Me & my girlfriend were visiting Albania, Teth. When we drove back with the minibus to Shkodër, Ben was in it to. (We didn"t know him by then). Since it was a 3 hour drive we started talking and he explaind/told us a lot about Albania. We normally had a taxi from Shkodër to Tirana but Ben invited us to join him in his ride (his friend was taking him from Shkodër to Tirana). We stopped at some very cool places, ate ice cream, dronk coffee & ate watermelon...He makes you feel really comfortable and is so  hospitable. You can really feel the passion when he starts talking about his country. Such a lovely and friendly man. We even met that night in Tirana and had some drinks in a bar. In short, if you are looking for a very helpfull & pasionate guide ...this is deffinitly your man! Great guy!

On a week’s trip that, starting in Shkoder and taking in a spectacular three-hour ferry ride along a reservoir in the midst of soaring mountains, included hiking in the Valbona Valley and around Teth  and Razem and finally a day in Tirana, Arben Kola was our guide.  Hard to think we could have done better. 

Arben was as good at planning our itinerary and organizing every detail - including the horses that took our heavier luggage over the stupendous Valbona pass and highlights such as a wonderful lunch served by two young women at a table under the trees by a remote lone cottage it took us a 400 metre ascent up a gorge to reach - as he was at leading us on the walks, and passing on all the detail about the places we saw and about Albania’s long history and current politics from his astonishing store-house of knowledge. Keeping up was quite a job, but worth it. 

Committed as much to our safety as to our enjoyment of the trip, he was absolutely tireless, and with all that a lot of fun as company. Meeting his lovely wife and toddler son when we got to Tirana, was something we won’t forget. When after we’d got back home Arben sent us all a WhatsApp group message with a long and detailed day-by-day report on our trip, what one of us wrote back was “You’re one in a million!” That’s about the measure of how we ended up feeling about Arben.

I visited the Albanian Alps and Tirana for a week as part of a group. Arben not only changed our original hiking itinerary (so that we saw much more interesting parts of the country) but added in history, scenery and extraordinary places to eat. He sorted out transport at short notice, looked after all our individual needs, was lovely to chat to and perpetually cheerful. No hesitation in recommending Arben!