I lay in bed in a hostel in Kotor, Montenegro, for the longer my travels extended, and the cheaper the accommodation got, the happier I was to spoil myself with such comforts. I knew next to nothing about where I was headed - the so-called 'Albanian Alps,' more menacingly known as, 'The Accursed Mountains'; three words so thrilling and mysterious that they may as well have been: 'Here be dragons.' It turned out that that was one corner of the world the all-seeing eye of Google hadn't quite penetrated into. Whatever information I'd gleaned from the internet wasn't really much to go on. But scrolling around on my phone, I found photographs of Dolomite-esque reliefs and snowy peaks. The latter alone was enough to persuade me to make the journey since, hailing from Atlanta, snow - to say nothing about the novelty of snow-capped mountains - and I were not frequent acquaintances. Besides the alluring photos, I'd glimpse an unsettling weather report.
Beneath the warm blankets, I read of an approaching cold snap forecasted to fall upon the glaciated valleys of these Accursed Mountains the very same day I was set to arrive among them, after what should have been a three-day's journey from Kotor. The temps were predicted to plummet to an arctic minus twenty degrees Celsius, which was astonishing considering the first day of the journey out of Kotor would turn out to be a cloudless and very warm twenty-one-degree day. Having never experienced that kind of cold, minus twenty degrees was a hilariously meaningless number. For comparison, I checked the same day's forecast at Everest Base Camp, which is just a tad under two miles taller than the highest peak among the Accursed Mountains, Maja Jezercë: minus eight. Sheesh.
Kotor Old Town
Bay of Kotor
Not particularly thrilled by cities, I hadn't intended to pass through the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica, at all, but my initial scheme of hewing to the northern edge of Shkodra Lake had been thwarted by roads now engulfed beneath a meter of lake-water. An unvexed elderly lady, whose village seemed to just barely be floating above the water, spoke to me in Montenegrin as I spoke back in Russian and, clearly able to parse what the other was saying, together we decided that I'd have to reverse course and head towards the capital. It's always a delight to bomb all the way down a mountain road only to have to return straight back up it. Half of the way down I'd chewed the fat with some gentlemen paving over a dirt road while I waited for one of their rollers to finish up its business so I could carry on down the road. As I passed them a second time, I did wonder why it seemed to have slipped their minds to inform me that the way ahead was flooded. Ah well. That first night out of Kotor I pitched my hammock among a scattering of pines just outside Podgorica, whose name means, 'beneath the mountains.'
The following day, I endured a ceaseless deluge while riding up and down insanely steep (but fortunately paved) mountain roads. Descending the wet, serpentine pass, Leqet e Hotit, the heavy, half-frozen rain droplets crashed into my face with hail-like force, compelling me to squint my eyes the whole way down lest I go blind. And by midday, it was becoming apparent that I was going struggle to find any place to wild camp for the night. I'd have to condense this three-day trek into two, for the bulk of this day's ride ran through the crumbly and narrow Tamara Gorge - carved over millennia by the fierce and glacial-blue river Cem. The road, sandwiched on one side by a kilometer-high cliff, and on the other side by the river and then another kilometer-high cliff, would be the only remotely level terrain; and a road is no place for a hammock. I'd have to keep on keepin' on, as they say.
The northwesternmost tip of Shkodra Lake
Flooded Roads & Nearly Flooded Village
Top of Tamara Gorge seen from the top of Leqet e Hotit pass
Having a merry time paving a gravel road
I was shivering outside the Albanian border checkpoint. Eight hours and sixty mountainous miles had passed, and the rain still hadn't let up. My layers and I were completely soaked through, and the border officer wouldn't allow me inside his tiny, but, crucially, warm office. The Montenegrin officers were several more, but in an even tinier office - no room, alas. Even though I'd woken up that morning in Montenegro, the road through the Tamara Gorge, just northeast of Shkodra Lake - split in half between Montenegro and Albania - was in Albania. Back over the Montenegrin border, and now firmly in 'Accursed' territory, with three miles between me and Gusinje, the nearest town, each pedal stroke would stave off the onset of hypothermia.
I would warm up and begin to dry off in a quaint cafe opposite the town's Mosque. Steep mountain roads are hungry work - "I'll have one of everything, please!" Poor me, scarfing down my lunch and dinner in soggy trousers! The cook, Arden he was called, was kind enough to shout at me, "You're crazy brother!" just a few times. We'd have a long chat. He said his uncle was crazy like me, climbing mountains, hiking, and biking. But Arden would have none of it. He only wanted to find a good woman to marry. Before the sun set, he'd point the way to a cozy, cheap hotel just a hop and a skip down the town's main, but brutally battered road. "Don't die!" he advises.
I'd come up here on this massif detour in the hopes that I would find a mountain-scape completely covered in snow (it was December after all), something I'd never seen in person. Winter's first snows were due very soon, so Arden mentioned. For now, the mountaintops slept beneath a thin, white cover, while the rest of the landscape was still firmly autumnal. That would all change the next morning when I would awaken, plenty warm and very dry, look out the window, and behold the winter wonderland of my dreams. The snowstorm picked up by noon, strengthening to a full-on blizzard some hours later. Visibility didn't improve until the following morning, occluding any glimpses of mountainous splendor, but oh, was I merry anyway!
Semir waves and smokes in a blizzard. "This is Balkans," I was told
Semir's Jeep
My first day in Plav, the largest town in the valley, I'd cross ways in a cafe with a kind-faced man sporting a soul patch called Dadu after filling myself up with half a dozen Russian-style blini - drizzled over with honey, of course. He looks at me and asks, "How is it you're here? How did you find this place?" referring to this accursed valley. I told him I'd put a pin on my map months ago and simply wanted to see what was here. Then, as if to imply that some conspiracy of cartographers was ushering me to my doom, in the most serious voice he admonishes me, "Delete that map."
I tend not to spend much time looking back at pictures that I've taken in my travels. But there is magic in the memories and the photographs of my first few days in the Accursed Mountains when all was freshly blanketed in white. It was and is as if out of a fairytale and I revisit the images often.
In snow there is a silence unlike any other. Absent the chirpings and scuttlings of insects, birds and other beasts, especially humans, footsteps crunch in the powder. Under a foot of snow, the trees cannot be heard. The heart is beating, and the lungs are breathing.
The mountain environment becomes even harsher, even more unfriendly to human life wrapped in its winter cloak. It is otherworldly, breathtakingly gorgeous, but one must tread with the greatest care, for here warm-blooded life dances on the edge of a knife.
