TravelArk 2.0

Western Balkans and Northern Italy, Autumn 2015

The Balkans are a part of Europe of which I've seen little but have had my eye on as a travel destination for about five years. My only experience with them was a quick pass through in transit from Britain to Istanbul in 2006 as the beginning of my Silk Road trip across Asia. I am continuing on without a break from my travels on the British Isles over the summer but consider the Balkans different enough and my travels long enough to make the travels there into a separate blog. As I head towards southeastern Europe in late August 2015 my travel plans are fairly wide open. The only part set is the first two weeks, a group trip with the Explore tour company called Undiscovered Balkans which consists of a loop from Tirana, Albania through three countries - Albania, Kosovo, and Macedonia. This may be one of the roughest and least developed parts of Europe. I'm expecting it would be a place somewhat difficult to travel independently with rather poor public transport and little English spoken. This is the part of Europe that was most recently in armed conflict, the warring between Serbia and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo taking place in 1999, a few years after the other conflicts in ex-Yugoslavia subsided. My tentative plans afterwards are to work my way northward through Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, and Slovenia mostly by public transportation, but as I'm writing this before I begin also considering car rentals in Montenegro and Slovenia. With no set time to be back home and if the wanderlust keeps up I am contemplating continuing on into northern Italy in October and possibly a cycling trip in Malta with Explore toward the end of the month. We'll see - I'm just taking things as they come.
Planned Dates
Aug 23, 2015 to Oct 21, 2015
Countries
11
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