This week’s dream: walking in a wild corner of the Balkans

Few areas of Europe are as remote, wild and majestic as the Accursed Mountains, says Martin Fletcher in the FT. Straddling the borders of Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro, their “jagged” peaks and pristine valleys shelter isolated villages where ancient pastoral traditions survive. They are home, too, to a centuries-old code of honour – the Kanun – that leads to occasional blood feuds, but that also urges “deep generosity” towards strangers. Yet the region attracts few tourists bar the odd hiker, who can walk in the mountains for a week without seeing a single motor vehicle, or tarmacked road.

Most visitors fly to Podgorica, the “diminutive” capital of Montenegro, and penetrate the mountains via a two-hour boat ride up the long, deep gorge of Lake Koman. From the village of Valbona, an extensive hiking circuit criss-crosses international borders – these points marked only by machine-gun posts abandoned since the collapse of Enver Hoxha’s paranoid communist regime in Albania. Other notable traces of the region’s bloody history are the ancient stone towers, or kullas, where the targets of Kanun revenge killings took refuge (sometimes for years); and cemeteries where Muslim victims of Serbian ethnic cleansing during the Kosovo War (1998-99) are buried.

The paths lead over long narrow saddles between “sublime” valleys with forests of beech, oak and pine where bears, lynx and wolves roam. There are turquoise lakes, great for swimming, and “lush” Alpine meadows that are festooned with wild flowers in spring and early summer. And each night, “simple, spotless” village guest houses await, most of them the homes of Muslim smallholders who create lavish meals from their own produce – cheese, honey, roasted vegetables and meat – washed down with “fiery” raki. Balkan Natural Adventure (00 386 49 661105, www.bnadventure.com) has a ten-day trip for around £880pp, including meals and guides, but excluding flights.