Nine caves open in the cliff face of Rugova Canyon, and a climbing route of steel rungs and cables fixed to the rock now runs straight through them. The gorge is the work of the Lumbardhi i Pejës, which sawed 25 kilometres of limestone off the flank of the Accursed Mountains, leaving walls that stand up to 1,000 metres above the water. Limestone dissolves in rainwater as much as it wears away, so water has hollowed the canyon out from the inside: caves, natural rock tunnels, springs bursting straight from the wall, glacial lakes on the plateaus above. Kosovo protected it as a natural monument in 1985, and since January 2013 it has lain inside Bjeshkët e Nemuna National Park — 630 square kilometres of brown bear, lynx and chamois country. At its mouth, where the cliffs let the river out toward Peja, stands the Patriarchate of Peć, seat of the Serbian Orthodox patriarchs since 1346 and a UNESCO World Heritage site.
One road threads the whole gorge, ducking under overhangs and through tunnels blasted into the rock, the milky-turquoise river running below the guardrail. Kosovo's first climbing route of this kind was bolted onto these walls in 2010, and there are four of them today. The longest runs a thousand metres across the cliff and crosses a narrow rope-and-cable bridge strung 60 metres above the drop. A 640-metre zipline also crosses the canyon, carrying riders at up to 80 kilometres an hour. Hikers turn off for glacial lakes and shepherd huts in the highlands, while at the upper end the village of Bogë runs a ski lift all winter, when the road narrows to one plowed lane between white cliffs. The families of these highlands are the source of the Rugova sword dance, one of the best-known Albanian folk dances, and many of them now run the valley's guesthouses. Come in spring and the river is loudest, fat with snowmelt; come in late October and the beech woods below the grey walls turn gold.