Шар Планина, Косово
Sharr Mountains, Kosovo
May 4th 2024
My current stay in Bulgaria has been the longest time I've stayed in one country since 2020, so it feels about the right time to leave. At least, temporarily. I am going now on a trip for actual photographic reasons, like a proper adult photojournalist and everything. For this, I will be retracing the steps of my last Balkan roadtrip in 2022/2023, albeit in the reverse direction and this time with a car. (Click here if you want to see a collection of the best photos I took on the last trip).
This first leg was a long drive from Sofia, Bulgaria, to Prizren, Kosovo. It involved passing through two borders and taking the unfinished mountain road through the Sharr Mountains. Two things were made immediately clear to me upon driving through Kosovo: wow it is mountainy, and wow everyone else really are much safer drivers than Bulgarians.
Fueling up in North Macedonia
Stopping off in a town in south Kosovo for supplies (chocolate), one of the boys playing in the street stops and asks "do you like the dog?" in a heavily American accent.
Sharr Mountain National Park, pocketed with ethnic Serbian-majority villages