The human and the mountain.

It was Tuesday the second of April and I was somewhere in Fushe Kosova. Suddenly a notification came on my Facebook account which was saying "Do you want to do an adventure just only the two of us", I said "yes" even without knowing where we are going. That person was Rinor, he has a pure adventure soul. Thus, we met at a coffee in Prishtina and he told me about the plan and the destination and when the adventure would start. We were excited and in the same time intimidated.

In the early morning of April the 3rd we woke up early around 6 am and met at Rinor's house during around 7 am and aimed for the bus station with a taxi. A friend of ours Adnan, gave us some Ice Axes just to have them for safety. We decided to travel with a bus to Peja, which was at 7:30 am with Pranvera Tours. We kicked of, to an unforgettable adventure where we didn't know what was going to happen and we thought "Let's see what is waiting for us".

When we arrived in Peja, we saw a Qebabtore and decided to go and eat some "qebapa" (choped meat) at Qebabtore Kujta located in front of the Bus station in Peja. After we finished eating and went to buy some water bottles we went again to the bus station and took the bus to Deqan and in the midway was Strellc a big village near Deqan. We stopped there and prepared for a big day.

The hike started at 10:15 am through the deep forest of Strellc mountain and it is a really tough one because it's a long distance hike and has a never lasting road that is really hard to get through without getting a sweat. After  2 hours and 15 min hiking we stopped at a water spring and we refilled our bottles and drank some water and got refreshed. This was a really calming moment because hearing the sound of the water falling in the ground and the birds were singing, it gave us an indescribable soothing feeling of ones spiritual comfort. The break was over and we were at the Mountain huts of Strellc mountain in the accursed mountains.

Afterwards, we continued hiking below the summit of Strellc and heading for the Belleja Peak 2336m, but something unpredictable happened, it started to snow and the weather got really bad, the visibility started to fade away, fog started to make it even harder to walk, it was more colder and the wind was getting faster and faster. We crossed our fingers and started to pray that nature would change the weather for us and make it easier to ascend and for a moment it did.  We passed the cliff known as Guri i Nuses and from there the trail started to get thinner and thinner and was covered with big and heavy snow. The snow in some places was very deep and smooth which was very tiresome, during that time we kept walking very slowly since our backpacks were very heavy and putting one step at the time and assisting it with our Ice Axes for more stability and security. We were walking in a grey area which we were slowly going further and we hardly managed to get to the summit of Belleja during 4:30 pm where the visibility was almost 0 we couldn't see more than 20 meters due to the fog and the snow that was falling down, by the way we are in April now.

During that time on the summit I had mixed feelings about what was going to happen with us, or what was going on because the weather conditions were very risky to hike however we still continued. In such manner, we started to descend through the ridge of Belleja and going towards our goal, the checkpoint was the mountain huts of Izniq, however each step started to get harder and the snow was getting thicker, till it reached a point were we had second thoughts and Rinki came up with a conclusion that we had to return back before we could found ourselves in hot water. We were near the summit of Veternik or also called (Qferla) 2461m but to go there the goose would be cooked.

That day the Accursed Mountains taught us a lesson that the mountain is way beyond our limits but we as humans have to challenge those limits and get ourselves even higher and in the same time to stay humble. In that point of time we understood what the mountain was trying to say to us and Rinor called the day. We returned the same way we came and made a short break near the summit of Belleja and ate something and continued to descend further until we reached the wood cabins of Strellc mountains. That night we found a mountain hut and made a decision to sleep there, we found some wood and made a fire in order to get warmer and to dry our wet clothes from the storm as Bear Grylls says: "Struggle develops strength and storms make you stronger".

During the time when we were at the cabin we rested and prepared potatoes with cheese which we heated them in the stove and later on continued eating boiled eggs with "Suxhuk" or Sausage and drank plenty of water. We really got a kick out of it because we were very tired from the long hike and decided to sleep and we woke up during 8:30 am in the morning fully recovered and ready to start the day. We cleaned the mountain hut and left everything as it was there before and parted our ways with the beautiful cabin and thanked the nature that we could stay there. The mountain was covered from a huge cloud that came very slowly towards it, it was so beautiful and unique that let us speechless. A big cloud was approaching the summit of Strellc, it was very slowly but it was brilliant. After we visited the other mountain cabins that were there in that mountain, so we started to descend the mountain.

In the meanwhile we were going down and I saw a road that looked very promising to be a shortcut and I said to Rinor maybe we could try it out, he agreed but later on we found out that the road was leading nowhere so we decided to return back again and continue the same way we came before. Subsequently, we arrived at the village and rested for some minutes and waited for the bus to return to Peja and eventually going back to Prishtina, very tired but thrilled with excitement and joy.