“You feel the distance from the city even before you arrive,” my friend said as he looked at the winding road among the hills. Indeed, with every kilometer you move away from the city noise, the peace grows. The air becomes fresher, and the greenery — denser, as if embracing you.

Labunista welcomes you with calmness, with the smell of earth and moisture, and with a sense of connection rarely found today. “Here, time flows differently,” he said, looking at the three mosques dominating the village — symbols of faith and history told through generations.

“Let’s go to Krasta first,” I said, and my friend caught that adventurous excitement in his eyes found only in those who want to discover something new. So we set off.

The road takes you behind the village, where you first pass by beautiful villas and new houses, with clean yards and flowers on the fences. I told him that once there was a wild dump and quarries here, and that locals fought against it for a long time. “We protested a lot,” I told him. “But in the end, we succeeded — we solved it once and for all.”

Then the road starts climbing Krasta — a hill full of small and large stones, dry grass, and rare bushes battling the wind. The ground is hard, but the scent is pure, mountainous. Every step echoes, and stones quietly roll underfoot. The higher we climbed, the more the landscape below opened up. The view — green, picturesque, endless.

“Everything here breathes,” he said, looking toward the village spread at the foot of the hill. “You can’t help but fall in love with this place.”

When we came down again, we already felt Labunista differently. The silence, the river, the people — all were part of an old story told without words.

The three mosques immediately caught his attention. “Each has its own soul,” I told him. Especially the Lower Mosque, once proud of the tallest minaret — a true record for that time. Today, with a smile I explained that people seem to have entered a silent race — every new builder wants to build something higher, brighter, more modern. “They began to compete with the sky,” he said laughing.

I also told him about Mehmed Ali Pasha and the old mosque he built with faith and vision. And how today, right next to it, the new part is being built — a continuation of the same story. “It’s built with love,” I said. “Just as it was built before — slowly, with soul and respect for the past.”

As we walked around the mosque, I showed him where everything used to be green — gardens, yards, meadows. During Ramadan days we used to sit under the willows, outside in the garden, eat, laugh, and listen to the water flowing from the fountain. “There was something peaceful about those evenings,” I told him. “The smell of grass and the silence broken by nothing except the sound of the fountain.”

He was most impressed by the New Mosque in Podgorci. Its domes, painted a warm copper glow, look like molten gold in the sun. Not real, but with a color that catches the rays and turns them into light. “I have never seen such a dome before,” he said, looking up. “It looks as if it melts with the sky.”

At the end of the day, as we returned along the main street, the river flowed parallel to us — hidden under concrete and reinforcement. “It used to be open here,” I told him. “We all used to walk along it.” He stopped, tilted his ear and said: “I hear water… but I don’t see it.”

That sentence echoed in my mind all the way back. Someone might say he was talking about the river — but I knew, he was also speaking of something else. About the quiet beauty of the place that is still heard, even when no longer seen.

In the air of Labunista the Islamic spirit is still felt, but not as something strict or heavy, rather as a gentle balm shaping every day. People are quiet, smiling, and they have that softness in speech that disarms you. “Here people do not speak loudly,” he told me. “Here they speak with the heart.”

Labunista is not a place to be seen — it is a place to be experienced. And when you leave, you don’t just carry memories of landscapes and mosques, but a feeling that you were part of something bigger — something true, pure, and peaceful.