Kosovo's lakes, from reservoir to glacial cirque

Kosovo has no coast and no big postcard lake, which is worth knowing before you go looking for a freshwater beach. What it does have is large reservoirs down on the plain and small, cold, lovely lakes up in the mountains. They are two different days out, and the second wins for me every time.

The big four are reservoirs

The Kosovo Agency of Statistics (ASK) publishes a table of the main lakes and their area, and all four are man-made. The government tourism portal, which survives only as a 2022 copy on archive.org, explains what each one is for.

The largest is Gazivoda Lake (Ujmani in Albanian), 9.1 km² in the ASK table, a reservoir on the Ibar in the north; the portal adds that part of it lies outside Kosovo. Next comes Lake Radoniq, 5.96 km², built in the 1980s near Gjakova, which according to the portal supplies some 214,000 people in Gjakova and Rahovec and irrigates 10,500 hectares.

Batllava and Badovc, Pristina’s water

The other two sit within easy reach of the capital. Batlava Lake, 3.27 km², dates from the 1970s and supplies Pristina; OpenStreetMap places it in Podujeva municipality. Badovc, 2.57 km², is a reservoir on the Gračanica river about 5 km from the city, according to the same portal. If you are based in Pristina, they are your quickest trip to the water.

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

Rugova, the lakes I would pick

The easiest mountain lakes are in Rugova, inside Bjeshkët e Nemuna National Park. Peja’s tourism website, which I rely on only as a secondary source, suggests setting off from the Kuqishtë lake area at 1,680 m and walking about two hours on an easy path through pine woods to Liqenat, at 1,860 m and some 40 by 60 m across, and on to the lake at Drelaj, at about 1,800 m. Drelaj fills with rain and snowmelt, which is why the website recommends it in spring. The same site says visitors come all year round, and of everything on this page it is the walk I would happily do without a guide, because it is short and well trodden.

Glacial lakes on the high ground

Higher still lie the lakes the glaciers left behind. The 2003 study that underpinned Bjeshkët e Nemuna park counts ten glacial lakes in the cirques around Gjeravica and the source of the Bistrica e Kozhnjerit river. In the south, the Sharr National Park directorate names Livadhishte, at 2,173 m, 230 by 120 m and 7 m deep, as the park’s largest, and describes Jazhinca, 120 by 90 m and 11 m deep. These are high-mountain tarns, and the ones by Gjeravica sit in the border belt where the FCDO flags old landmines and asks you to stick to main paths, so I would save them for a guided route.

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