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The next Sunday’s plan was for a different kind of hike. The club had scheduled a walk to the “Good Cave” on Mount Brar. The mountain was known by two names, Mount Brar and Mount Priska e Vogël, because at its height of 1241m it brought together the two villages of those names, north of Mount Dajti (1613m).
In practical terms, it is the mountain that reaches as far as the Bovilla Dam, farther north along the Kruja–Dajti range.
The cave lay behind Mount Brar, on its eastern side. It had this name because local residents considered it a good, blessed place. People prayed and lit candles there.
According to custom, they visited it in August, making a pilgrimage much like the one we were about to undertake. Their walk began before dawn, because it was said the sun should find you at the cave’s entrance, which made a visit to the place all the more intriguing.
We set off with the group from the Arts High School at 9:00, as usual. Travelling around 14 kilometres by minibus, we followed Dibra Street towards Tufina and passed villages such as Ferraj and Tujan along what was supposed to be the “Arbër Road”. It was my first time going that way.
The road was a disgrace, and the only part of the journey that saddened me. 
Construction, begun back in 2008, had stopped who knows how long ago. The vehicles rattled through potholes, and 5 kilometres felt like 50.
When I began writing, I searched online and came across an article by the late Ardian Klosi. Imagine! Klosi was talking about the barbarity of this road 7 years earlier.
And still, all this time later, it was coating the area’s natural jewels in dust. The Tujan Steps, Mount Brar and, worse still, the Tirana River, which they had now put to work washing the quarries.
Ironically, our hike began on the edge of the village of Besh, precisely where the road ended. Seen up close, it gave the impression it would be finished only when the medieval Arbër people rose from the dead. Painfully, we wound our way through a great bite taken out of Mount Brar by “Barbarity Ltd”, as Klosi put it in his article. 
The plan called for around 9 kilometres of walking, up and down, with an elevation difference of 600–700 metres.
It looked as though it would be quite a challenge. At first, the mountain was dry and sparsely vegetated. Farther up, as the terrain grew rougher, we came across ordinary scrub here and there, but also heather, the kind that grows among rocks and stays green all year.
With every upward zigzag, a clearer panorama opened up. From there we could see Lake Bovilla to the north, Mali me Gropa (1731m) and the Erzen canyons to the southeast.
The cave could not be seen from below with the naked eye. But just when you least expected it, distracted by the view and the walk, an even more enormous cave appeared behind an enormous rock. Dark from the very entrance, the “Good Cave” seemed good indeed, welcoming you with water dripping from above all around. We settled down.
We had a proper rest. Caught our breath and began to explore inside.
It was the first large cave I had visited. The stalactites overhead were not particularly clear, but the stalagmites were more than visible. Below, the trickling sounds of water helped you make them out and understand how they had formed.
Near the end (the cave is 60 metres long), we also spotted sleeping bats. Leaving them in peace, we lit candles and offered our prayer. Of course!
If there is a God! “Work a miracle and let the road be finished!”
Another interesting part of the trip!
The beauty of trips, especially into nature, is that you make good friends. So it was with our foreign friends who love Albania’s nature. Taking part in our group’s hike that day were a woman from Germany, a young woman from Austria and a young man from China, the last of whom lived and worked in Durrës.
In the “Good Cave”, as we got to know them better, the humour of the visit led us to challenge them to a tongue-twister game. Did you know that “A cup with a lid, a cup without a lid” is not only an Albanian game? I, for one, did not!
It took that spontaneous game for me to realise that all the world’s cultures and languages have a game like this. Do not miss it!