Adventures from Bulgaria: Summer in the Mountains – Days 12 & 13

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On under clear, blue skies

By Valeria Idakieva

[Sequel to “Days 10 & 11,” published on July 30.]



The morning after another wonderful day in the Rhodope Mountains woke me up with a clear, blue sky and gentle, soft sunshine streaming through the window. I had the usual morning cup of coffee and hit the road, filling my head with pleasant memories and my lungs with fresh air. The mountain was revealing a softer beauty now – some houses of a nearby village perching on a hill, stacks of hay, rounded slopes, trees.

    The road was weaving on the distant hills, urging me to follow it faster since the cloudless sky was promising a sweltering day and long hours under the hot sun.

After passing through some villages, I had lunch near one of them and continued on an asphalt road along with many cars and drivers wondering why I was crawling on the asphalt road in the heat of the summer day. Fortunately, it did not last long and I soon swerved into another village. The air was hot, hot wind was blowing – I was breathing in and out hot air like a dragon breathing fire. The streets were empty since everybody had hidden inside and I could not ask anybody where to find the orange marks I intended to follow. I did not want to bother people who were probably having their afternoon naps in their homes so I walked through the empty streets and sat down in the nearby forest to take off my shoes and socks to relieve my sweltering feet. I could not find the orange marks or any other marks and the track in my phone was leading me by a river so I decided to choose the longer but pleasant way along the river. My feet were protesting against the shoes, but I had not learned how to walk barefoot, so I thrust them back into the shoes and hurried to the river, where the trees and the water provided me with shadow and freshness.

From time to time I crossed the slender river, enjoying the coolness of the water, but soon it was time to leave the oasis, and although it was after 4:00 p.m. and the sun was not so strong, the hot wind was lashing me like a ship’s sail in the sea of hills. Hill after hill I came near a village where I had some rest and phoned the owner of the lodge where I was going to stay for the night.

    He told me that there was nobody in the lodge, but he was going to come over from the nearby city, open the lodge, and let me stay there. So I had to gather my will and stop dragging my feet on the dusty path, moaning that it was too hot and hard but I shouldn’t make him waste his time waiting for me. But it turned out to be not such an easy task – as soon as I started climbing the next hill, I had to face the next challenge: A cloud of small flies covered my head, trying to penetrate my eyes, nose, and mouth. Having interacted with them before, I was prepared for their invasion this time and put on my mosquito head-net. So I continued on the steep hill, puffing, and panting, walking like a strange, mutant creature in the middle of a cloud of flies. After some more hills and a beautiful forest I was thanking the owner of the lodge for making the efforts to put me up for the night and telling him how much I enjoyed the cool air inside and the fact that I could shut the door before the small flies could squeeze in.

When I opened my eyes in the morning, the sun was shining brightly, reminding me that it was time to go since I was not in the high mountains and it was going to be another sweltering day. The humming of machines in nearby ore mines was ruining the harmony of the beautiful morning, but after I started walking, my spirits were lifted again by blue lakes sparkling in the distance and by the soothing green of the surrounding forest.

    After a while, as I was trudging along the asphalt road between some villages, I realized that I was feeling drained already, nearly at the start of the day, as if I had left my energy in the mountains. Obviously, it was time to have some coffee and breakfast so that I could continue walking normally without dragging my feet and being an object of fun for the locals. After I had spent some time in a village café, the energy started coming back, but now it was very hot outside. I was lucky to enter a little wood soon after I left the café. I slowly put off getting out of the cool shadows with the excuse of making phone calls to my family and friends. But this could not go on forever. I scolded myself for being lazy and wasting time and continued walking under the hot sun through harvested fields and vineyards.

    Suddenly I felt a dull pain in my kidneys, which reminded me that I had not bothered last evening to change my wet-from-sweat clothes because I was enjoying the coolness of the lodge, and this dull pain was the result. So I stiffened my lip and started walking faster. It didn’t help much, but I didn’t have any other options. The lodge I was heading for now seemed so near, only a few hills away, but I knew it was not going to be that easy. When I reached the lodge, with the intention of cuddling in a bed as soon as possible, the person there told me that only the cafeteria on the first floor was open. I was ready to drop dead on the floor, but this wasn’t going to help.
    I pulled myself together and went on to the nearest village, where the only place available for staying the night was a camper in the yard of a local restaurant. The camper was as hot as an oven, which would have been going to torment me ordinarily, but now the heat felt nice because I had started shivering. I went to sleep while praying to the God of the E-8 Path to let me finish the route because there were only two days left.

Copyright © 2018 by Valeria Idakieva