Towards Shëngjergj and its history
Our next hike began early, as usual, but with a destination as close to Tirana as it was far away. We would travel to Shëngjin and Shëngjergj, the next-to-last villages along the capital’s eastern boundary with Elbasan. I had heard of these villages beyond Mount Dajti.
Food was mostly what I knew them for. There are good places to eat and restaurants out that way.
But Shëngjergj, and even more so Shëngjin, had many, many other beautiful things to offer, including nature and history.
Getting there took a while. From central Tirana to the centre of Shëngjergj village, it took us about an hour and a quarter. The distance was around 37 kilometres, but part of the road beyond Surrel, through Shkallë and onwards, was a mountain road with many bends, which made the journey somewhat difficult. The scenery around us, though, was wonderfully soothing.
On reaching the centre of the village, what struck you was how orderly it was. It felt more like a small town than a village. We began walking.
We would climb a hill above the village to the foundations of the first Albanian-language school in the Tirana district. It was interesting: at an altitude of around 1,100 metres, with a fantastic view of the whole valley, a building had once stood where, more than 100 years earlier, people had learned to read and write, above all from Kostandin Kristoforidhi’s primer. The building was later also used by the partisan forces.
What caught my attention, though, was that a village named after a Christian saint, right in the middle of three “holy” villages (Shëngjergj, Shënmri and Shëngjin), had a mosque. We were told that, towards the end of Ottoman rule, a considerable number of the village’s young people had been educated in the Empire, mainly in theology. As we discussed this up there, near the foundations of the first Albanian-language school, it was mentioned that the whole area is said to have a substantial archaeological heritage dating as far back as the third and fourth centuries.
At this point, we were told that the village had once been called Tomadhe, not Shëngjergj (the Tomadhe region). In earlier centuries. During the Middle Ages, the Araniti family had settled in this area. 
Liqeni i Lepurit
After learning as much history as we could in a hurry, we set off again. This time we were heading for a reservoir which, we were told along the way, was called “Liqeni i Lepurit”, the Lake of the Hare. It was a fair walk to get there.
In fact, it was around 5 kilometres from the centre of the village to the lake. But all the tiredness that had built up drained away the moment you sat down beside Liqeni i Lepurit.
Honestly, the “lake” was nothing extraordinary. It was small, and there was not much colour in the water either, but nature knows how to make up for its shortcomings. All around, plants brought colour to the scene, to the endless symphony of the breeze at the foot of the mountains.
The Shëngjin waterfall
Once we had fully recovered our strength, we headed for the next place, the one that had really sparked our interest most: the Shëngjin waterfall.
The walk downhill to the centre was a little easier. We completed around 10 kilometres, with an elevation difference of 500 metres. Once back in the village centre, we took the road downhill and, about 8 kilometres into the return journey, stopped at the roadside and set off on foot for the waterfall.
This next walk was even more exciting, with the rush of the waterfall audible in the background. Small paths ran around the edges of enormous rocks, full of plants and living creatures. Very exciting.
After no less than 20 minutes of walking, an enormous waterfall stood before you.
A high slab of rock sent a powerful stream of water plunging down under pressure. The sound, the clear colour and the small pool it had formed made the Shëngjin waterfall fantastic. Of the waterfalls I have been lucky enough to visit, Sotira is among the most beautiful, but this one at Shëngjin brought the waterfalls in Osum to mind.
The rock interrupted the water’s free fall so little that you could clearly see the point where the water broke downwards, from right up there.
Simply fantastic. Waterfalls really are the earth’s pearls, polished with such effort by the inexhaustible waters of the rivers our country has in such abundance.