A Balkans itinerary with Kosovo in it, done in the right order

A Balkans road trip is the sort of holiday I’d suggest to anyone who has done the usual European city breaks. Short distances, landscapes that change every hour and five countries in a fortnight. But with Kosovo in the mix there’s one rule that shapes everything, and ignore it and you’ll come unstuck at a border.

The rule that sets the order

Gov.uk is clear. Serbia doesn’t treat its crossing points with Kosovo as official international borders, but a round trip that starts in Serbia, into Kosovo and back out, is fine. The direction that fails is Kosovo first. Without a Serbian entry stamp in the passport from earlier, picked up at one of its airports or at a land border with another neighbour, you can’t cross from Kosovo into Serbia and you’d have to go round through a third country. I go through every case on my page about the Kosovo-Serbia border.

In itinerary terms, if Serbia is on the trip, it goes first. If it isn’t, none of this affects you.

My five-country loop

The one I’d do flies into Belgrade and out of Skopje. Belgrade and Niš first, then Pristina and Peja, across the mountains to Podgorica, down into Albania via Shkodër to Tirana, and back round through Ohrid to Skopje. No leg is longer than four hours’ driving by OpenStreetMap routing, and the longest, Peja to Podgorica, is 169 km through the mountains.

Fly into Tirana or Skopje and skip Serbia, and the loop works from any starting point. For Kosovo from Albania see Tirana to Pristina; from North Macedonia, Skopje to Pristina.

Once your dates are set, check which hotels are still free in Peja before prices climb.

Money and health cover

The European Commission says Kosovo and Montenegro use the euro as their de facto currency without an EU agreement. Serbia uses the dinar. Bring pounds and you’ll be changing money more than once, so a card with low foreign fees earns its keep here.

Health cover is the British trap. The NHS lists Montenegro among the places your UK GHIC works, but Kosovo isn’t on that list, so travel insurance has to cover the whole route, not just the countries where the card fails.

Driving it

By car this route is a joy, with two gov.uk warnings. Kosovo doesn’t accept the green card, which means paying cash in euros for a local policy as you enter, and a car rented in Serbia often isn’t allowed across, nor a Kosovan one into Serbia. Gov.uk also flags delays at Kosovo’s crossings with North Macedonia, Albania and Serbia in summer and around holidays. More in driving in Kosovo.

If you would rather have a local show you round, book a guided tour in Peja and choose by the reviews.

And within Kosovo

If you can only give Kosovo two or three days, I’d pick Prizren or Peja over Pristina. Pristina is easy to reach and worth a day, but Prizren’s old town and Peja’s mountain setting are what I’d remember from the trip. Coming down from Montenegro, Peja is the natural first stop; coming up from Albania, Prizren is. My priorities are in things to see in Kosovo, and if you’d rather book a ready-made tour, what I’d check is in Kosovo holidays.

Once your dates are set, check which hotels are still free in Peja before prices climb.