#darlingescapes

Pushing out into the milky blue waters, letting the warm liquid take my weight and making those first few strokes across the pool toward those snowy mountains in the distance; that was how this morning began.⁣

Few things are more refreshing than an early morning swim, a chance to wake up and stretch, enjoy an hour of open headspace before the rest of the world rises. Not that there were many people around; the waters weren’t exceptionally hot but neither was the weather, and this was enough to put most off. The main appeal for us was that this pool was just the right size and depth for swimming in.⁣

The steam swirled upwards in the thin winter sunshine, a herd of goats crossed the old Ottoman bridge with a tinkling of bells, and we swam. Back and forth, round and round, algae tickling our feet and the constant crashing of water falling from the pool into the river, staining it too that surreal milky blue as it filtered down through the valley.⁣

The nights were cold and filled with starlit skies, alive with the croaking of bullfrogs and the rushing of river water. The days were peaceful and cool, broken up only by short visits into the nearby town of Permët.⁣

We had a blissful feeling of completeness here, a sense of comforting familiarity we could seldom find on the road. This was the area we’d stayed in when we first came to Albania, and we loved it so much then we spent a whole week here. Little had changed in two years, apart from the damage caused by country-wide flooding had been repaired and the family of stray cats we’d fed were long gone, to be replaced by a timid yet local black dog who crept out of the shadows at night in search of food.⁣

Sadly we didn’t have the luxury of time on our side this time, and after three short days we were onto our next destination in a bid to get our battered old van repaired before she could let us down again…⁣

But we would always miss the milky blue waters of Benjë, tucked away in this furtive little valley, and we would remember this corner of Albania fondly.

What I love are slow mornings, waking up to the sunlight stroking my face, climbing out of bed to make coffee and cracking open the door to appreciate the morning view. A little walk or a dip to refresh my body and mind, and a moment of contemplation before we consult our maps to plan the day’s route ahead.⁣

What I don’t love is being woken up at 7am by someone insistently honking their horn outside our van, stumbling groggily out of bed to be greeted by a police badge.⁣

They ask us where we’re from, what we’re doing here, and we reply that we’re sleeping and is there a problem?⁣

“No problem,” he says, and gets back in his police car and drives away. Well then why the hell wake us up?!⁣

These are the stories of two very different mornings parked in the same camp spot. Setting up camp is a little like flipping a coin; you never know what the result will be, but you can be sure it will make a good story.

Our first few days in Albania were spent at this spot, enjoying a rare moment of winter sunshine, waking up to the soft tinkling of goat bells and the distant braying of donkeys.⁣

The glassy lake waters reflected the steely grey mountains and smoke stacks which rose upwards in the still air. ⁣

Sure the water was cold, and the nights were even colder, but that didn’t stop us from taking a refreshing dip in the mornings with little fish swimming around our ankles. The warm air tingled against our cold skin as we emerged, revitalised, and headed back to the van to brew up coffee.⁣

It’s simple mornings like these that give us time to recharge our batteries, to bask in our surroundings and plan the next leg of our adventure. This is the simple life we so crave, detached from civilisation, and our van which affords us this moments as we drive into the depths of beyond in search of a wild place to just be for a little while.

When we arrived in Albania on an unseasonably warm January day our hearts were fraught with a mixture of emotions: comfort, familiarity, but also a degree of hesitation. We had fond memories of our time in this country, but were they simply painted bright by nostalgia, and would our second visit live up to expectation?⁣

Our answers to these questions came on just our second day here.⁣

We’d spent the day basking in sunshine, washing our van and dipping our bodies into the icy waters of Lake Prespa, and were just beginning to enjoy one of those spectacular Albanian sunsets which painted the mountains the particular shade of purple that was so ingrained into our memories. We went to fire up the engine but our van refused to start; the batteries were too flat, the air too cold. The engine got slower and slower until it had no juice left to give. We were now faced with the prospect of a night here with no power, no heating and no light; we’d seen approximately three cars all day and the light outside was rapidly fading.

Yet somehow, whether by miracle or fate or pure coincidence, a car approached just two minutes later. We waved them down, explained as best we could what had happened, and the man along with all six members of his family came over to help us. We had no jump leads but this didn’t deter him, and in the most Balkan display of ingenuity and problem solving he had our van running in no time by swapping our battery with the one from his car, starting the engine then swapping them back around while it was still running. He even fixed the loose positive terminal with a screw.⁣

Feeling like we’d been a burden we offered him a shot of rakia as a thank you and his face lit up; they then immediately invited us to join them for their son’s birthday party at a nearby restaurant. Instead of spending a cold, dark night in our van we spent the evening drinking, sampling local cuisine, having conversations via Google Translate, eating homemade baklava and birthday cake and toasting each member of the table with a hearty, “ë!”⁣

What a welcome back into Albania.

It’s all too easy to simply pass through somewhere, admiring the scenery from a distance through dusty window panes like the hollow eyes of a TV screen.⁣⠀

It’s much more complex and infinitely more rewarding to engage with life in other countries, to meet people and experience small snippets of culture through them, to learn what it means to be a local in even the most mundane sense, to really a country in a richer, more wholesome way.⁣⠀

When you’ve assimilated into the local way of life, when you’ve learned things that could never be written in any guidebook, that is when one graduates from a tourist into a traveller.⁣⠀

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The people are their country; a country is its people. And to pass through a place blissfully unaware of the locals and their customs is in our eyes to waste an opportunity.⁣⠀

Without those chance encounters, without delving into new cuisines, without saying yes and throwing ourselves into whatever comes out way, how could we ever truly say we’ve seen the world?⁣⠀

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When you travel you open yourself up to a wealth of experiences the world has to offer, both good and bad. But through these experiences you realise that the world isn’t such a dark, scary place as we’re led to believe. Most people we’ve met on our way have been good and kind, hospitable and welcoming. And the bad experiences are just lessons learned for the future.⁣⠀

After all, we wholeheartedly believe that what you put out into the world, is what you receive back.⁣⠀

Be good, be honest, be curious and be kind. And just see where the winds will take you.⁣⠀

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P.S. This might just be my favourite photo from this trip, taken in one of my favourite corners of the world ⠀

Isolated.⁣

Few places offer such opportunity to seek the wild and the remote such as North Albania.⁣

A swathe of black pine trees, a horizon dominated by the hostile white peaks of the Accursed Mountains, and a winding dirt track meandering toward a wide open plateau just big enough for one van to camp. This is where we spent our nights while our days were spent in nearby Pukë.⁣

Of course, parking in such remote places is usually fraught with a danger we must weigh up and assess before deciding to stay. And with our van playing up in cold weather since driving the perilous SH75 road we knew this was a risk we would take.⁣

Dusk arrived, staining the valleysides purple and tinting the dry grass a beautiful shade of umber. The starlit night was peaceful and undisturbed by another human presence, but by dawn the winds had began to pick up, descending from a mountain whose name we were later told translated to the .⁣

Our sleep interrupted, we cracked our eyes open and lay in bed while the van rocked to and fro until one of us gave in and got up to move it to a sheltered spot. Unfortunately, with the wind blasting straight into the engine, the stubborn old beast refused to start and we were left stranded, watching the hammocks and the lights sway as though in an earthquake.⁣

Thankfully we were rescued, for the first in a number of times that week, by @discover_puka in a Land Rover. With our van running at last we were able to drive into the town to wander round its beautiful square and little tiny shops, and sample some of the local Puka beer made from the surrounding area’s mountain spring water.⁣

Then we returned to our secluded spot amongst the pines to rest for the following day’s adventure, safe in the knowledge that even the most troublesome days in the wild were bound to make a good story one day.⁣

On a particularly frosty Monday morning we rose earlier than the sun did, cameras in hand and blankets around our shoulders to capture the sunrise and encapsulate it in our memories⁣.

The watercolour sky was awash with pale pinks and dusky orange, the jagged mountain peaks shrouding the horizon beyond. Below our camp spot sat the most pristine lake of emerald water, clear as glass, and a thick stream of cloud scooting across its surface before being sucked down into the valley below.⁣

We stood patiently, cameras poised, as the fiery sunlight licked the tops of the mountains and slowly made its way down to their base. Finally, after what seemed like hours, the golden rays filtered through the peaks and burst through the chill in the air. The snaking dirt track beneath us was all of a sudden bathed in gold, the fog clouds set ablaze in the sky, and the warmth of a late winter’s day kissed our cheeks and unfroze our hands.⁣

It felt like an achievement for us, a rare gift of total aloneness after several chaotic days amongst the city folk of Tirana, long before the first commuter minibuses would rumble their way down this track. We retreated to the van to reward ourselves with coffee, watching the sun scatter the orderly clouds into a haze of fog that enveloped the landscape and licked at our van.⁣

An early start and a little less sleep had been a fair trade to enjoy this moment all to ourselves. We cradled our coffee cups and pored over maps, planning the day’s adventure ahead before the rest of the world had even pulled back the covers and risen out of bed.