Ten years ago, the north of Albania was still considered “a scary place” – even by most Albanians. My impression is that this is the result of a combination of two things: The inaccessibility of the area (which made it easy to make up whatever nonsense you wanted about the place – who could check?) combined with a whole bunch of really rotten historical luck, which was mostly not the fault of people actually living here. If you are not Albanian, the chances are good the only reason you’ve ever heard of Tropoja is because of the (mindbogglingly stupid and offensive) film Taken.
Here is one young Tropojan filmmaker’s response to that:
This is the work of Visar Bucpapaj, aka B Visi, and I strongly recommend taking a look at some of his other work wherever you can find it.
Why?
Ten years ago, when I arrived (and this website started), tourism was just starting in Valbona. Now in 2021, lots of people have heard of Valbona – but most people still don’t realize that Valbona is only ONE part of Tropoja. And Tropoja has lots more unexplored landscapes! And some of these ‘other parts’ offer the chance for activities that are actually pretty difficult inside Valbona National Park (hint: kayaking and horse-riding).
If you are interested in ‘off the beaten track’ or undiluted traditional life, we humbly suggest you go exploring!
Main regions of Tropoja
Roughly divided, Tropoja consists of 6 large areas. We made up these boundaries ourselves, but the idea is that each of these areas can be explored independently. Ie, You could base yourself somewhere and spend days exploring each, but you’d want to move base to explore one of the others.
Click on any region to see more details of the area.