A good beginning

I spent a day and a half in Prizren, sleeping in a hostel that had the atmosphere of yesteryear: nice people looking to talk for a bit. I spent some time with a German, Israelian and a French tourist, having coffee and lunch throughout Prizren. Although the city is quite large, its old city centre is pretty small, so it was traversed quickly enough. As a result I had plenty of time to fix all those holes in my clothing and plan a route towards Greece.

So I departed from Prizren generally southward, quickly making the first couple of kilometers and taking my first break. I don't know why, but thank god that I thought: "you know what, I'm going to read for a little bit", because checking my bag for the usual location of the ereader quickly led me to conclude that I left it at the hostel. No other option than to go back really, and so I did. I couldn't really get my annoyance under control on the way back, but having returned to the hostel and finding the darned thing underneath the bed worked wonders.

Shar mountains

And so I made my second attempt, now going a different route just because I didn't feel like going the same way again. I took another break not very far outside of the city and found a little puppy underneath the bench I had planted myself upon. I tried giving it a peach, which wasn't to his liking, but the filled bread I had bought did tickle his appetite. There's been a lot of stray dogs ever since I've been in Niksic. In that city the people take care of them and they're well-behaved, probably because they've figured out that's the best way of getting food, and the same is true in Prizren, but in the Shar mountains I've had them running and barking after me, occasionally deterred by a local that throws a rock at them. Not a big fan of throwing rocks at dogs myself, but at the same time I'm also quite happy to keep my calves intact. I don't know what to do yet when they get more agressive, as I've heard they are in Greece and Turkey, we'll see.

After feeding the dog I continued under a light drizzle which slowly became the proper pattering of rain. To be honest I was glad for it. I had cycled for so long without experiencing any rain that I started to fear the cold that it usually causes. Even though I've had my fair share of it on previous tours, the apprehension was there nonetheless. It was nice to experience its familiarity instead of it living in my mind as an abstract thought. I stopped in a market in Blac to get some relief from being wet and to buy some food. I heard in Prizren that the Gora people live in the Shar mountains and are known particularly for the cheese they make. So after putting all my food on the counter I asked the cashier if they had some. They had, but only in big jars of about 2 kilograms. After explaining the practical difficulties of hauling this much cheese around on a bike the man happily opened one of the containers to let me taste, because "you are stranger", as he put it. It was quite nice, a feta-like cheese but harder and much more salty. With that in my belly I tried packing my food onto my bike, and quickly realised I was underdressed: I had some difficulty closing the roll-tops of my bags as my hands had become cold while off the bike, and started shivering. More clothing did the trick, but only after I got to some uphill cycling in order to warm up again. I had not noticed the cooler air that accompanied the higher elevations I had reached, so I made a mental note of being more proactive with my clothing and aware of my surroundings during rainfall in the future.

That day I went all the way to Restelice. Particularly memorable to me was the final section between Gollobocice en Restelice. It had the road all to myself as it snaked between two small but steep mountain peaks, bot covered in large pines with lush green needles. Everywhere were signs and trashcans saying "eco restelice", and through some kind of magic (whether it is just the trashcans, or educating the local populace, or active cleaning by a couple of inhabitants) all the roadside trash was finally gone. I think I mentioned it in my posts in Albania and Bosnia, but trashheaps and dumping places are just about everywhere. I couldn't see much of Restelice, as all the rain that fell that day decided it would become clouds again, and shrouded the mountain village in a thick fog.

As I climbed my way up and out of Restelice I quickly found a place to camp, just a couple of kilometers from the border with North-Macedonia. As I went to bed I realised I had broken my personal record of biggest elevation in a single day, now at 2300 meters. Highly unlikely I'll ever break that again.

Borderguard says no

The next day I had a clear view of Restelice behind me, and moving forward I made the final little ascent up to 1900m and descended amongs the grasslands towards the border. One german cyclotourist was coming from the other direction, jokingly telling me it took him 5 minutes to wake up the sleeping border guards to check his passport. I was already looking forward to seeing Mavrovo national park, and taking the huge descent all the way down to Debar lake, so expecting a bunch of sleepy officers just increased my excitement. I turned up at the two patrol cars with a smile, where the Macedonian policeman told me: "border is problem". Apparently I cycled to a local border crossing. I pleaded with them and tried to talk my way in, firstly by way of joking later by way of being more direct, but the Macdonian wouldn't budge. The Kosovar would've happily allowed me to cross the border, and from his tone of voice and some of the words I recognized I even believe he pleaded with the Macedonian commander, but to no avail.

I was pretty annoyed. I had two options: a) go to Macedonia by first heading to Kukes in Albania, or b) cycle back to Prizren, going furrther east and trying another crossing in Kosovo. Going all the way back felt like such a horrible waste of time that I made the genious decision of: c) take a walking path of about 20km into Macedonia. I knew from earlier escapades that the progress would be slow, perhaps taking a full day, but as a result I would make better progress than cycling all the way back.

It was a really stupid decision. Really incredibly stupid. Never dangerous, or I would've gone back the way I came over that walking path. But it was just idiotic. The first 5 km were fine, but I quickly found myself dragging and lifting my bike over steep hills and rocks and streams, going way slower than expected, until I realised at the end of the afternoon that it would get dark soon. I was near mount Korab, where my routing app indicated there would be a small relatively flat patch of land. The remaining section had terrain that was too steep for me to haul the loaded bike over. So I unpacked my bike, carried the luggage in one traversal, and then came back for my bike to carry seperately over the remaining hills. I had anticipated the setting of the sun well enough as I had the tent set up just as night fell. Weirdly enough I wasn't feeling like eating after all that effort, so I decided to go against my body's signals and eat some apples and nuts. Not much later I figured out the source of the reluctance to eat. I had just finished eating the last apple as my body decided to rid itself of food in all the ways a body can. In hindsight the most likely culprit was improperly filtered water from one of the mountain streams, likely contaminated by grazing sheep shepherded across the peaks.

I still had enough water and food to last me a day, so I spent a day sleeping and reading near Korab, looking for an alternative road away from my planned route and boiling all of my water to prevent exacerbating my condition. The original plan of taking the walking path would go up to 2500 meters in elevation, something I only figured out after I started my way down this walking path, and I believed I could not pull that off being ill. The day after my one-day fast I felt like I could eat again, and after breakfast I took an alternative path to Radomire, taking the descent of 1000 meters by foot. Luckily this was easier than my ascent, but being ill it was quite the effort dragging (not lifting, thank god) the bike over rocks and through narrow sections as wide as the bike. In Radomire I was quite impressed so much energy can be pulled out of a body while not having eaten for a day. Having arrived I kissed the asphalt and bought some fruit, as it was the only thing I felt like eating.

The next two days should've been quite enjoyable, but my drained body and continuing diarrhea made it rather difficult to enjoy. The road to Peshkopi I was annoyed by the continuous smell of traffic, small hills felt like huge challenges to overcome, arriving at Debar lake and seeing the valley coming from Mavrovo that I wanted to cycle through three days earlier made me angry again, and the trashpiles in Macedonia (once more every roadstop was filled with garbagebags, often thrown over the cliffs, so later along the road you'd have a nice view of plastic spread over 500 meters of cliff down into the Crn Drini river) all were front and center in my mind. That instead of enjoying the beautiful valley next to the black Drini, or the lake, or the friendly people. Sadly I find it hard to control my mood when I have too little food in my body (and I was still having diarrhea), but at least I could force myself to cycle until Ohrid lake. I remember going to sleep with the resolve to keep cycling until reaching the border with Greece.

I awoke realising I still wasn't feeling any better. As I packed up I realised I shouldn't continue: I wasn't having proper rest, I felt myself becoming weaker be the day, I wasn't enjoying the sights and it certainly isn't easy controlling your bowels on a bike. So I set off to Ohrid for some rest in an apartment. Perhaps that morning my reserves were fully depleted, perhaps I was experiencing some psychological effects after deciding I needed rest, but the 10 kilometers towards Ohrid I was, as the Dutch say, a mop draped over a bike. I probably won't see a lot of Ohrid the coming days, but I'll stay there until I'm feeling better.

Here's to a very positive next blog post.