The way I left things yesterday I had a plan.

To summarise: -

It was now Wednesday evening and I had only eight more days before I was due to fly from Rinas Airport, just outside the Albanian capital. I had expected a lift the previous Saturday or Sunday, but it hadn't materialised and when I called George, the organisation director he said that he'd sent me a message that I would have to make my own way if the lift didn't come. Extremely daunted, but not quite panicking, I had got myself to Gjakova which is much closer to the Albanian border and then by the most incredible of coincidences / some kind of fortitude / God's grace I had somewhat miraculously encountered Skender - and it was a good job too, because Nik, who I'd planned to overnight with had completely disappeared. Not only did I stay with Skender, but he was able to find out what time a furgon (shared minibus) was heading to Lezhe in Albania - my immediate destination. I was still fearful as my friends back in Klina, where I had been living, had refused to take me because of the inherent dangers on the journey. Also lingering in the back of my mind was the fact that somebody close had said that I was likely to face a life-threatening situation during my stay and at that moment, as I saw it, nothing had presented itself - so it had to be now. Looking back I now realised that actually I had faced two or three situations that hung on a knife edge and could have gone either way.

Ok, so now we are up-to-date and as Older_Rah says whenever we digress during a bedtime story - "Back to the story!"

Skender and I woke up at about 4.30 after only having a managed a two or three hours sleep maximum. Having left most of my baggage in a secure lock up in the city centre, it didn't take long to gather the few things I had with me and we set off for the town centre. We stopped off on the way in a bakery, that despite the early hour was open and bought a couple of  kifle.

 Kifle - a delicious jam-filled sweetbread.

Upon arrival in the city centre, I gathered the rest of my belongings and Skender stayed with me until we departed. There were several furgons, ready to go and mine actually departed a bit later than we had been told and there seemed to be endless people milling about and I surmised they were relatives saying goodbye to their loved ones. Just before I got onboard, I put most of my baggage in the back and paid the driver in US dollars.

Finally, with it still being dark, we were on our way and heading towards Morine, the border crossing, which for a short time during the Kosovo war became quite famous as a major crossing point for refugees. As we approached, the furgon suddenly came to a stop and the driver pointed to two guys who were sitting in the back with everybody else and said something incomprehensible to me and they got out.

A moment later we turned right and seemed to leave the road and with the bumping it felt like we were crossing a freshly ploughed field and soon we came across a place illuminated by couple of floodlights mounted on mobile generator and a portacabin. We were soon apporached by two guys, one in a United Nations police uniform and the other in a KPS (the relatively newly formed Kosovo Police Force) uniform. We handed over our passports and the UN guy suddenly said to me "You're English. What are you doing here?" 

I responded in the only way that I knew how to. 

"You're American. What are you doing here?

He kind of shrugged off my wit and within a couple of minutes we were on our way again.

On the Albanian side of the border crossing there was a ram-shackled sentry post, a barrier and a single border guard in a scruffy police uniform. He approached us and gave each of our faces and passports a cursory look before raising the barrier and letting us through. 

A couple of minutes later, and out of sight of the border post, the furgon stopped again and the two guys who had got out on the Kosovo side of the border got back in. I assumed that they had no documents and that the border must be very porous at that point. 

We then drove on into Albania and it must have been only half an hour later when we pulled up on the side of a lake. There were other furgons there and this time the driver pointed to me and said "Out!"

This probably was the single most scary moment.

We were in Tropoja, that was known to be the most dangerous part of Albania at that time and nestled at the foot of the nearby mountains was Barjam Curri, that I mentioned yesterday and this very much was seen as the Wild West back in those days. Suddenly, I was isolated and singled out and never before or since have I ever felt so vulnerable.

I only felt slightly reassured when a few minutes later the same driver pointed to a small family group; presumably a mum and dad and their daughter who looked about six at the time. Surely, they wouldn't attack a family group? My concern then shifted to the fact that I had paid one specific driver and now he was dumping me on the lakeside and that I would be scammed. The drivers then assured me that they all work together.

I stuck to the family like glue, because they were in the same boat and it soon turned out that this would be literally. In the midst of the chaos we were somehow herded onto a ferry with another furgon and I honestly can't remember whether I boarded on foot or on the furgon that I had been directed to.

The ferry, almost certainly the one in the header image, was in a state. It was rusty and broken down and I remember thinking at the time that the Titanic was probably in a better condition, even in its current state at the bottom of the sea. There I was, almost certainly the only non-Albanian on the ferry, loaded down with a heavy rucksack, camcorder and laptop. I was ready to be robbed and thrown overboard, assuming the ferry didn't sink on the way.

The ferry has now been beached and left to rot and replaced with a modern one which some clients of mine traveled on last year and they said it was a great experience. Even rotting now, it isn't in any worse condition than it was back then.

The ferry pulled off from the shoreline and we were soon on our way through the picturesque mountains, but this created another anxiety. I am not the world's greatest swimmer and the lake was created by artificially flooding the valley at the southern end of it. This meant that the sides of the lake were effectively mountain sides and assuming, in the worst case scenario, that I were able to reach the shore - in the event of disaster - that I would probably not be able to haul myself to safety. I was convinced the ferry was going to sink.

I must say it was stunning and remarkably peaceful and nobody approached me and I was left alone - which suited me just fine. The journey took about three hours and the ferry docked in Komani

I actually traveled between points 3 and 2 from Fierza to Komani and it is generally called the Komani ferry because that is also the name of the artificial lake.

Disembarking seemed to be fast and then the furgon carried on with its journey, its ultimate destination was probably Tirana, but it went through Shkoder before heading towards Lezhe. When I realised where I was, while entering Shkoder, I realised that as a result of taking the ferry I had bypassed the mountain roads around Fushe-Arrez (that always turned my stomach inside out) and we were already on the coastal plain where the roads were much straighter and less bumpy.

After Shkoder we then proceeded fairly quickly to Lezhe and what happened next shows just how much I had misjudged the situation. My actual destination was a place called Ishull-Lezhe a small village that abuts Lezhe and is nearer the sea (Ishull literally means island), but the furgon stopped in the town centre, and by the furgon, and that means the driver, stayed with me until I was safely in a taxi that completed the final leg of my journey. This is the Albanian concept of Besa in practice. A host is responsible for the safety of any guest until they are safely home or in this case passed on to the Besa of another (the taxi driver).

I had told George that I'd arrive before dark on Thursday and I got there about an hour before the sun set.

One final point about the ferry, is that when I mentioned it to George upon arrival he said that he'd heard of it, but had never been on it because he'd heard that it was too dangerous. This was confirmed a little while later when I read in Tim Judah's book Kosovo: War and Revenge a short snippet in which he described the Komani ferry as a place to be avoided by Westerners because it was a known route for gun running, drug smuggling and human trafficking.

And so my final comment on this six part adventure is that in the end the journey that I had feared the most proved to be the most comfortable and incident free, even though it certainly didn't seem so at the time.

As always stay safe and well my friends