Across Koman Lake to Valbona
I usually try to avoid the obvious must-do experiences, but the ferry across Lake Koman felt different from the beginning.
I arrived early that morning, before the landscape of northern Albania had fully revealed itself to me.
After passing through a narrow tunnel, the view suddenly opened up into a quiet but strangely busy ferry port surrounded by steep green slopes.
Somewhere between the still water and the movement around the boats, the journey slowly stopped feeling like transportation and started to feel like an arrival.
As the ferry moved deeper into the valley, the landscape kept changing constantly.
Narrow passages opened into wide stretches of water, steep rock faces turned into forested slopes, and it became harder to understand how far we had already travelled.
Even after several hours on the water, the time seemed to pass almost unnoticed.
There was a quiet feeling of hoping the journey would continue just a little longer — partly because the scenery never stopped changing, and partly because it was impossible to know what was still waiting ahead.
The further we went, the more the landscape started to feel quiet and slightly mysterious.
After leaving the ferry, the road continued deeper into the valley, passing through small villages and increasingly dramatic landscapes.
With every hour, the mountains seemed to grow larger and more present, until the valley finally opened up and the scale of the Albanian Alps became impossible to ignore.
I hadn’t expected them to feel this high and this close — at times they almost reminded me of the European Alps, with steep rock faces rising above deep green forests.
Arriving in Valbona felt less like reaching a destination and more like stepping into a place that was still slightly unknown, even while trying to figure out where exactly my guesthouse would be hidden somewhere between the mountains.
What surprised me most was the silence. My accommodation was located slightly above the village, a bit off the main path, and suddenly it felt like I was completely alone in this huge valley. After the busy ferry the day before, the contrast couldn’t have been stronger.
In the evening the valley felt very quiet and almost empty. Away from the main trail there was little movement and only a few people around.
The next day on the hike towards Theth the situation was very different. The trail was much busier and many hikers were heading in the same direction, especially near the higher sections and viewpoints. The contrast between these two places was quite noticeable.
There was something surreal about the scale of the mountains. Behind every ridge there seemed to be another one. Even though they were “just mountains”, the landscape felt different from anywhere else I had been before on this trip.
It was one of those quiet moments that stayed with me after the trip. Standing there above the valley felt like a natural ending to this part of the journey through northern Albania.
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