2023-06-18. Korçë - Blëzenckë

Iran - Iraqi Kurdistan - Turkey - Greece - Albania

It rained again tonight but it looks like it will be a nice day.

I stop in a bar in Ersekë to make tea and eat some biscuits, the waiter tells me that it has already been paid and that a man who is sitting at another table has paid, I sit down with him and give him the thank you and let's chat for a while, he's the village doctor and I explain to him the route I plan to take today, he tells me it's very nice but to keep an eye on the road as there are very bad sections and that they're doing construction.

I continue south on the SH75 and soon the villages disappear and the road climbs and becomes more twisty, narrow and bad. The views are spectacular and for many kilometers there is only forest until I reach a restaurant-hotel-campsite that has a river trout breeder and many tourists eating and riding horses, I stop for an espresso with a view of the trout pools.
In the vicinity there are some of the thousands of bunkers around the country.

From there they are fixing the road and when I get to Leskovik it becomes a road with perfect asphalt and it is nice to make the bends but also the traffic of cars and trucks increases a lot.

I stop in Përmet to buy a drink as I will soon take a track and for many kilometers there is nothing of any kind.
At the beginning the track is good enough, although stony, until at a junction I meet a German with a motorcycle standing there, he tells me that he is waiting for his friends who come in 4x4 further back, he tells me that the track gets a little complicated and that there is also some mud.

It starts to climb hard with many pans with stones and you have to be careful, also mud sections with some big and long mud holes, especially on the way down. It's getting cloudy and I'm afraid it's going to rain.
After more than 2 hours and having covered 30 km of track, I reached the asphalt where there is a sign indicating that you can only go back with 4x4 cars.

I eat, drink and recover for quite a while.
I follow the river that forms some cliffs, Osumi Canyon, and I turn off on a track to another small tributary of the previous one where it looks like there may be places to camp.
I find a quiet place where you can only hear the murmur of the water and the songs of the birds.
In the middle of setting up the tent, a car passes by and stops, they are Castilian tourists who ask me if they are going to Girokaster (an important city to the south) since Google Maps tells them to go there, I tell them that everything it's a track and they won't be able to pass with their tourism.