The High Scardus Trail in Albania is a wild alternative to the well-trodden Peaks of the Balkans Trail. Here’s all you need to know
“Welcome to Hotel Radomirë Korab,” Agron greets me with an enormous smile as I arrive at my lodgings. It’s the end of my second day on the High Scardus Trail and I am in dire need of a drink. “Can I get you a beer?” he adds, clearly reading my mind.
Over the years, I’ve met people all around the world who could very well be running multinational companies had they been born elsewhere. There was Werry at Port Resolution Yacht Club on Vanuatu’s Tanna Island, Josie the receptionist at Poseidon Dive Centre in Colombia’s Taganga and Amirico, a guide on the Salkantay trek in Peru. All these people had an intelligence and ability that shone as bright as any graduate or executive I’ve met in the UK. Recently, in the tiny town of Radomirë in Albania, I met another.
Agron used to be one of the 10 million Albanians living outside their homeland – an enormous number given the population of Albania is just 2.4 million. The country has seen mass emigration since the end of communism in the early 1990s. During that time, authoritarian ruler Enver Hoxha effectively sealed the nation off from the outside world for decades.
Agron moved to the UK when he was just 15. He came with no English but learnt a trade (carpentry) and worked for nearly a decade in London. Still a young man, he recently returned to the family home in Radomirë where his family run a small café serving coffee and beer. The café is still the heartbeat of the village but above it, he’s built two floors of guest rooms which hikers use as a base to climb Mt Korab, the country’s highest peak.
“I loved the UK,” he tells me one evening as looks up the valley in the direction of Korab. “But, eventually, I wanted to come back to my family and with this new trail opening, the timing was perfect.”
Agron has worked wonders since his return. His hotel is the most comfortable lodging along the trail with warm service, hot showers, fast wifi, a superb restaurant and all the strong coffee and cold beer you could want.
Agron could indeed be running a multinational somewhere, but I expect he’s pretty content where he is – and who can blame him? He lives at the foot of a mountain in one of Europe’s least-explored…
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