A DIARY

Across the Peaks of the Western Balkans

7 countries, 700 kilometers of walking, love, history, unity, hard work, good food, great fjalë

THE
ILLYRIAN
WAY

BOOK DESCRIPTION

Shortly after a life-shifting diagnosis fractured the silence of everyday life, the author set out with her husband on a three-month pilgrimage through the wild heart of the Western Balkans. The Illyrian Way is more than a travel memoir. It's a deeply personal journey of grief, healing, heritage, and discovery. Crossing seven countries and three epic long-distance trails, Via Dinarica, Peaks of the Balkans, and High Scardus, the pair embrace mountain solitude, cultural resilience, and unexpected joy.

Packed with trail maps, intimate photos, local recipes, and luminous vignettes of alpine meadows, Sharr dogs, wild horses, and warm family tables laden with raki and homegrown fare, this book is a love letter to connection: to history, land, and strangers turned kindred spirits. It’s a mosaic of encounters: world travelers, village heroes, ancient ruins, and a search for the author's own Illyrian roots.

With quiet strength and playful reverence, The Illyrian Way invites readers into a tender expedition that celebrates nature’s drama and human grace. Whether you're a backpacker, a dreamer, or simply curious, this journey will awaken your wanderlust and just might guide you toward your own version of home.

FROM THE AUTHOR

The Illyrian Way is a physical trail along mountain peaks, forests, and the Adriatic Sea. There are three established long-distance trails that I have stitched together for the hiker enthusiast to experience 7 countries in the Western Balkans in one go. These established trails are called Via Dinarica, Peaks of Balkans, and High Scardus. Altogether they make up over 965 miles of hiking in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Albania. I personally walked 435 miles of it.

The Illyrian Way is also a mental journey of discovering culture from the comfort of your own home through this book. It depicts a unique cultural blend of West and East, of Christianity and Islam, of communism and democracy, and of various ethnic identities, the larger two being Slavic and Albanian, that have shaped the region. It is so much more than a place you may associate with corruption, poverty, and conflict, due to mainstream media often focusing their reporting on grief rather than celebratory human stories.

Lastly, The Illyrian Way represents my spiritual pilgrimage - a journey born from grief, heritage, and my father’s final wish to rest “back home.” Walking through the region allowed me to reconcile the difference between identity and belonging, to understand my parent’s courage and setbacks under communism, and to forgive my father by seeing him through the land that shaped his fears. Amid mountains, villages, and centuries of layered history, I discovered harmony, hospitality, and a deeper sense of self. This journey became my way of healing, reclaiming ancestry, and honoring Illyria as both a cultural inheritance and a personal awakening. Read more below [...]

Nina, Nana Lullaby

Our journey across the
PEAKS OF BALKANS

Slovenia/Slovenija
Lake Bohinj
Mt. Vogel
Lake Bled
Mt. Triglav
Mt. Viševnik
Mt. Snežnik

Croatia/Hrvatska
Risnjak National Park
Mt. Risnjak
Northern Velebit
Premužić Trail
Middle Velebit
Split
Senj
Opatija
Pag Island - Star Novalja

Bosnia & Herzegovina/ Bosnia i Hercegovina
Blidinje National Park
Jablanica
Mostar
Sarajevo
Umoljani & Lukomir
Sutjeska National Park

Montenegro/Crna Gora
Durmitor Mountains
Prokeletije Mountain Range and National Park
-Babino Polje
- Plav
- Mt. Talijanka (Maja e Vajushës)
- Grebaj
- Karafili Peak
- Vusanje
- Kolata Peak

Kosovo/Kosova
Pejë
Accursed Mountain Range and Bjeshkët e Nëmuna National Park
- Maja Hajlës (Hajla Peak)
- Gjeravica Peak
- Marijash Peak
- Guri Kuq Peak
Prishtinë
Prizren
High Scardus Trail
- Sharr Mountain Range and National Park
- Korab Mountain Range

Macedonia/Makedonija
Sharr Mountain Range
Mavrovo National Park
Jance and Galicnik
Korab Mountain Range

Albania/Shqipëria
Korab Mountain Range
Korab-Koritnik National Park
Theth and Valbona National Parks
Accursed Mountain Range
- Maja e Harapit (Arapi Peak)
- Vukël, Tamarë, Vërmosh, Lepushë
- Bogë, Grykë e Lugjeve
- Maja Jezercës (Jezerca Peak)
- Theth, Çerem, Dobërdol
Shkodër
Tiranë

THE ILLYRIAN WAY DAILY ITINERARY

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EC ME LEZET!

[...] What The Illyrian Way Meant to Me

I walked as:

•A reader shaped by parents passionate about books

•A poet who learned permission instead of suppression

•A naturalist who finds equilibrium in nature

•A humanitarian who understands displacement and belonging

•A daughter seeking peace with her father and her origins

Each layer of my life became a lens through which the Balkans revealed themselves.

A Spiritual Journey, A Heritage Pilgrimage

The Illyrian Way was my pilgrimage into the Western Balkans: a long walk through land, memory, and ancestry that helped me reconcile identity, belonging, and the unspoken history carried by my family (not too different from thousands of families across the region). Walking 700 km across seven countries allowed me to see the Balkans not only as a region shaped by conflict, communism, and fragmentation, but as a place of perseverance, hospitality, and deep cultural layering. I witnessed how Illyria still lives in the subconscious of its people, how borders dissolve on mountain peaks, and how nature becomes a teacher of peace.

Belonging vs Identity

This journey helped me understand that I can belong to multiple places, multiple histories, and still remain whole. Gained the ability to distinguish identity (history, culture, ethnicity) from belonging (a state of inner peace).

Communism, Courage and the Inheritance of Fear, Reconciliation with My Father

My parents grew up under a regime that punished and jailed people for owning books that strayed from state approved socialist realism. They lived through a system that censored creativity, isolated Albania, and taught people to fear knowledge. Yet they refused to pass that fear on to me. Every book my mother placed in my hands, and every ritual of rearranging our bookshelves, was her way of ensuring I inherited courage instead of silence. She shaped me as a reader who was never denied access, and as a writer encouraged me to create rather than only consume. As per my father, communist Albania taught men to fear vulnerability, dissent, and emotional expression. Silence and toughness became survival. Walking through Illyria helped me see him not as distant, but as a man shaped by a system that punished tenderness and restricted speech. Through the land, I forgave him; not through conversation, but through understanding the soil that formed him. And as a man raised in the wider Western Balkans, a region marked by trauma and centuries of mistrust between neighbors, he never placed that fear on me, even though it echoed through his stories. In the end, I became grateful to both of my parents: despite fear and suppression, they exposed me to literature early on; my first doorway to freedom.

Reconciliation Across the Balkans

My pilgrimage unfolded across a region long shaped by fragmentation, war, trauma, propaganda, and competing national narratives. Yugoslavia’s cultural policy, though more flexible than Albania’s, still required literature to serve socialist ideals and state‑guided memory. Albania, meanwhile, enforced isolation and ideological purity! Both systems produced their own propaganda, one by controlling identity, the other by severing outside influence, each resulting in an “othering” of self and “satanizing” of neighbors. Yet on the trail, I found something radically different. My pilgrimage became a personal and collective act of reconciliation: with history, with borders, with inherited biases, and with the complex mosaic of Balkan identities. Despite centuries of conflict and division, I encountered “harmony, warm and caring people… with deep convictions for belonging to their land, to Illyria.” Reconciliation in the Balkans revealed itself not as a political project, but as a lived, everyday practice, in hospitality, shared food, long conversations, mountain crossings, and the quiet coexistence of churches and mosques within eyesight of one another.

Peaks of Balkans

& High Scardus

Trails along the Accursed, Sharr, and Korab Mountain Ranges

spanning Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia

Accursed Mountain Range

Accursed Mountains (Bjeshkët e Nëmuna in Albanian and Prokletije in Serbo-Croatian), also known as the Albanian Alps, are a mountain group in the western part of the Balkans that are the southernmost part of the Dinaric Alps. Maja Jezercë, standing at 2,694 m (8,839 ft), is the highest point of the Accursed Mountains and of all Dinaric Alps, and the fifth highest peak in Albania.

Accursed Mountain range extends from northern Albania (Malësia e Madhe, Theth National Park, and Valbonë Valley National Park) to southern Kosovo (Bjeshkët e Nëmuna National Park) and northeastern Montenegro (Prokletije National Park). They are ethnographically and sociologically diverse with many tribes living in the region as sheep herders; primarily, Hoti, Kelmendi, Shkreli, Kastrati, Gruda, Dukagjini, Shala, Shoshi, Nikaj, Krasniqi, Gashi, Kuci and Rugova.

It includes the highest mountain in Montenegro and second highest in Kosovo.

- Zla Kolata (2,534 m or 8,314 ft) part of accursed mountain range

- Gjeravica (2,656 m or 8,714 ft) part of accursed mountain range

Accursed mountains are world renowned for its dense old growth forests and high biodiversity. The range was formed by the folding resulting from the collision of the African and Eurasian plates. After the Alps, these mountains are the most glaciated in Europe south of the Scandinavian ice sheet. They have very steep limestone slopes with abundant karst features. Its engulfed by active glaciers, glacier lakes, rivers, waterfalls, karst caverns, protected wetlands, wildcat, lynx, fox, deer, boar, wolves, chamois, falcons, brown bears, partridge, owls golden eagles, ancient black pine, hundreds of medicinal herbs, blue grass, glacial flora, beech, fir, maple, spruce, Petasites doerfleri is only found on the Jezerca peaks, and the Albanian lily Lilium albanicum and Viola ducagjinica are only found at the top of the Maja Radohimës slope, and last but not least, the Accursed Mountains are also the only European area where the Tertiary relic Forsythia europaea grow.

Fun Fact: Albania has 42 mountains that are 2,000m or 6,000ft and above.

Sharr Mountain Range

Sharr Mountains (Malet e Sharrit in Albanian) is a mountain range extending from southern Kosovo to northeastern Albania to northwestern North Macedonia. The sections in Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia are national parks (Korab-Koritnik National Park in Albania, Mavrovo National Park in Macedonia, and Sharr Mountains National Park in Kosovo). These mountains are among the highest on the Balkans, with ~30 peaks higher than 2,500 m or 8,202 ft and 70 above the 2,000 m or 6,600 ft. There are 70 glacial lakes along the range. The dog breed Šarplaninac (aka Illyrian dog) comes from this area. Sharr Mountain Range is NOT part of the Dinaric Alp system and therefore not part of the VIA DINARICA Trail but part of the High Scardus Trail. Count on this trail to deliver arguably the best cheese you have tasted in your life - the Sharr Cheese.

Korab Mountain Range

Southwest of Sharr mountains, Korab Mountain Range is a mountain range around the border triangle of Albania, North Macedonia and Kosovo. It’s across three national parks (Korab-Koritnik National Park in Albania, Mavrovo National Park in Macedonia, and Sharr Mountains National Park in Kosovo). Great Korab or simply Korab peak stands at 2,764 m or 9,068 ft and is the highest peak in Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia. A kind of double peak, that of Korab II is about 150 m or 160 yds northwest of the peak within the Albanian territory. On the same ridge are two other peaks rising over 2,700 meters or 8,900 ft: Shulani i Radomirës and Small Korab or Korab III. Korab-gate (Albanian: Maja e Portës së Korabit; Macedonian: Korapska Mala vrata) is another peak about 2 km or 1 mi to the southwest. A few hundred meters south is another peak, Maja e Moravës.

Fun Fact: Korab is the highest mountain in Albania and the fourth-highest mountain located entirely in the Balkan Peninsula, standing at 2,764 meters or 9,068 feet.