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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Travel
Stuart Kenny

‘I wish the stones here could talk’: an epic hike through Kosovo’s Accursed mountains

On the trail to Gjeravica.
On the trail to Gjeravica. Photograph: Stuart Kenny

There are stone bunkers shrouded in the mist on the hillside to my right, just shy of the ridgeline marking the Albanian-Kosovo border. To my left, the view is not just clear but startlingly beautiful.

I’m able to see back down to the tiny mountain hamlet of Gacaferi, where I’d slept the previous night, to look across the deep greenery of Deçan Gorge beyond, over dense pine forests and grasslands that pop with pink and yellow wildflowers, and gaze all the way to the 2,461m summit of Çfërla and the rugged peaks of western Kosovo’s Accursed mountains.

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