Theth is a village in the Accursed Mountains of northern Albania, a scatter of stone houses in a valley of pine forest under limestone peaks, and it is the start of the best-known trek in the Balkans, the day-long crossing of the pass to Valbona. The mountains carry the same grim name in two languages, Bjeshkët e Nemuna in Albanian and Prokletije in Slavic, and the reason is in their shape: grey walls and spires rising straight out of the valleys, cut off by snow for half the year. Theth was almost unreachable until the road was paved in 2021, and its houses are the old highland kind, stone with wooden balconies and steep roofs, among them the Kulla e Ngujimit, a lock-in tower where men marked for death in a blood feud under the mountain code once walled themselves in for months or years, one of the very few such towers that survive intact, and it is open to visitors. In the meadow at the valley's centre stands a small Franciscan church alone against the wall of the mountains, lit after dark.
The crossing to Valbona climbs out of Theth's forest for about four hours to the Qafa e Valbonës at 1,795 metres, a saddle with the whole range on both sides, and drops into the next valley for a night in a guesthouse there; it is one leg of the Peaks of the Balkans, a loop of about 192 kilometres linking footpaths across Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro. Day walks from the village drop into the Shala gorge and climb a side valley to the Blue Eye, a small karst pool so clear and cold that the rock basin under it reads deep blue, not the great spring of the same name in the south but a smaller one, and to the Grunas waterfall. Guesthouses in the village serve what the valley grows, and the hosts walk their guests to the trailheads. Theth is a village that the mountains cursed and the walkers found, and the tower in it is the reminder of what the mountains once meant.