After I got a car in 2022, I made the vast majority of my trips in it. The war in Ukraine, which left us without air transport, contributed significantly to this.
When I was visiting Ivano-Frankivsk in early spring 2023, after the death of someone close to me… A friend wrote to me. After the war began, they fled from Kyiv to Spain and invited me to stay with them for a week, to take my mind off things and enjoy the warmth.
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A sedentary lifestyle is by no means the best thing in the life of a remote worker. That’s why it is important to warm up once in a while.
It so happened that I needed to go to Shkodër because I couldn’t find the medicines I needed in Montenegro. To avoid wasting time, I threw my bike in the car, hoping to ride somewhere interesting.
I initially wanted to ride to the point of geohashing. But, upon arrival, I found I could not pass. That’s why I opened the map and started flipping through my points of interest. One of them was the coastal village of Shiroka, on the border with Montenegro.
Rationalizing that it would be a good idea to ride there at sunset, I raced toward the right location.
I turned right towards the checkpoint at the fork where I usually went left when leaving Shkoder. After a minute of driving, I came to a slum with a lot of gypsies. I thought I’d have to turn around and leave. But, after another kilometer, the landscape began to normalize. Suddenly, a footpath appeared on the right. (In Montenegro, I had forgotten what a sidewalk was.) In the distance, there was a lake.
When I got to the village itself, I realized that I’d better park somewhere else. Everything here was full of cars, and parking starts at 2 euros. I turned around and headed for the cemetery I had noticed on the way here. There was enough free space to park for free (coordinates – 42.05565985700833, 19.467744460739038).
I retrieved my touring bike from the trunk and put a bottle of mineral water into my backpack. Locking up the car and on my way, I pedaled away!
Driving along the lake on a flat road is fabulous. No elevation changes… You can easily ride 100 km or more without any special physical preparation.
The first thing that caught my eye was an unfinished cafe building (42.05650772889564, 19.46719081389819). The place was supposed to be luxurious and offer a beautiful view of the lake. But something didn’t work out. Now it is a concrete box, part of which is used as a public toilet.
The view from the site is pretty amazing, so I had to take a few photos.
A little farther away, on my left side, there was a stone wall that looked like a castle wall. But I had never seen any mention of it before. I took a photo to find out more about it later. Google Maps calls it a residential complex. But, in the Balkans, to believe that is to lack respect for oneself.
UPD. At home, I found out that this place was not on the old topographical maps either. It turned out to be a very atmospheric, old-fashioned hotel called “RUSTICO.”
Next stop – another abandoned place on the lake. Developers planned to build a hotel here, based on the comments. But, as is common in these countries, they did not finish it. Now the place is a skeleton on an island. Earlier, it was free. But now, some citizens are charging for passage.
The island itself is not simple either. I’ll tell you about it next time. Now I want to draw your attention to this photo. Do you see the sunken boat? It is so typical here that I didn’t pay much attention to it and only thought about how to fit it into the frame. At home, I found out I was looking at a sunken Austro-Hungarian boat. It has been here for over a hundred years.
I’m going to Shiroka. It is very crowded for a small village on the outskirts of the country. People stroll along the promenade and spend time in cafés. Cats and dogs scurry underfoot. They look much less intimidating here than in Montenegro.
I didn’t have much time to look at the embankment; I left it for a leisurely walk with my girlfriend. I noticed a strange concrete structure. It seemed to cut into the lake near the pier where tourist boats leave.
After taking a break for about five minutes, I pedaled onward. I wanted to reach the former checkpoint on the border with Montenegro, which is now used as a cowshed.
There is no curb or bicycle lane here, so you have to move on a one-lane asphalt road. But there are practically no cars here, even on a weekday evening. The ride is pleasant, cool from the water.
To my right is Lake Skadar. To the left are gorgeous mountain peaks. Driving along, I can’t stop turning my head in all directions. I want to capture these moments not only in photos but also in my memories.
By that time, however, the sun had already set, and dusk was fast approaching. I decided not to drive the last kilometer. My past, wandering at night in the mountains of Ukraine and Montenegro, taught me to avoid risks. It would be an interesting location for next time.
А интересна она тем, что в ближайшие годы здесь планируют открыть ещё один пограничный пункт пропуска между Черногорией и Албанией Чкла — Зогай. Соглашение было подписано в 2018 году [1]. .
В 2021 году представители обеих сторон отчитались, что строительство идёт по плану [2]. .
A satellite view shows a good-quality road on the Montenegrin side. This is not the case in Albania, where it is still a dirt path with wild bushes.
I hope this border crossing will be completed as soon as possible. It will greatly ease tourist travel around and along Lake Skadar (both for motorists and cyclists).
I went for a very easy bike ride to stretch my bones. I rode about 11.6 km, gaining 22 meters of altitude. You can see the route below if you’re interested.
Makovytsia is one of the most popular peaks in the Ukrainian Carpathians. This is due to several factors at once: being right in the resort being visited and the ease of climbing. We traveled here for the first time as a group of three people, one of whom was pregnant and yet managed the trek with ease.
Mount Makovytsia is part of the Gorgany mountain range. The entrance is located in the village of Yaremche, which is visited by tens of thousands of people every year for tourism purposes (and even more so after the Ukrainian authorities stopped letting people out of the country). Its altitude is 984.5 meters above sea level.
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Uzhgorod is the smallest regional center of Ukraine. It is also one of the few centers, by which you can’t guess the name of the region itself, because it is Zakarpattia.
In Ukraine itself, people know about Transcarpathia that cherry blossoms bloom here. They confuse it with western Ukraine (read – Lviv region), which locals strongly disagree with. The region is complex and not simple. But I decided to look at it from the side of a simple traveler, and therefore during our Prague-Zakarpattya trip we stopped here for a few days.
You can read about your impressions in this article. Welcome to this article!
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Scythian Stan is one of the locations on Khortytsya Island in Zaporizhzhya. It positions itself as an “open-air museum” and “one of the most famous memorial-territorial complexes on Khortytsya”.
Even though the location is practically in the center of the island, I couldn’t get here. It is located far away from the main paths and roads. But, finally, I went to the Scythian camp. What came out of it – read on.
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My love for castles is irresistible and visiting a country without visiting fortifications is possible only if they are not within 100 – 200 kilometers. However, in the Baltics there are no problems with this, and therefore from Riga we went to Daugavgriva fortress. Thankfully, it is very close by.
This fortress is located on a peninsula in the Gulf of Riga and has a very rich history. Today it is part of one of the districts of the Latvian capital. Let’s walk around the ruins together, and at the same time I will show you photos, tell you about my own impressions and share important information for visiting.
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Vilnius is the third most populous capital in the Baltics. And this imposes a certain imprint: transportation, crowds of tourists…. At such a moment you always want, after a long day of sightseeing, to dive into a park…. Or take shelter there from the sultry summer sun in the heat of the day. The Bernardine Garden is a wonderful place for this.
When quite by chance we wandered here in 2018, I genuinely wondered how I missed it, having explored this part of town so much in 2013, especially around the Užupis neighborhood.
After a couple of minutes of studying the history of the park, the question fell away by itself. And what it is and how to get here – I will tell you in this article.
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Tell me, what comes to mind when most people hear the word “swamp”, especially if they have never seen it in their lives and know only from movies and fairy tales about this type of landscape?
I was sure it was something completely bleak. However, how could one come to Estonia and not visit the bogs? It took a long time to convince my companion that it would be interesting there, and yet we planned a trip to Pääsküla bog.
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At the southernmost tip of Khortytsia Island, which stretches across the Dnieper River in the city of Zaporizhzhia, there are remnants of floodplains. Nearby is the territory of former settlements called Protolche. This is a protected area where you cannot drive a car or ride a bicycle, sail a boat or kayak. And you cannot walk everywhere here either.
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Sinai Desert. This is the name of the part of the Sahara that is located on the Sinai Peninsula and belongs, for the most part, to Egypt.
My introduction to the area first took place in 2018, when I flew to Egypt to swim in the sea in winter on a regular package tour and decided to go to the famous St. Catherine’s Monastery.
Since the monastery is located in the central part of the peninsula, in the mountains, and Sharm el Sheikh on the southern coast, I had a long road through the desert on an old, traditional in the Middle East minibus toyota.
I must say that I did not regret it one bit. Even from the window of the bus, the surrounding scenery is breathtakingly beautiful.
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