Travel Guide The Šar Mountains

This mountain range is called Bjeshkët e Sharrit or Malet e Sharrit in Albanian and Шар-планина/Šar-planina in Serbian and Macedonian. It extends about 80 km in length between Kosovo and Northern Macedonia, up to the border with Albania. In Kosovo, Prizren and the village of Štrpce/Shtërpca are the main access points to the massif. Štrpce/Shtërpca is located 43 km east of Prizren, 24 km southwest of Ferizaj/Uroševac.The Šar Mountains belong to the Dinaric Alps chain and include thirty peaks over 2,500 m above sea level, including the Velika Rudoka ("Great Rudoka"), which at 2,661 m is the highest point in Kosovo. It is located in the Gora region, southeast of Dragaš/Dragash, but it is only accessible from Northern Macedonia. In fact, it was only discovered in 2011, dethroning Mount Đeravica (2,656 m) in the Albanian Alps, which was previously considered the highest peak in the country. The highest point of the massif, however, is in Northern Macedonia. It is Mount Tito (Titov Vrv), at 2,747 m, which neighbors the Velika Rudoka. In Kosovo, there are fourteen other peaks above 2,500 m, but the most beautiful is Mount Lubojten, near Štrpce/Shtërpca, on the border between Kosovo and North Macedonia. With its iconic conical peak that reaches "only" 2,498 m above sea level, it is visible from Skopje and Pristina on a clear day. On both sides of the border, the massif is protected by the two national parks of the Šar Mountains.