How to Travel from Tirana to Skopje by Bus

There’s something about sitting on a rickety bus in a foreign country at night, on unknown roads, seeing unknown views and listening to that one album you always play on long journeys. The blur of half-wakedness in sync with the blur of the streetlights and occasional headlights flowing in in the opposite direction. This sort of travel feels like a real adventure, none of the blandness of airports, seeing a country through its inner veins. It doesn’t do my back any favours, but I still love it.

There wasn’t much information online about the transfer from Tirana to Skopje, so hopefully these tips will come in handy for your Balkans adventure .You might also find our travel guide for Tirana and Top Things to do in Skopje useful.

As we didn’t trust online timetables and wanted to play it safe (we flew into Tirana and we’re flying out of Skopje), we headed to the International Bus Station in the north of Tirana to secure our tickets and know our departure time to plan our last day in Tirana around it. 

The rather messy bus station is surrounded by small offices offering tickets to various destinations. Both Ido Tours and HAK Bus offered tickets to Skopje. After picking the time that worked best for us (at night so we could enjoy another day in Tirana, but not so late that we’d be exhausted for a day in Skopje the next day). Tickets were €20 per person, with returns available for €30.

We arrived at the bus station around 15 minutes before departure, but there were plenty of seats available and the bus left right on time. And here we are. I’m currently writing this post at the back of the small mini-bus-style coach, at times barely keeping hold of my phone and struggling to type as we cascade over the bumps in the rickety roads. 

We picked up a couple of passengers along the way, waiting for around ten minutes by the side of the road at one point. There was a 15 minute break just before the border, around two hours into the journey- coffee, toilets, snacks and stray dogs. Travelling at night there’s not much to see out the window, but having travelled along much of this road before, I know that by day it offers exceptional views of the mountains and Lake Ohrid. 

The bus itself is small, and so are the seats. Think Ryanair in terms of legroom. The border crossing itself was relatively smooth, leaving Albania we handed our passports over to the driver who returned with them 5 minutes later. One passenger had to get out to “speak to the police” but he returned shortly after. Entering North Macedonia, we all had to get off the bus and stand in the cold to have our passports inspected. Overall the process took less than 20 minutes, but the border was quiet and we were lucky that the bus was too. 

There was just one more service station stop after the border. The toilets were just about bareable. 

The bus got incredibly cold later in the journey, despite the day’s temperatures being mid 20s in both Tirana and Skopje. I wasn’t anticipating this, so layered up with extra T shirts from my backpack. The driver smoked a cigarette a couple of times whilst driving, unpleasant as it was, I’d probably rather put up with that than stopping for smoking breaks continuously throughout the journey.