What you are about to read is a travel journal from a trip to the Balkans I and my boyfriend are about to make. We are a young couple living in Prague, Czech Republic, and we love hiking. At least once a year, usually in summer, we escape our daily lives, pack all the stuff we need into a small backpack, and head out to some natural park to spend some time walking in the mountains.
One way ticket
This year we chose Montenegro and Albania, because we’ve heard the mountains there are beautiful, not very well known and thus not so crowded, and relatively cheap. We found a car at a car-sharing site (blablacar.com) going from Prague directly to one of the Montenegrian national parks - Durmitor. That said we only have planned the one way, because this year we don’t wanna be constrained by the date of the return ticket or the limited time of vacation from my job, as it was in the past years. I finished my bachelor degree in June and my boyfriend quit his job in spring. We even moved out from our flat to save the money for rent and spend it on the travel. Now we are free for a true unconstrained adventure! :)
Let’s get cursed
After spending 2 or 3 days in Durmitor we are planning to refresh our bodies, which will be tired from walking the mountains, in the Adriatic sea. Then we would like to continue hiking in Prokletje (which in Serbian literally means The Cursed Mountains), cross the border to Albania and explore this wild country. We will see where the chance will lead us, but the plan is to spend three weeks on the journey.
Less is more
We will be travelling with five maps, one for Durmitor:
A possible hike in Prokletje:
One more detailed tourist map of a part of Prokletje:
And two other maps for the overall orientation, which is very useful for hitchhiking and travelling longer distances.
We are gonna carry all the stuff for the whole journey on our backs, so we spent quite a while thinking through what we will really need and can’t live without. One nice hack we came up with earlier this year is to carry just one sleeping bag for the two of us. We even tried it with just one sleeping mattress, but two people sleeping on 60 cm, it was too hardcore even for us. But one sleeping bag just for covering us should be ok, considering the latitude we will be in. We are also taking a light tent with us and the food for the both hikes.
We wish you will enjoy and follow our travel journal! We will make sure it will be worth reading…
