The Rugova Valley

Beyond the Pec Patriarchate the road follows the Bistrica river as it winds its way through the towering walls of the Rugova Gorge.

In recent years this area has been developed for the steadily increasing numbers of sightseers and day-trippers.  New pizza restaurants and holiday camps are springing up by the river. One larger building houses the Rugova water bottling plant – mineral water being one of the few staple products that isn’t imported. Further upstream an area is even being flattened for a petrol station. Most tourists only make it a few kilometres along the road, where spectacular waterfalls cascade down the side of the gorge. As we drive past there’s a crowd of visitors there, among them a group of Slovenian troops posing for photographs.

Past the gorge the scenery opens out and the area becomes far less visited. We’re at the base of the ‘Accursed Mountains’, the range that encompasses the Kosovan/ Albanian/ Montenegrin borders and is virtually unknown outside of the region. Rugova alone covers over 30,000 hectares. There are 13 villages in the hills and mountains above the gorge but infrastructure is very limited and many are accessible only by 4WD along winding dirt roads. A number of organisations have been founded in the region to help the villagers realise the potential of the area of for tourism without damaging the environment or the community. We’re travelling with Ellen Frank from one such group – ERA (Environmentally Responsible Action) which was founded in 2003. ERA volunteers have started building trails to some of the more dramatic parts of the gorge that are almost never visited by locals or tourists, despite being only a few hundred yards from the road. And they’ve built a series of cabins in the mountains to serve as bases for trekking – it’s to one of these, on the slopes of Guri i Kuq (or ‘Red Rock‘), that we’re heading for.

The tarmac road continues on to the border with Montenegro, but we follow a rough gravel which winds off towards the village of Leqenat. There’s a maze of tracks to navigate and no signs, and at one point our driver has to execute a rather worrying three point turn above a sheer drop into the gorge. Our trek into the mountains starts at a farm belonging to Ramiz, a local school teacher. 20 children from the local villages all make the daily journey to his school house in the village of Drelaj. Ellen tells us both the farm and the school were destroyed during the 1999 war, along with virtually every other building in the valley. Rugova was initially a protected or “free land” during the conflict – a transition area for IDPs (internally displaced people) where they stayed hosted by Rugova families, before passing into neighboring Albania and Montenegro as refugees. Later the entire population was evacuated, the livestock killed and the buildings razed to the ground.

Now nothing remains of the traditional stone and wooden ‘kulla’ houses, instead the new buildings are bigger, more modern, and despite the extra comforts some locals lament the loss of their cultural heritage. Construction here is uncontrolled and some fear it is unsustainable as more areas are earmarked for bigger and bigger farmhouses and holiday lodges. There’s also a problem with illegal logging – several times on our trek the trail becomes obscured by felled trees. Huge swathes of forest have disappeared since Ellen last came this way a few weeks ago. In the distance we can hear the chainsaws of the lumberjacks. ERA are part of a campaign to have Rugova declared a protected area but even then there’s little chance the laws would be respected.

As we climb above the farm we get uninterrupted views across the Rugova region. A red brick Catholic church, the only one in the region, stands out bathed in sunlight in the village of Kuqisht on the opposite side of the valley. After several hours we reach a cabin built by ERA’s co-founder Fatos Lajqi and other volunteers. It has a roof coated in soil and turf, walls made from thick sections of log, insulated with foam. Inside is surprisingly spacious, big enough to sleep six, and heated by a tin stove.  Ellen tells us Fatos can build cabins like this over a couple of days. During the weekends it’s occupied by a local family who make sure it’s not ransacked by shepherds. They offer us coffee and homemade raki. They also see we’re woefully unprepared for the snow and lend us walking poles and gators.

From here two children from the family act as our guides to the mountain hut where we are to spend the night. It’s a good job they come along – from here the trail disappears completely below several feet of snow.  It’s slow going and it’s nearly nightfall when we reach the hut. By now we’re above the treeline, the scenery is more desolate but dramatic. The hut is small, with a dirt floor strewn with empty cans, but is equipped with enough basics for the night – candles, tins of sardines, an axe for chopping firewood. The stove is cracked and the room fills with thick smoke, but we need to keep it burning throughout the night as the temperature drops well below zero.

In the morning we again trek through the snow to a natural ampitheatre at Lugu i Males Orit ( “Highlander’s Valley”). At 2100 metres, this is the highest point we reach before making the return journey. Above us the peak of  Guri i Kuq looks tantalisingly close at 2522m. The area is prone to avalanches and only skilled climbers go any further these days, but during the war the refugee columns came through this way. Ellen‘s group have video footage of the refuges, mostly women and children, trekking across where we’re now stood without mountain gear or even winter clothes.

Now this area is part of the proposed ‘Balkans Peace Park’, which is being co-ordinated jointly by a British group and local NGOs. As well as Rugova, the park would encompass Theth national park in Albania and Prokletija national park in Montenegro – an area of 4000 sq. km. The park would have open borders between the three countries (for now, trekking across the borders can involve making huge detours to pass through official border posts). There is continuing debate as to whether the focus should be on the creation of the park as a political symbol of peace, or on the development of sustainable eco-tourism for the region. There is little doubt that this area will attract far more visitors in years to come – the challenge is to make sure it‘s done in a way which helps, not damages, the local communities.