Sustainable Travel Pitch: High Scardus Trail/Western Balkans

Rugged, frontier trekking between Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia

The High Scardus Trail is Europe’s newest transnational long-distance hiking trail, which includes 20 stages between Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia. I had the opportunity to photograph a scouting expedition of this project/partnership between the GIZ, Trail Angels (an Austrian sustainable tourism consultant) and various local tourism agencies and stakeholders. The trail offers rugged trekking in an untouched and unspoiled mountain corridor in Europe, while also presenting sustainable development opportunities for, and collaboration between the people of these small countries that have too often been the victims of crises in recent history.

The piece I want to write would highlight this stunning, underdeveloped region in an area of Europe that is still "wild," and in many places still bears scars from the recent Yugoslav wars. Publicizing this trail presents a great opportunity to help eliminate the stigma of “war” that is associated with this region. Here in the Western Balkans, responsible travelers can be among the first to visit these relatively unknown destinations, and to do so in a way that directly benefits the local communities, who for the large part are just now learning the basics of tourism and hospitality. A unique angle I have for telling this story is that I have a lot of experience traveling in the Balkans in general, have hiked sections of this trail in two different seasons.

High Scardus Trail won an award for the "Best European Project" at the British Guild of Travel Writers in 2022.

Thank you for your time and consideration.