The Albanian mountain crops that keep us looking young

While Albanian wild-gathered herbs are sought-after internationally, the industry offers great economic opportunity and independence for women like Donika Musaj.

It was a rushed start for my morning journey, and I was still fiddling with pots of cream and tubes of sunscreen as the minibus set off. I was leaving the Albanian town of Kukës for what I had been warned would be two bumpy hours of travel into the highlands. Our bus was filled over capacity with people and their bundles. The engers had the clear skin and great bone structure I am used to seeing in the men and women of the mountain regions of Albania's north, but their luggage surprised me.

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There is a dreadful saying from Albania's traditional Kanun of rules determining communal life that "woman is a sack to be well-used". But here, the wiry women in their demure headscarves and long black plaits were the ones well-using the sacks, hefting them into the bus and around their persons. Next to me, a woman had a carrier bag swelling yeastily with half a dozen large loaves of simple white bread fresh from a bakery. In front of her was the woman I heard arguing with the driver beforehand over stowing a huge fragrant bedsheet knotted around a billowing mass of stalks and flowers, some of which were littering the floor of the minibus.

Luckily for my curiosity, a woman – who later introduced herself simply as "Naim's wife", in an indicator of the area's lingering traditional views towards women – was keen to tell the whole minibus about just what was in that pillowy pile of herbage she was bringing back home from Kukës.

"Without the stalks, they said! Last year they were happy to have the stalks! But now apparently, it's not acceptable. So, the whole lot has to come home again. I'll probably just feed it to the sheep."

It turned out she was talking about cowslips, one of the many medicinal plants that are wild harvested in Albania. Her bundle was denied because she had picked the stalks instead of just the flowers, apparently a new, unforeseen rule at the market where she's come to sell her flowers.

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