Even a week after returning from Albania, my thoughts were still on the Accursed Mountains, a fitting name for the dramatic limestone karst and dense beech forests that lay before me.

With scenery reminiscent of the Peruvian Andes, it was hard to believe you were only a three-hour flight from home in the UK. There is little sign of civilisation in this untamed landscape (apart from the increasing number of hikers on the Valbona Pass).

As a detoxification for modern life, the valleys are scattered with kullas (Northern Albanian farmhouses) that are hundreds of years old, possibly the same ones that the Victorian travel writer Edith Durham passed by. In her 1909 travelogue Upper Albaniashe noted that in Theth and the surrounding villages “time had stood still”.

It could be argued that not much has changed since then, with a few exceptions: you can take a Land Rover Defender taxi to your guesthouse rather than a mule; there are a handful of hotels following a post-millennium tourism boom, and thankfully the Isolation Tower is just a museum these days, as blood feuds are a rarity. Of course, there’s also now hot water and WiFi (unless a storm destroys it), so you’re not completely off the grid.

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The farms there have been passed down from generation to generation and are run in the traditional way. The family I stayed with still drives their cattle up to the high pastures in Theth and back down to the foothills in Shkodër to escape the harsh winters. Many like them now open their ancestral homes to hikers, offering priceless cultural exchange, home-cooked food straight from the farm and all-consuming bucolic beauty.

But even in 2024, Theth and Valbona are relatively isolated from the outside world; some of their roads have only recently been paved and the pass between the two towns can be crossed more quickly on foot than by car.

Nature is even more unchanged. Large areas of the forests are so untouched that they are considered primeval, especially near the border with Kosovo, where there are trees believed to be over 350 years old. As I climbed to the saddle of the Valbona Pass (1,800 m above sea level) to the call of the cuckoo chorus, I looked down on the prismatic Valbona River. In June it is just a narrow thread through the floodplains, but it is one of the cleanest rivers in Europe.

However, Albania’s ultimate claim to be Europe’s last wild frontier is the mighty Vjosa, the continent’s last completely untouched river outside Russia. Although part of it crosses Greece, the majority flows through Albania, where in 2023 it became the first river to be declared a national park for its protection.

Seventy-five percent of Albania is made up of these larger-than-life landscapes, and although they are touted as an affordable short-break destination, beach lovers are missing out if they head straight for the coast.

Instead, land in Tirana and head north. Within minutes of leaving the airport, you’ll be driving through pastures typical of a Greek island: orchards, sheepherders, and hazy mountains on the horizon. Stop to admire the view over lunch at Mrizi i Zanave, an award-winning agritourism restaurant that sees locals flocking to it on weekends. Take a free tour of the wine and cheese shops and learn how they produce their food on site before you tuck in. There’s no menu; you’ll be served whatever’s in season.

We continue for another two to three hours to Shkodër, the namesake of southern Europe’s largest lake, which lies on the border with Montenegro. Known as Albania’s cycling city, Shkodër is an ideal base for exploring the lake and the Albanian Alps. Not far from there, on a 30°C June afternoon, I drifted on a stand-up paddleboard into a nature reserve surrounded by water lilies, sinking my feet into the putty-like lake bed as I swam. Here, the Dalmatian pelican screeched from behind the reeds as our guide, Drini, explained how conservation measures had saved it from extinction. The conversation changed as we giggled about the local name for carp (“krap”). He answered us with English words that mean something rude in Albanian – I’ll leave you to figure those out for yourself.

A little later, I continued swimming in the refreshing waters of the resort on Lake Shkodra. After a sunset swim with a view of Montenegro on the other side, I retreated to my bell tent and let the mating calls of Albanian water frogs lull me to sleep. Later in the night, I was aroused by golden jackals, which I thought were children, laughing loudly in the fields after their bedtime.

The lake’s beauty has long attracted German tourists, but much of Western Europe is still unaware of the hidden beauty of northern Albania. Waking up and seeing the Accursed Mountains on one side and the Montenegrin border on the other was magical. Slow travel is the best approach here. Hiking, biking and paddling lets you get to know the whole story. With tourism on the rise, I just hope Albania stays wild at heart.

How it works

There are daily direct flights from London, Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester to the Albanian capital Tirana.

Laura Sanders was a guest of Undiscovered Balkans on their seven-day Holidays in the north of Albania.

Read more: The best holiday destinations in Europe that you can reach by train from London