Staying in Rugova, in family guesthouses below the peaks

Rugova is not a place for big hotels. It is a place for family houses with spare rooms, a hot dinner and a mountain outside the window. If that is what you are after, few places in Kosovo do a night or two better; if you want a 24-hour reception and a spa, stay down in town.

What kind of places are there?

Peja’s tourism website, which carries no publisher’s name and so counts as secondary here, explains that Rugova families have opened their homes to visitors as guesthouses. Behind that is an EU-funded project under the Montenegro and Kosovo cross-border programme, which upgraded 40 rural households across the area and laid out 18 rustic trails. These houses are also the natural base for the Peaks of the Balkans, the trail that links Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro through these mountains. In Peja municipality there are now ten rural routes and about 20 homes that serve meals and offer rooms, half of them in the mountains.

I have no official list with names, prices or grades, so I am not going to recommend a particular house. What I can do is tell you what to look for.

Bogë, Kuqishtë or Drelaj?

It depends on why you are going. Bogë, 36 km from Peja according to the same website, is the village with the ski run and lift, plus bars and restaurants, and the obvious pick in winter. The Kuqishtë area, which the website calls Liqenat after its lakes, sits at about 1,460 m among pines more than 20 m tall and is the base for walking up to the Liqenat and Drelaj lakes at roughly 1,800-1,860 m.

The census tells an interesting story. In 2024 ASK counted 161 people in Bogë and 210 in Drelaj, against 24 and 74 in 2011. Small villages, but far from empty.

If you are staying the night, see the best hotel deals in Rugova for your dates: the well-placed rooms go fast.

What to check before you book

First, whether dinner is included. Up there you will not find a street of restaurants as in Peja, and after a day’s walking half board is pure comfort. Second, how you reach the house by car and whether there is any unpaved track. Third, heating if you go outside summer, because you are in high mountains.

Then the driving. The FCDO advises avoiding night driving in Kosovo, and the Rugova Canyon road is all tunnels and bends. It also reminds British drivers that the green card is not valid here, so bring euros in cash for local insurance at the border.

Peja below, Rugova above

My ideal split is two nights in town and one or two in the mountains. Below you have the bazaar, the Patriarchate and more choice for dinner; above, quiet and trails from the door. If you decide to stay put in town after all, my page on hotels in Peja covers which area to choose. ASK put the whole region at 4,380 beds across 118 establishments in 2025, but it does not separate Rugova, so I cannot tell you how many beds there are up the valley alone.

So you do not lose the morning at the ticket office, browse tickets and tours in Rugova on GetYourGuide.

If you are staying the night, see the best hotel deals in Rugova for your dates: the well-placed rooms go fast.