How to get from Ohrid to Tirana by public transportation?

When I decided to have a short Balkan trip, I decided to start from Skopje and move onwards to Tetovo and Ohrid. Once Ohrid is completed, I planned to go to Tirana, Albania and keep going to Montenegro over Shkoder. As I was searching the internet for various possibilities to travel between Ohrid to Tirana, I could not find satisfactory information. Apparently, there was no direct bus connection between these two cities and suggestions were mainly on taking taxis to the border and then catch a bus or another taxi to Elbasan. So, once I reached Ohrid, I didn't know how to get to Tirana the next day. Thus, I decided to prepare this post to help people searching for this information as well as increase content on Albania in the internet domain. (Note that all these info is based on data from October 2012 and check for updates where necessary.)

Well, for the best information, I asked locals once I get to Ohrid. The main suggestion is to take the mini-buses to Struga on the north shores of Ohrid lake and then catch a inter-city bus coming from Skopje outbound to Tirana in the main bus station in Struga. I was told that if I may miss the mid-noon buses then I might have to wait for 5-6 pm buses leading to late arrival to Tirana.Note that there is no direct bus line originating from Struga going to Albania. All the buses I have seen were coming from elsewhere, such as Skopje, Kumanovo and even Istanbul.

This is an "insider's" view from the mini-bus between Ohrid to Struga. It takes approximately 15 minutes to get to Struga from the main boulevard of Ohrid. It is very easy to spot the minibus if you just wait near the road. Even private cars stop and ask whether you need a ride or not.

 

Once in Struga, you should get off the minibus around the following tiny church St.Petka (yellow marker in the below map). Actually, in the below photo, you can see a similar minibus coming to the bus station and people waiting for the minibus. If you keep in the minibus, its route gets farther from the main intercity bus station. Once out, keep walking toward the city and turn right and keep going. Check the map below for further details:

The front side of the bus station looks like as shown below. It is very small bus station and mainly the buses comes, picks up passengers and leaves. Note that the bus station is squeezed between industrial shops. So, while getting there, it feels like there cannot be a bus station but believe me there is one.

Inside the bus station, I have seen this bus going to Istanbul over Bulgaria. I believe if there wasn't a need for a transit visa from Bulgaria to get to Macedonia, many people from Turkey would take this bus trip. It is very cheap compared to flight tickets and you get to see different cities along the way. 

 

This is the bus stop for Istanbul. Note the way they write Istanbul: Istambul. I cannot say this is a typo as some countries including Spain write Istanbul the same way as below.

The other perons of the bus station

Finally our bus arrived from Skopje. It stopped for a very short duration. After picking up the passengers it hit the road. The next destination is the Albanian border.

We are at the Albanian border. It took approximately half an hour to clear from both countries. First the Macedonian side collects the passports and they stamp out. Then, Albanian border police gets the passport and stamp in. As passengers, we did not interact with the border police at all. The bus driver took care of everything. Unfortunately, stamps were barely visible due to almost no ink on the stamps.

This is the inside view from our bus to Tirana. There was this nice old man who kept the cigarette in his mouth until he get off while waiting for the customs for the passport or IDs. He was calm and definitely cool.