The Art of Travelling & Nero in Albania

I pick up my bags and look at the hostel garden for the last time. The owner’s wife, she must be in her fifties, is smiling at me. It was a nice place, the Berat Backpackers Hostel. It’s traditional, large and a beautiful old Ottoman house now converted into a hostel. The interiors still have some of the family portraits.

I touch the fortifying wall and walk out. I used to sit near the railings and watch the river and the town across it, in the evenings. In two days, I became fond of this house. But the 250 year old abode has seen a lot of backpackers like me. 

I walk down the street, typically Albanian old town, no tar, just white stone. It is the best part of town, the UNESCO protected old quarter called Gorica. 

All the houses are old, almost two three hundred years, white in colour, with large windows. There are winding footpaths and narrow alleyways, and you can spend an entire evening just walking around Gorica. Pretty and quaint, it’s a fairytale-like place. A girl watches me from her balcony as I take in my surroundings. Whatever the news, the media, regular blogs say about Albania is silly. It is a beautiful country and has such friendly people.

As on July 10, its been over a month since I came to Europe. The group I was leading in Turkey and Greece left a few days back, and after a couple of relaxed days, I am ready to travel hardcore. 

The most significant part of travelling alone is that it makes you think a lot. In those long moments when you are just by yourself, maybe on a bus, or just walking alone, there are a thousand things going on in your head. Most of your head is cluttered by thoughts about where you can have your next meal, or where the hell’s that bus stop the hostel guy was talking about, or when you should leave for the next town. 

And there is a part of your head that is learning and processing so much. I can now figure out if a person is from Scandinavian Europe or not. I have learnt to differentiate between some of the accents. Then, there's the history. Every place I go to in the Balkans, there has been war in the past, bloodshed, empires being built and shattered, of which I mostly knew nothing before I came here. As I headed from Turkey to Greece and now to Albania and continue on my northward journey, I trace the path that the Ottomans took. I am reading the history of the Ottoman empire and seeing the cultural and architectural influence in the lands they ruled.

As I walk on, I wonder if I am progressing ahead, or going back in time. Maybe the two go hand in hand.

I cross the bridge that divides Gorica from the rest of Berat. In the evenings, when the town is lighted up, the bridge looks very pretty. There is not much water in the Osumi river now. July’s the hottest month of the year. But the water is very clear and green. Next to the bridge is probably the best part of the town. It is like a postcard - an old bridge over a river, the two oldest and most historic parts of town – Gorica and Mangalem, sitting on the mountain slopes – on either side of the bridge. As the river curves ahead, it will pass through towering canyons as high as a hundred metres.

The houses in the Mangalem quarter too are old, white, and have large windows. It is exactly why Berat is known as the “town of a thousand windows.” This well preserved Ottoman town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and along with Gjirokastra is one of the most beautiful towns in Albania.

On top of the hill above the Mangalem quarter is the fortress. The castle has seen Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman conquerors, and has been continuously inhabited ever since the fourth century. The path from the town to the castle is beautiful, it’s a sea of white on cobblestone streets, and there are trees lined on the sides as you climb higher.  

There are some fantastic views from the castle walls, of the entire region. I would have loved it more but there is a hotel and a few cafes inside the castle walls. It made it less authentic for me.

A man asks me if he can click a photograph with me. I smile. He has never met an Indian before. Albania is still very untouched, unlike Croatia which receives a lot more tourists. After being in Santorini and Muykonos, two stunning Greek islands that are overrun by tourists, I am liking it here, where there are no tourists at all.

Travelling should also make you try out things, test your newly acquired comfort zones and make you stretch those too. The first evening at the Berat Backpackers Hostel, I meet a traveler from France. On the road for six weeks, he’s carrying a tent with him. He goes to a town, finds a hill or a lake or a shaded area and pitches his tent. When he has finished seeing the town, he hitchhikes to his next destination. Only when he is exhausted, he takes a short break and stays in a hostel. He left yesterday, and as I saw him fold his tent into the bag, I can’t help but wish him all the best in his travels.

And I love it. One of the key things about the life of a traveller is that he/she must constantly try to evolve, push their comfort zones. I never really made a bucketlist but if I had a couple of years back, I guess it would have focussed around places. Now however, it is in trying out things that are more challenging.  

Next year onwards, I want to carry a tent too.

I want to do busking  - perform on the street for a couple of hours every day and collect money in a hat. Heh, I don’t think I have a talent for street performance and it will take a lot of luck for my Bollywood dancing to get me a few pennies. I need a hot partner, I think.

I want to do a four person (all strangers to each other) road trip through a series of countries. Also try a two person trip for three four weeks.

I want to figure out all the countries in South America that give Indians visa on arrival. Plot a route map through them, and bike my way across the countries.

 I want to Visit Antarctica, and sit in between a colony of Emperor Penguins.

As I walk ahead, there are a few souvenir shops. Lost in my thoughts, I forget to buy a magnet.

Berat has been a good experience. It is time to move on to a new country now. I am headed to Kosovo – the second newest country in the world. From there, I will probably go to Montenegro, then Bosnia, Serbia and Romania.
To reach Kosovo, I must first take the bus to Tirana, the capital of Albania. And then take the evening bus from Tirana to Prizren, the Kosovo town I want to visit.

I pass the bus station and walk a hundred metres ahead. I put out my hand as the first car approaches. He does not stop. Neither does the second.
I look up at the sun. It is about forty degrees celcius. So many people only see the glamour that comes with a traveller’s image. Nice photos, overwhelming locales, the jump shots. Nobody sees the sun, the heat, the tons of patience, the queues, the waiting.
I walk a little more and wait for the next car to come. Another hitchhiker joins me. We smile as five, six cars zip past us and pay our thumbs or us no attention whatsoever.

I can easily take the bus. But a traveler must push his comfort zones. I have decided. I will hitchhike my way to Tirana, come what may.

----------------------  The End  --------------------

Have you read  "Nero's in Albania"

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Nero is in Albania

It is half past one in the night, and the guard takes his own time to look at my passport. I stand nervously wondering if all is okay. Finally, he stamps it. I heave a sigh of relief and walk back to my bus, still groggy eyed. When I climb aboard, everyone is staring at me. There is not a single foreigner in the bus. Besides me.

Down the road, a sign reads “Welcome to Albania”.

They are all talking loudly. Finally a girl translates. “Where are you from?”, she asks me. When I say India, there are several “aahs”. One man is rubbing his chin, another is eyeing me. The chatter does not stop. The girl keeps translating the questions. “How far is India?” “Where are you coming from?” “Why are you visiting Albania?” To the last I answer “Because it is beautiful” and when the girl translates it back in Albanian, the bus erupts and everyone cheers. Everyone is smiling. The questions don’t stop however, and neither do the side jokes. And all this at 2-3 am. When I finally get off at my stop at Gjirokastra, everyone waves at me and wish me good luck. I think I will like this country.

It is 330 am.

The bus has dropped me in the middle of the city. My plan was to wait at the bus station till morning to save one night’s accommodation cost. But Gjirokastra, just like most of Albania, has no official bus station. A few men are staring at me from the other side of the road. I nod at them and make my way to an inn. After knocking several times, finally someone opens the door and thankfully I am given a room.

My bedsheet has a print on it. It says “Welcome to Albania”.

Ask anyone if they have been to Albania and mostly they will say “What? Where is that?” or “Is it safe?”. The latter is a valid question. Albania has mostly been at war for hundreds of years. While earlier, it was under the rule of the Ottoman empire, in the twentieth century, it was under Communist dictatorship for over forty years.

I go to sleep almost immediately. I have already been on the road for twenty nine days, first travelling solo and then leading a group trip through Turkey and Greece for two weeks. Now that my group has left, I am looking for some serious adventure and am planning to hitchhike and bus ride my way through the Balkans for a month. Bosnia and Serbia might not approve of my visa, so I am planning to weave my way through Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Hungary and Romania.

I wake up the next morning and my balcony opens up to the town on the mountainside. I walk through the streets and my plan is to make my way to Gjirokastra castle.

A lot of people are staring curiously at me.They have never seen an Indian before. Neither had any of the people in my bus the previous night. Can you imagine the gravity of that line? There are 1.2 billion Indians and they haven’t seen a single one!!!

Forget Indians, I don’t see any tourists at all in this town. And it makes me happy. I have been on too many backpacker trails and most travelers keep doing the same things, keep following the same circuits. It is the same cities and countries and pattern that all backpackers follow when they are in South East Asia, and it is the same places everyone does in Turkey. In Greece, the Europeans do a few more islands but we Indians only do Santorini, Mykonos, Athens and sometimes Crete.

Here there are no Germans, no Australians and no Japanese (the countries who travel the most). Here, unlike South East Asia or Bali there are no pancakes and waffles being served and hostels aren’t selling flyers or talking in an American accent. There aren’t any pub crawls in Gjirokastra. And these thirty days, that is how I want to travel. Not through capital cities, not through Europe’s most cosmopolitan cities, but through the countrysides and towns of the nations that most people don’t visit.

Nobody here understands English. But I don’t need to speak the language. I ask “Castle” and they all smile and point in a direction. I keep asking people the same thing, and they keep smiling and pointing.

And such is the beautiful irony in this land. It is not just the land of Enver Hoxha, the Dictator who built 700,000 military bunkers in the country for fear of invasion. It is also the birth place of Mother Teresa, the apostle of peace.

Till the 90s, only politicians were allowed to drive in Albania, and only 3000 cars were on the road. Today, everyone rides a Mercedes. The brand is so deeply entrenched that everyone, office goers, taxi drivers, mini bus drivers, food caterers all drive Mercs.

I walk on and am completely mesmerized by this town. It is as if it was plucked out of the medieval ages and planted in today’s world. 

The houses, mostly in Ottoman style, are painted white and have grey tiled roofs and as they stand next to each other, on the slopes, with the majestic mountain in the background and the castle perched on top, the town looks like a perfect postcard. The street roads aren’t tarred (except for the highway and a connecting road), and are made of white brick and stone and run narrow and curved between the houses. 

I pass a small bookstore and see the name “Ali Pasha of Teplene” on it. Arguably the greatest Pasha of the Ottoman empire, it is he who had added extensions to the castle and brought in advanced firearms and cannons. Earlier, when at the age of fourteen his father was murdered, Ali along with his mother formed a gang of brigands and looted all those who passed the mountain. As he grew older, he was first recruited by the empire to police the region and through way of favour, bribes and marriage, became Pasha (governor) in the region. Ali Pasha was a strict ruler and a vengeful one and his violent acts instilled fear in his enemies. Under him the Albanians emerged stronger and united and his soldiers would do anything for him.

I walk into the castle and fall in love with it immediately. I have always had a thing for stone castles and military fortresses. I can almost hear the horses gallop inside, can almost see the prisoners of war being brought in, can see the soldiers guard the walls. There is so much history in these walls. 

It is fitting that the dials on the clock tower don't work any more. Time, it feels, has actually stood still in this town.

I come out and walk over to Zekate House, an Ottoman house that belonged to the rich Zekate family in and was built in 1812 but was plundered in the early 20^th century. Today, it serves as a modest museum house and though the riches, the jewellery, the paintings haven’t been returned, one can still see traces of what might have been when one sees the large rooms, the divans,  the viewing galleries and the many fireplaces *(in Albania, traditionally a house’s family’s richness was decided by the number of fireplaces in the house I counted nine in the Zekate House). The house is a lovely window into the lifestyle of a rich family during the Ottoman era.

I come out and walk down to Babameto Hostel – a lovely nineteenth century house that is now a hostel but has kept most of its style intact. A French girl is working on her laptop in the lawns and a dog is sprawled on the ground by her side. I sit opposite and we start talking. She has been here for  a month and she loves it. I wish I could just spend a month here, do nothing but read a book, play with the dog and bicycle to the nearby towns. I express that wish to her. An Albanian boy is listening to our conversation and laughs loudly.

“You will get bored here in Gjirokastra”, he says “nothing ever happens here.”

I look around, down the mountainside. Just a stone throw away lies the village of Gardhiq. In 1812, forty years after the men of that village kidnapped Ali Pasha’s mother and sister and gangraped them for days on end, Ali Pasha had his revenge by killing 739 direct male descendants of the original sinners. Actually, I don’t even have to look that far. Gjirokastra is also the birth place of Enver Hoxha, the Dictator. He is also the man who ordered the confiscation of all the materials of the Zekate House.

The boy repeats, “It is boring, nothing ever happens here.”

I smile at him and nod my head.

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