Albania welcomes me!

I have been out of circulation if you get my meaning, slept in my tent in the middle of nowhere so I barely had cellphone coverage. But I am getting ahead of myself.

I left Ohrid in high spirit and with knowledge that my first part of the day I had planned, around 100 kilometers, getting close to Gramshi via Pogradec and Maliq, would be difficult with a lot of climbs.

Yeah, yeah, scenery is beautiful - look at the signpost dammit!

Anyway, it was in high spirit I reached the border crossing area it wen't very smooth but you weren't allowed to take pictures near it so this is the best I could do.

Yay!

Yay 2!

After this I headed towards Maliq, it went fine on a smooth road with wide shoulders. Entering it I asked a police about the route to Gramshi as my GPS lack a lot of roads in it's software for Albanina. He pointed my nose in the right direction!

From this point on the roads got bad at a alarming pace.

Imagine going through this with a bike weighing 30'ish kilos more than usual.

But it was downhill most of the time so it was kind of exciting, your mind goes into high gear and you constantly have to choose paths and change sides on the road. At one point I  me a, what I think was, german couple who helped me pinpoint where I were and about how far I had to go. This day ended in the last two-three hours on roads like the one above.

Since it was a ride in a valley between mountains and on mountain wall roads it was next to impossible to find anywhere to camp so when I had like 20 minutes of light left I chose a place, any place, just to get "inside". I shot some video from inside the tent with my tent lantern but it was pitch black anyway so I will do something with it once I get home and start editing my video from this. I had problems sleeping because I was uncomfortable about sleeping in a tent, you listen after the slightest noise, after animals, people and everything else. Luckily I had a river near me so it kind of drowned out most noises, I only heard a small animal scurrying about outside at some point.

However I did take a picture of the camp site the next morning.

A really horrible campsite I know but it was the best I could find..

I will upload the GPS tracking later as I haven't been able to transfer it yet due to lack of WiFi.