A Beautiful 6-Hour Trip through the Mountains

Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016--Podgorica to Peja, Kosovo


It was nice not to have to get up so early to catch the bus this morning.  Since I was already in Podgorica and not leaving from Cetinje, I only had to be at the bus station at 7:30--fifteen minutes before my bus to Peja was scheduled to arrive and depart.

The trip was spectacular in terms of scenery.  The first two hours, we drove up a narrow canyon of high, rocky mountains.  After that, we moved into a combination of rocky mountains with small valleys.  Then we entered a long stretch of really nice forests of tall fir trees with an occasional valley.  Besides the beauty, there was the feeling of going back in time.  This is a VERY remote area since the only way to get here is on these same roads.  I saw shepherds guiding sheep.  I saw very old homes built of raw stone and sometimes with the upper part built of huge pieces of stacked timber.  Everywhere, there were high, mounded hay stacks built around a central speer of wood maybe 3-4 meters (3-4 yards) high.  Adding to the beauty is that it was still cloudy.  There were areas with fluffy clouds hanging below the tops of the mountains and others with fog.

It was a long and tiring trip though with all the twisting and winding along the way.  I was constantly leaning one way then the other.  My body would tense in an effort to stay as much as possible an upright position over and over again.

There was a Turkish man traveling on our bus near me.  When we stopped at the Montenegro border to check us out of the country, they took him inside and questioned him.  Apparently all he had was a Turkish ID card and a letter of some kind with a seal on it.  However, they let him leave.  He was removed again when we got to the border control to enter Kosovo.  I don't know what happened there, but he never got back on the bus.  Maybe they were taking their time vetting him and would let him get on a later bus, or maybe they were going to send him back to Montenegro.  I have no idea if he was trying to travel just to Kosovo or to maybe try to get all the way back to Turkey.

As we entered Kosovo, the scenery became more plain.  The trees turned to scraggly ones.  And we twisted and winded our way down to a large flat area.  Unfortunately, the rain began again about halfway through the trip.  So when I arrived at the station in Peja, I had to put on my raincoat to walk the 12 minutes or so to the hotel.

I am staying in a five-star hotel here, the Dukagjini Hotel, and I am glad.  The main reason to be here was for me to go hiking into the canyon that forms the Rugova Valley.  However, it is raining, and rain is in the forecast for the next two days I will be here.  Even if it stopped, there is no way it would dry up enough for hiking.  This is my first disappointment of the trip caused by weather.  I will try to see some of the other sights in the city, but I think I will be spending a lot of time in my room or in the sauna they have here in the hotel that is included in my room!