Skip to main content

Albania From the Air

Thanks to Llukan for pointing me to the website of Alket Islami.

Alket Islami flies around the sky in one of those flimsy looking contraptions that I now know is a paramotor - a seat attached to an engine hanging from a parachute. While he's up there he sometimes carries a camera.

Recently a book of his photographs was published: Albania From The Air. The images are both spectacular and beautiful and you can see them at his website. I've reproduced a few of them below to give you a taster.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find it for sale on Amazon so I'm not sure if it is available outside Albania. In Tirana you can get it in bookshops for 5500 lek.



Labels:

Comments

Ll.T. said…
Ups, sorry, I had forgotten to send you the pdf version so I'm happy you got the site to work :D
11:24 am
Anonymous said…
thanks man! :)
12:08 pm
Anonymous said…
wow..breathtaking stuff... too bad the guy's name is in all of the pics...lol.
3:03 pm
olli said…
Nick, I think the name is there to stop people using these without permission/acknowledgment.

Anon, you are welcome. Are you Alket?
7:14 pm
Anonymous said…
yeah i know. I just wanted it to put it as background for my desktop...lol...but the name sorta ruins it cause it looks too big in bold letters. Maybe i can photoshop it out or something.
8:01 pm
Anonymous said…
no i'm not alket. just liked the pictures a lot! thanks for bringing interesitng stuff for us. :)
9:27 pm
Rod said…
I have added a link to you from my other Blog - http://alex-roadtofreedom.blogspot.com/ - Please recipricate - OK?

Visit Alex web site today and discover the true, heart warming story of faith and prayers. Read how this young Ethiopian street child is being rescued from a certain death on the streets of Addis Ababa. DISCOVER THE REAL LIFE STORY OF HOPE AND SUCCESS FOR ALEX Link to us today and follow the progress as Alex adjusts to the safe world in Europe where he will hopefully soon get a good education and health. http://alex-roadtofreedom.blogspot.com
7:10 pm
beyondrecall31 said…
I just bought the second volume of Albania From The Air in a charity shop in St. Albans, England. I've been interested in Albania - these pictures are a real eye-opener. It only cost me three pounds - abd the money goes to Oxfam.
4:59 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Miss Globe 2007

On Saturday, we were at the Rogner meeting with an expat friend who was leaving Tirana. It was breakfast time, and as our friend was finishing his tea the breakfast room started to fill up with over-dressed (or under-dressed) young women wearing blue sashes. These were the contestants for the Miss Globe 2007 beauty pageant being held in Tirana tonight at the Palace of Congresses. High heel boots and mini-skirts - or in a couple of cases micro-skirts, or possibly just belts - have never struck me as obvious breakfast attire, but the girls seemed happy enough tottering and wobbling around with their tea and toast. I'm not sure why they were wearing their sashes - perhaps in case they forgot which country they came from. As we were leaving they were boarding a large coach which I had seen a number of times around the city in the last few days for their next trip. I'm not sure how some of them made it up the steps, or how they managed to sit down, but perhaps these are the ki...
11 comments
Read more

Big in Albania

Ask me how much I knew about Albania before coming here and my list would be a short one: Enver Hoxha, bunkers and Sir Norman Wisdom. I have no idea when or how I acquired this extensive body of knowledge, but the association of Norman Wisdom with Albania was by far the most interesting part of it. I remember watching Norman Wisdom's old films on British television. My parents were fans of his wholesome, slapstick comedy, but apparently missed the ideological significance of Pitkin's relationship with Mr Grimsdale. Pitkin, the downtrodden and oppressed representative of the workers, triumphed every time over his capitalist oppressor, Mr Grimsdale - and he got the girl. It took a theorist of Hoxha's insight and profundity to discern this deeper political message. It always seemed tremendously unlikely, yet the story of Sir Norman's fame in Albania has been reported in worthy sources like the BBC , the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph . According to the Guardian, when Wi...
22 comments
Read more

Whimper

And now the end is near and so i face nanananana... Never did like that crappy song. But it's true nevertheless. Tomorrow in the wee hours of the morning we will be heading for the airport for the last time. I suppose it was too much to expect that I could have kept this going while getting ready to leave. So apologies for the lack of postings over the last weeks. This is post number 380 something so I suppose one post every two days is not a bad average. There were probably 380 more in my head or scribbled down on scraps of paper, but many of them are perhaps best left there. I suppose I should be penning - or typing - my final thoughts and reflections on two years in Tirana, but right now I don't have any. Maybe in a month or two though I might come back with something. Thanks to all of you who have read this blog - especially those of you who have become regulars. Thanks also for linking and thanks to all who left comments. As for the other stars of the blog, Bella now has h...
19 comments
Read more