I was watching with the eyes of a hawk, dreaming of catching a glimpse of that magnificent mane streaked with royal gold, those amber eyes as they gazed imperiously at me. And then, there it was, I finally saw it!
Life’s got funny way of working out. I started off planning to spend my spring break backpacking Europe, but where did I end up instead? With the flies and mosquitos of Tanzania. How did that happen? Nonsensical Turkish bureaucracy coupled with the fact that my passport counts for jack in the Western world. So I thought to myself, “Hey, Tanzania sounds like fun.”
Fast forward a week, I’m staring over Dar-es-Salaam through the window of an airplane, thinking to myself, “I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing!”
Fast forward another week, and I was thinking to myself, “Holy shit, if I could do that all over again, I would!”
There are some of the products of that one week of madness. Enjoy the photographs, I have tons more that I will continue to post over the next couple of weeks.
As always, please feel free to share, like or comment on the post!
I hope you have an experience that alters the course of your life, because after Africa, nothing has ever been the same… – Suzanne Evans
A few weeks ago, I had the chance to go to Albania. Now, I know what you’re thinking because I was thinking the exact same thing. Albania?! Really? Why? But, I didn’t really have a choice. I wanted to go somewhere, and visa issues prevented me from going to anywhere in Europe. Luckily, my US student visa allowed me to visit Albania, so I thought, why not? Honestly, that statement, “why not”, was a microcosm of the whole trip. We traveled with absolutely no plan and no idea of where to go. We google searched Albania and checked the images, and whenever a landscape photograph caught our eye, we looked up where that place was and went there.
One of Albania’s many stunning landscape views
Albania was, in some ways, an illusory country. In the sense that, it seemed like it was completely disconnected from the rest of the world. From the state of the roads and the people we met, I got the impression of a mid-western town in the US that was on the path of industrialization, when suddenly investors decided to up and leave for greener pastures, leaving the inhabitants in a state of perpetual flux, unsure of their position in the grand scheme of things. But, here was the contradictory part. Whereas most midwestern towns in the US are dusty and surrounded by corn fields and flat lands abound all around as far as the eye can see, Albania is surrounded by lush green mountains that encircle the whole country leaving only one side open to the beautiful coast of the Adriatic sea.
Lush green fields constitute a stunning scenery here
People in Albania were also a dichotomy. Some of them were very friendly and willing to help travelers out but most of the people just seemed downright miserable and glared at you with suspicion if you attempted to smile and say hello to them. Given the country’s emergence from a communist dictatorship relatively recently in the mid 90’s, it still seems to be coming to grips with itself. Most young people are without a job and a lot of people just spend their time sitting around doing absolutely nothing except drinking tea and smoking cigarettes.
But, I will say this. Despite how odd the country appears to be and no matter how surly most of the people were, the landscape and scenery you can see there more than makes up for it.
Blue waters, green mountains, skies with the right amount of cloud to them. What more can you ask for?
Layers.
Layers.
Traveling, it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller
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Thanks for reading!
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Travels and Adventures from the Middle Third of the World
Nowhere Boy 