and Montenegrins call Prokletije. The route links Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro, and its typically broken into ten stages. We fastpacked it counterclockwise from Theth in July 2026 and finished the entire loop in five days. The route is pretty well maintained with no major technical sections.

Distance	Elevation
176.4 km (109.6 mi)	10,117 m (33,192 ft) ↗️ 10,113 m (33,179 ft) ↘️

Planning

Border permits

The trail crosses three national borders at unmanned mountain passes, and each country handles permits differently. You need cross-border permits sorted at least a week in advance. The process is straightforward — online services like Zbulo handle filing for a flat fee, or you can apply directly. Most permits are free. Montenegro charges a national park fee that changes year to year.

We were never checked the entire trip, and most hikers we spoke to said the same. The one surprise was entering the national park from Plav and around Vusanje, where we had to pay around €5 at a gate. I'm not sure that fee is connected to the border crossing permits.

The border permits guide on peaksofthebalkans.info is the clearest write-up of the current process.

Getting there and getting back

Tirana is the practical entry point. We flew in from Berlin, spent the night near the centre, and caught the 5 AM bus toward Theth via Shkodër early the next morning. That put us at the trailhead around 10:30 AM. It's the most direct option but slightly pricier, and it means you can start walking the same day you arrive.

The loop closes back in Theth, which makes the return trivial. Buses run Theth to Shkodër, and from Shkodër you can carry on to the coast or back to Tirana.

Direction and duration

We went counterclockwise: Theth, Valbona, Çerem, Dobërdol, into Kosovo, across Montenegro, and back to Theth. Counterclockwise front-loads the hardest climbing, since Day 1 puts two 1,000 m ascents back to back before you've found your legs. Going the other way spreads that out.

Ten stages is the standard itinerary and it's the right call for most people. Five days works if you're fit, comfortable with 27 to 40 km days, and happy to camp where you stop rather than where a hut happens to be. Our five full days averaged 33.5 km and just under 2,000 m of gain, with a 9 km descent into Theth left over for the sixth morning, which is what kept the total elapsed time inside five days. We made no attempt to be fast on the descents.

Water

Water is generally good and occasionally not. Streams are frequent through the Albanian sections and along the high ridgelines, but the mapped locations are unreliable. In the Ragam and Lilomi stretch on Day 1, streams that appear on OpenStreetMap sat up to a kilometre from where we expected them, and some had shifted or dried entirely.

Two places to plan a carry. The Kosovo road section on Day 3 has almost no shade and no natural water between guest houses. And the Ropojana valley on the Montenegrin side of the final border crossing has a reservoir marked on the map, Ropojansko Jezero, which was bone dry in July.

Where to sleep

There's a proper hut network. Dobërdol, Milishevc, Babino Polje, and the villages of the Rugova valley all have shepherd guest houses that feed you and put you in a bed, and staying in them is a large part of why people love this route. We wild camped instead, partly for the flexibility and partly because the meadows up here are among the best camping I've had in Europe.

Wild camping was straightforward everywhere except Plav. That's the one real town on the loop, and we couldn't find anything workable, so we paid for a spot at the lakeside campsite.

Fees

A park ranger collected a Prokletije National Park entrance fee of about €5 per person on the trail south of Plav. It's an official ticketed system, not an informal toll, so carry small cash in euros.

Fitness and gear

This is a hikeable route with no scrambling, no exposure, and no fixed gear, which means the difficulty is entirely in the volume. If you're compressing it into five days, the number that matters is 2,000 m of climbing per day rather than the distance.

Sun protection belongs at the top of the gear list, which is not something I'd have guessed before going. The Kosovo section is a long, exposed road walk, and I misjudged it badly.

Getting to Theth

We flew Berlin to Tirana on 4 July and stayed overnight. The 5 AM bus runs Tirana to Shkodër and then up the valley to Theth, arriving around 10:30 AM, and we were walking by 11.

Theth is a small village of stone houses in a deep valley, and it's the busiest trailhead on the loop by a wide margin. Day hikers come up from Shkodër for the Valbona Pass crossing, so there are guest houses, a few shops, and food. It's the last easy resupply for two days.

Day 1: Theth to outside Çerem

Starting a 176 km loop at 11 AM with a 1,000 m climb is a decision you feel by the top. The pass itself is a good introduction to the range: loose rock, big views back toward Theth, and enough foot traffic that you're never alone. Once you drop into the Valbona valley the crowds thin out fast.

Valbona is the reward for the morning. We sat in the shade with cold drinks and a plate of flia, the layered crêpe dish of northern Albania and Kosovo, built up in thin sheets with cream between each one and baked under a lid of coals. It's the sort of food that only makes sense when someone has spent hours on it.

Then the second climb. Another 1,100 m in the afternoon heat, with a short unmarked crossing into Montenegro partway up, which is where the permits start earning their keep. We camped on a grassy shelf above Çerem next to a sheep farm as the light went. Something about the dry grass and the open valley below reminded me of the Sierra on the PCT, which was not what I expected from Albania.

Day 2: Outside Çerem to outside Milishevc

The dog turned up at breakfast. We were sitting by a stream about 4 km into the day when a large, friendly mountain dog wandered over, decided we were his, and stayed for three days. We called him Serem, after the village.

The border sequence in the middle of this stage is the strangest bit of navigation on the loop. You cross into Montenegro at Vranica Pass, walk about a kilometre and a half through forest, and cross back into Albania. No fences, no signs, nobody to show a permit to. Just blue waymarks and a change of country.

Dobërdol earns its reputation. It's a summer shepherd settlement in a wide green bowl with the Three Borders peak above it, and Bujtina Leonard fed us and sold us cold drinks while we washed in the river. Serem got briefly lost among the sheep and then reappeared, unbothered.

The stretch after Dobërdol was the best running of the trip. A short 400 m climb puts you on the ridge that forms the Kosovo–Montenegro border, and it stays high and smooth for several kilometres. We reached Roshkodol at km 32 with enough daylight left to push on, and made it the longest day of the loop by camping in the meadow outside Milishevc instead.

Day 3: Outside Milishevc to Guri i Kuq

The 1,200 m drop into the Rugova valley is relentless. Lawrence and I ended up on different lines through it and met again at the river at the bottom, which tells you something about how obvious the route is down there.

Then the character of the trail changes completely. You're on tarmac, in a valley, in full sun, and the Rugova villages are strung out along it. We stopped at the guest house in Reka e Allagës for a Coke. By Drelaj I was dizzy and light-headed and had to lie down. I slept through the middle of the day and didn't leave until close to 5 PM, which turned a moderate day into a long one.

The last stretch through Kuçishtë is gravel road under construction, and every passing car threw up dust. We tried to hitch and got nowhere. Camping in the field near Guri i Kuq that evening, Serem reappeared out of the dark and slept between the two tents.

Day 4: Guri i Kuq to Plav

Serem climbed to Jelenak Pass with us, which is 800 m of gain in 5 km and no fun at all in the morning. The ridgeline on the far side made up for it. Four or five kilometres of smooth, high, open trail with the Montenegrin side of the range spread out below, and it's the kind of ground that makes you want to keep moving even when you shouldn't.

We stopped for lunch at an alpine hut and ate homemade burek while debating the descent. There's a road shortcut into Plav and a longer trail route that stays higher. We took the trail, and it was the right call, though Serem disagreed. Somewhere on the way down he attached himself to another group of hikers and left. Three days of company, gone without ceremony.

Plav sits on a lake and it's the only real town on the loop, which makes it the natural resupply point and the obvious place to take a rest day if you're not in a hurry.

Day 5: Plav to outside Theth via Vusanje

The ranger found us not long after we left Plav. The park fee is real and it's enforced, and the ticket gets scanned, so this isn't one to try to walk around.

The climb out is brutally steep in one section: 230 m of gain inside a kilometre, on a slope where you're using your hands on the grass. It opens onto about 4 km of ridgeline that's some of the best running on the whole loop, and then gives it all back in a 10 km descent that drops 1,200 m into Vusanje.

Vusanje was busy with day visitors, most of them heading for the Grlja waterfall in the canyon above the village. We stopped to look and then filled every bottle we had, because the Ropojana valley ahead is dry. The reservoir marked on the map was an empty bed of stones. There's a spring about 9.6 km past the village, and between Vusanje and that spring there's nothing.

Crossing into Albania in the Ropojana valley, the landscape picks up a different kind of detail. Concrete pillboxes and abandoned military positions sit along the ridgelines, left over from the Hoxha years, and once you've seen one you start finding them everywhere. We camped early on a hilltop at about 4:30 PM, mostly because it was the best ground we'd seen all day. The sky stayed clear and the stargazing was the best of the trip.

Final morning: Qafa e Pejës into Theth

We were moving before 6 and over Qafa e Pejës early. The descent into Theth is the reverse of what half the day hikers in the valley walk up, so you meet people coming the other way with fresh legs and clean clothes while you're five days deep. We were back at the trailhead by 9 AM.

From there it was a bus to Shkodër, then on to the coast to meet a friend, then back to Tirana. Finishing a loop in the same village you started in has a tidiness to it that a point-to-point never quite gives you.

Tips for the Peaks of the Balkans

1. Apply for the cross-border permits weeks ahead. Most are free, Montenegro charges, and none of them are quick. Start at the border permits guide.
2. Going counterclockwise stacks two 1,000 m climbs into Day 1. Know that before you take the 5 AM bus and start walking at 11.
3. Don't trust mapped water in the Ragam and Lilomi section. Streams there move by up to a kilometre between seasons.
4. The Kosovo road day is the one to respect. Start early, carry more water than the distance suggests, and take the sun seriously.
5. Ropojansko Jezero was dry in July. Fill up in Vusanje and plan for the 9.6 km gap to the next spring.
6. Carry small euro notes for the Prokletije National Park fee south of Plav, around €5 per person.
7. Plav is the only real resupply and the only place we couldn't wild camp. Budget for a paid pitch or a room.
8. The huts at Dobërdol, Milishevc, and through the Rugova valley are half the appeal of this trail. Even if you're camping, stop and eat at them.

Reflections

Five days was too fast for a route this good, and I'd do it that way again. What stayed with me isn't the ridgelines, though the running along the Kosovo–Montenegro border and above Vusanje was as good as anything in the Alps. It's how quickly the terrain resets. You climb out of a valley full of tour groups and within two hours you're crossing an international border alone in a forest with nobody to show a permit to.

The Kosovo day was the low point and the most useful one. Road walking in full sun after a 1,200 m descent is the sort of thing you plan around once you've got it wrong, and I got it wrong. If I ran the loop again I'd start that stage in the dark.

And then there was Serem, who joined us at a stream above Çerem and left three days later on a descent into Plav with better company. Fastpacking strips a trail down to its logistics, which is most of what this post is about. A large friendly dog choosing to come along for a third of it is not something you can plan for.

Thanks for reading! If you're planning the Peaks of the Balkans and have questions about permits, water, or squeezing it into five days, get in touch or find me on Instagram: @andrewtpham.

Happy trails!