#writetotravel

Driving down these lonesome dirt track roads, icy waters below us, empty mountains all around.⁣

Miles and miles and nothing but silence, nameless peaks stretching toward the sky dusted with patches of white. Those sunset clouds splashed unusual shades of deep purple and dusty rose pink casting a colour haze across the landscape that’s hard to describe, the fleeting kind that comes only after rain and lasts just a few minutes before it’s gone again.⁣

Our tyres ploughed through deep, sticky mud to reach the small ridge that would become home for the night. We wrapped our faces in scarves against the cold and scrambled down the bank to skim stones across the lake’s frozen surface; they bounced and echoed with a bullet ricochet sound that reverberated around the valley and clattered through our ears.⁣

These were the only noises we would hear all night; no birds, no cars, no wind or rain, just us above this frozen lake as the colours slowly melted and the stars came into view.⁣

So much of Albania was just wild land, beautiful places that would not appear on any hiking trail or in any guide book, free to explore, yours to enjoy. With no fences or barriers to hold us back we could pitch up and call anyplace home for the night, and that was just the kind of freedom we craved.⁣

Oh how good it was to be back in this land again.⁣