This website is an archive from 2016

This site was actively maintained from 2006 to 2016. Since then I have kept it online for historical interest, but have made no further updates. Much of the information in these pages is now incorrect or obsolete.

Albania's Lake Koman ferry

15 April 2012

Articles about Albania in the travel pages of mainstream newspapers are rare, and articles about the country’s remote northern mountains even rarer. So it’s good to see a piece in today’s Observer about a journey to the Valbona Valley in the Albanian Alps.

The article focuses on the scenic two-hour ferry journey on Lake Koman: “Just as you conclude you’re heading straight into the side of a mountain, the water opens up again and you turn into a narrow passageway between two vertical walls of rock”. The account of the practicalities of Albania travel are likely to strike a chord with many visitors to the country. Although finding solid information about the ferry trip initially proved difficult, “… eventually a taxi driver with a few words of English called a friend and arranged for us to be picked up early the next morning. This was typical of our experience. Ask someone on the street and, even if they can’t help, they’ll find someone whose second cousin definitely can”.

At the end of the piece the Observer bravely commits itself to an actual timetable and departure point for the connecting buses that link the city of Shkodër to the ferry.