Albania

Things started changing in Montenegro already.
Petrovac: Nice beaches, people in swimsuits walking in the streets.
Bar, the next town: Over! No more tourists. If I see a car with foreign number plates, the people inside are emigrates, coming home to Montenegro. Nobody on the beaches. Serious faces, longer skirts. First mosque.

Two hours later, I enter Kosovo.
Now it is spectacular! This country, who just emerged from it’s communist nightmare, has decades to catch up! It is for sure the poorest country, I will pass during my trip.

I enter Shkoder, through slums, the cross a river via a wooden bridge, only one lane.
I pass Shkoder quite fast, as I have to go to Koman.
The road there is the worst I have seen since years! I have to drive so carefully, that I cannot make it to Koman, so: wild camping at the Drim river.

Next morning, early start: 30 km to go on the craziest road you can imagine; it will take me 3 hours! And again, endless up’s and down’s; after 30 km, I have climbed 640m, without ever being higher than 200m.

In Koman comes a steep climb up a dam, so steep, I have to step down and push again for a while.
Then the road ends.
On the other side of the dam wait’s a ferry who takes me for a 2 hour cruise through a magnificent scenery on the Drim river. Unfortunately, there is a lot of trash floating on it; people seem not to be concerned about environmental issues yet.

Follows a climb to the 600m border post.

I am in Kosovo.

Road to Koman

Cruising the Drim river