Читать книгу The Peaks of the Balkans Trail. Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo онлайн

6 страница из 34

The bulk of the mountain scenery on the Peaks of the Balkans Trail is provided by the Prokletije mountains (Bjeshkët e Nemuna in Albanian), whose name translates rather charmingly as ‘the accursed mountains’ – created, according to local folklore, by the devil himself, unleashed from hell for a single day of mischief. The biodiversity of the region is extraordinary. The Montenegrin side of Prokletije was recently designated a national park – the newest and still the least visited of Montenegro’s five national parks, a great glacier-scoured area (the glaciers themselves are long gone) bristling with spiky mountain peaks boasting suitably evocative names like Očnjak (‘Fang’) and Koplje (‘Spear’). There are two more national parks on the Albanian side, and another in Kosovo.

The trail was developed by the German development corporation GIZ in conjunction with national and local tourism organisations and hiking clubs, in order to create a sustainable income for the local population in these mountainous areas of Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro, to encourage sustainable local tourism and to bring these parts of the region closer together across political borders. Despite increasing visitor numbers – largely due to the growing popularity of the Peaks of the Balkans trail – the area remains incredibly underdeveloped and unspoilt, much of it having been off limits to foreigners until comparatively recently. This is the first English-language guidebook to hiking the Peaks of the Balkans.