Today I want us to go back to the Balkans in early 2001. I had arrived in Albania in the February and in the March I was due to go to Kosovo for a sustained period of time to look at some aid projects and do some preliminary work for some Summer Camps that we had planned in the post-war climate, that while still potentially volatile was showing signs of calming down, or so I thought. The plan was to go through Macedonia (Ochrid - Tetovo - overnight in Skopje) and up into Kosovo that way. I must admit to being delighted, it would be another country to add to my growing list of visited places, but more importantly it meant that I will not have to go through the northern mountain route, by heading initially to Rreshen (a place I also lived - I am sure you have seen mentions of it in my posts!), through Fushe-Arrez and then Kukes before crossing the border in the direction of Prizren. I have done this route several times and on most occasions due to the terrain and poor roads I have been violently sick.

I think it must have been the end of February when the insurgency had broken out in Macedonia and southern Serbia. Embolded by their victory in Kosovo in 1999 (mainly due to Nato) some Albanian ultra-nationalists wanted to see the birth of a Greater Albania, built around Albania herself, but including parts of northern Macedonia, particularly around the towns of Tetovo and Kumanovo, but also extending to Presevo, the latter of which had been actually going on under the radar since the Kosovo War.

From our base in Lezhe in Albania (NGO not military) I occasionally saw snippets of news and saw the insurgency grow and particularly around Tetovo and Kumanovo. It seemed that Albanian insurgents were holding the villages around the towns and in the towns themselves the Macedonian Army had effectively circled the wagons to protect the town itself. 

My heart sank, not only a war was going on with its horrific costs, but it would mean the route through Fushe-Arrez was back on the table - a virtual guarantee of getting travel sick again.

George, the director of the organisation, told us that the Macedonian route was still on because he had set up a meeting in Skopje on the war to Albania and so on 21st March (2001) in the early hours five of us embarked on the journey in a white Land Rover Defender 110 that would be like nothing I have experienced before or am unlikely to experience again. It wasn't just the whole experience, but it was each element...

BTW the colour of the Land Rover will become extremely relevant in a subsequent post  - ETA two days!

George was driving and on board with him were two Americans (whose names I honestly don't remember), Paul, another English guy and me. We headed off towards Tirana, Albania's capital, before continuing towards Elbasan which was shrouded in a yellowish green miasma. We turned east just before we got there and headed towards the Macedonian border where we crossed at Ochrid. We then carried on, following a road that ran alongside Lake Ochrid and three things struck me. The roads were of a significantly better quality, well marked out in yellow (rather than white) which was unusual and they seemed to be strangely quiet with little traffic on them.

We stopped off at a quiet road cafe for something to eat and then carried on up towards Tetovo and although I wasn't aware of it at the time, but I checked later, we arrived at almost exactly 4pm and this was the exact time that the Macedonian Army launched a counter-offensive to try to dislodge the insurgents in the surrounding villages. You wouldn't have thought we were entering a warzone because - and it is indelibly locked into my memory - there were two fishermen walking along with their rods and a group of women working in a field - normal mundane activities that looked surreal in the circumstances.

But for us we carried on, and the first thing I certainly noticed, and probably the others too, was the smell of war before we saw or heard anything. The air was thick with the smell of explosive residue that was somewhat reimiscent of fireworks but much, much stronger. As we drew closer to the centre of the town we saw some heavy equipment including a couple of tanks and a lot of Macedonians in military uniforms. From the centre we could see the topography of the land much clearer. It seemed that the town was almost completely surrounded by high hills covered in lush forest. Here and there houses could be seen with their roofs poking up out of the bush.

George said 'Let's park and watch.' Something I have never been able to reconcile, given what was happening, but he was the boss.

And so we found ourselves parked in a Land Rover within a few metres of a tank that was firing its ordnance into the hills. Up in the hills we saw explosions as the shells hits home with unknown accuracy and while we were too far away we were probably watching people dying and at the very least their homes being destroyed. It seemed that the insurgents had no answer as nothing seemed to be coming our way. I have always surmised that it was because they were only lightly armed with small weapons like pistols, rifles and probably a few machine guns. I could be wrong of course.

After what felt like 20 minutes or so, but in reality I have no idea, we resumed our journey to Skopje. As we approached the nation's capital we saw passed many gun nests just to the side of the road, all protected by a hefty sandbag wall and understandably conversation was somewhat muted. You don't see something like that and be all sweetness and light.

When we arrived we spent an almost comical hour driving around Skopje looking for a Nissan Pajero. George had called the guy who we were supposed to be meeting and he started driving around looking for us as we were doing the same. We finally tracked him down and had the meeting. One of the things he explained to us was that Macedonia was drawing a line becasue it was tired of being truncated by more powerful nations that surrounded it including Bulgaria and Greece and probably also saw the relatively recent enforced country name change as part of the same thing. The country that was Macedonia (or more formally FYROM - Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia) is now Northern Macedonia to distinguish it from the Greek province of Macedonia (populated by Greeks - go figure!). I guess it is more persuasive when you have NATO and the EU behind you.

At that point we moved on to spend the night in Skopje. I will write more about the hotel tomorrow, but for now I will just say that when we got to our rooms and turned on BBC World the pictures we were seeing were almost the same as what we had directly witnessed only we were much closer. In fact, two things, we saw where the media was parked - safely well away from what was happening with their flash equipment - and I am sure that if we had looked closely it might just have been possible to pick out our Land Rover in the chaos.

Tomorrow I will tell you what happened next...

As always stay safe and well my friends.