Louella’s Journal

Newsletter 1 : Week One: ALBANIA

Our first day’s journey in Albania took us from Dedaj (pronounced Deadeye), where we met our interpreter Mario and driver Tonio, and then along the unmade road for a further fifteen miles (which took two hours) toTheth, nestled near the top end of the Shala Valley in the Dinaric Alps. These mountains are jagged, awe inspiring and covered almost to the top with forest. The changing colours of autumn make the trees very beautiful and we were taken aback to see so many forest fires, billowing smoke issuing from the woods, and at night we watched the blazing inferno from the safety of our hillside hotel.

The Deputy British Ambassador came to stay with us the night before the start of our journey, and with the Union Jack flying from the front of her car she brought us support, kudos and a bottle of champagne.

Earlier in the day we had visited the beautiful church in Theth, rebuilt last year after the church had been destroyed under communism, with money from Shala Valley people now living in America. Our horses arrived and we adjusted the saddlery to fit them and tried riding them in the village. The retired school master invited us to his house for delicious raki made with the plums from his garden, and his teenage daughter Diana (named after Princess Diana) made us welcome with her excellent English.

Our first day on the horses was going to be a long and arduous one as we had to climb up to 6,000’ over a pass to leave the Shala Valley and descend into the equally stunning and even more dramatic Valbona Gorge.

The climb started in rain and we walked, leading the horses, for three hours along incredibly stoney, narrow paths, up through beech woods and then tall fir trees to the pass. My horse, Billy, is a grey and has a sweet nature but is difficult to motivate! Robin’s horse, Pieter, is a thin chestnut who, with much urging, will break occasionally into a trot. Mario’s bay horse is called John, who despite her masculine name is a mare, and who kicks both the other horses and us, if she can. A local man called Noa walked with us to show us the route. We picknicked on the top of the pass on bread and cheese before starting the precipitous descent on loose scree with mind-boggling drops to the valley floor. A small hamlet at the bottom called Rrogam on the side of the Valbona river bed was a relief to reach three hours later. Our horses were incredible with their sure footedness and resilience and we bought them for this mountainous stretch of our journey, changing later to lowland horses, who will not have the same abilities as these three to climb like mountain goats.

In Rrogam we stopped for coffee and raki in a small cottage, and ate delicious small plums dripping from the trees. Another two hours riding along the stoney dried up river bed and another hour looking for somewhere to stay, brought us to a farmhouse which is, in effect, one of the first bed and breakfast places. To our delight we found our fellow guests to be the Minister of Tourism, Ylli Pango, and also a leading journalist Ilir Mati and his son Gent Mati, who has a travel agency. We arrived in a thunderstorm, drenched to the skin, and as our vehicle was unable to make it up the gorge as they had had to drive for eight hours and take a three hour ferry journey, we had no clothes to change into except our night clothes which we had stuffed into a small bag in case this should happen. Robin had a T shirt and kikoi; I had my nightie, my utterly useless shower proof jacket and my wet socks. The Minister and his party were astonished and not at all impressed by our fashion sense, until we explained our sartorial dilemma!

Our second day was spent riding for six hours the length of the Valbona Gorger – a more magnificent and scenic place does no exist. After all the rain of the last two days we thought all the fires extinguished, but as we left the gorge we saw the side of the last great peak ablaze.

Our only problems are in the late afternoons when we need to find somewhere for the horses and us to stay. It takes all Robin’s charm and perseverance, and his utter faith in others, to eventually succeed, when I am despondent and sure of failure. Albanians are with one hand very unhelpful, unwilling and loath to look one in the eye, and with the other hand they want to fill you up with raki and give you wholehearted hospitality. Just when we were in despair a lovely farmer agreed to help us and Skender Imeraj, his wife Spahe, daughter Anila and sons Edison and Erlis took the horses, pegged them out in their field, and filled our glasses with raki in their tiny cottage. These people live with limited electricity, a stand pipe in the yard, a small dark sitting room and perhaps two small rooms where the family sleep. In winter conditions must be very hard as they have snow here for six months a year. The houses are incredibly basic but well swept and clean, and hospitality is offered with genuine warmth. I am sure they would happily give a guest their last crust of bread and be proud to do so.

We drove into Bajam Curri, our first experience of a town. Population I would guess is about 11,000, the Blue Guide writes the town off, justifiably so, by saying “there is little to delay the visitor in this town”. Bajam Curri is generally in a poor condition with run down modern flats and cows wandering the roads sifting through the rubbish.

We spent two nights in Bajam Curri to rest the horses; take a day to cross the border into Kosova to visit two historic and important monasteries at Decani and Pec; and to give Mickey Grant, our film maker and camera man, time to edit and upload film of the ride onto our website.

Our hotel, the Albturist Ermal, was the best of a choice of two in an uninspiring town which is struggling and seems poverty stricken with groups of unemployed, listless and rather sinister men everywhere. The hotel doubles as the local mortuary and occasionally corpses can be seen in the hall awaiting burial rites – fortunately there were no bodies or coffins to greet us as we searched for someone to check us in.

Once back on the horses we rode through superb countryside and after a long day in the saddle we had our usual worry of accommodation and grazing. In the forlorn hamlet of Pac with a windswept bar amongst the usual rubbish and goats, and a group of shifty looking men, half drunk on raki and in aggressive and loud mood, we finally met up with our driver Tonio and Mickey. No one would help us so Robin and Mario drove on to the next village of Corraj which has three families living there amongst the deserted farmhouses. They persuaded a young man to take us into his house, already bursting with his widowed mother, Sabrie, and her three sons in the ground floor, and another family of cousins upstairs. We then had a further hour of riding to reach their house, by which time Sabrie was against the idea and worried about finding food for us. Six years ago her husband was shot dead by their neighbour in a dispute over water. Within half an hour her eldest son, then 17, had killed the neighbour – an Albanian solution, and thankfully not the start of a full blown, and still not uncommon, blood feud.

Their house was basic but clean and their hospitality boundless once we were a ‘fait accompli’. With no electricity between 10.00 p.m. and 6.00 a.m. we talked and wrote our diaries by candlelight, and when it came to turning in the family came and watched our every move with interest.

At 6.00 a.m. the single light bulb flicked on, the cockerels crowed, dogs barked and the crowded little house creaked with the two families and five extra guests all getting up. The cow was milked, our horses fed and the rain continued in torrents. By 8.00 a.m. we were saddled up and the sun tried to come out. With no means of an income and no employment for any of her family, Sabrie and her sons eke out a living, and I am sure the money we left was all they would earn this year.

Our ride up over a stoney pass and on to the next hamlet of Kan was horrible as sheet rain and cold swept over us and we were wet to the bone, yet again, in moments. We sheltered in an abandoned building, once a hospital but now without doors or windows and full of animal and human excrement. We called up Tonio and Mickey and while we changed from soaking clothes into all our spare clothes, Tonio and two small boys broke up the last remaining window ledges and made a fire in one of the rooms. Robin and Mario drove back to Pac and amazingly persuaded the sinister men in the Godforsaken bar to buy all three horses at a knock down price. Goodbye to our faithful steeds!

The roads are so bad it takes an hour to go seven miles and our slow progress in the deluge took four hours to Kukes. Here we find a town built thirty years ago when the old town was submerged in the substantial new Lake Fierze, which provides almost all of the electricity in Albania. The Hotel Amerika is the best in town and it was hard to know what to have for supper last night when the English menu had such delights to choose from as “head stew; gora porridge; fried brain” or an item called “combinations”.

Louella Hanbury-Tenison

Photographs by Mickey Grant

Picture by Mickey Grant www.creativehat.com