6-Day Western Balkans Road Trip with Ohrid, Sarajevo and Kotor

Pickup from your Tirana hotel at first light, then head east over the mountains into North Macedonia. The morning belongs to Ohrid: the cobbled UNESCO old town, Samuil's Fortress on its crown, and the Church of St John at Kaneo on its cliff above water so clear the fish look airborne.

After a lakeside lunch, continue north to Skopje for a full tour of Europe's most gleefully eccentric capital: the Ottoman Stone Bridge, Macedonia Square's giant Alexander, the fortress walls, and the old bazaar. First stamp, second stamp, day one.

Head north across the border into Kosovo, Europe's youngest state and statistically its youngest population - half the country is under thirty, and the café scene proves it. In Pristina, visit the NEWBORN monument, the gloriously brutalist National Library (voted both the ugliest and the best building in the Balkans, depending on who's voting), and Mother Teresa Boulevard's promenade.

Then continue south to Prizren, Kosovo's Ottoman jewel, with its stone bridge, league house, and mosque-and-church skyline, before climbing to the fortress for sunset over a thousand red roofs.

A day of magnificent geography. Travel back through the foothills of the Albanian Alps to Shkodër, one of the oldest cities in Europe, where Rozafa Fortress rides its rock between two rivers and a lake; the legend of the walled-in bride is told on the spot.

Then continue north into Montenegro, climbing hairpins into the karst until the world turns to black pines and grey towers of limestone: Žabljak, the Balkans' highest town and base camp for Durmitor National Park. Mountain air, mountain dinner, mountain sleep.

Spend the morning at Black Lake, Durmitor's glacial mirror beneath Međed peak, with an easy and beautiful walk along the shoreline. Then the road tips over the edge of the Tara River Canyon, at 1,300 metres the deepest in Europe, crossed on the five-arch Đurđevića Tara Bridge with the river a green thread far below. Summer departures can swap in a rafting run.

Cross the Bosnian border and continue down the Drina country to Sarajevo by evening, heading straight into the lantern-lit lanes of the Baščaršija for ćevapi and Bosnian coffee poured from a copper džezva.

See Sarajevo in the morning light: the Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque, the Sacred Heart Cathedral, and synagogue within blocks of each other, City Hall's restored Moorish glory, and the Latin Bridge corner where a nineteen-year-old changed the twentieth century.

Then follow the jade Neretva to Mostar for the Old Bridge, rebuilt stone by stone after 1993, and lunch beneath it while the divers work up their nerve. Continue through the Herzegovina karst as the Adriatic reveals itself, arriving in the Bay of Kotor by evening, where mountains fall straight into the sea.

Enjoy a slow morning inside Kotor's Venetian walls, visiting the Cathedral of St Tryphon, the maze of squares, and the resident cats who own the place. For the energetic, there is time to climb the ramparts toward St John's Fortress for the full postcard view of the bay.

Then follow the coast road south past Sveti Stefan's island silhouette and along the Adriatic into Albania, arriving back in Tirana by evening. Five flags, two bridges, one canyon, and roughly four hundred photographs later, drop-off at your hotel.