Through the 1970s and 1980s Alexander Ivanov was one of this country's most innovative photographers. He was the mastermind of the association of photographers in his native Kazanlak, and his experiments in colour photography at the time brought him prestigious national and international photography awards.
Since 1988 Alexander Ivanov has been a freelance photographer based in Kazanlak.
The first place of interest after Lakatnik might look strange to a foreigner: a five-metre statue of an old man apparently staring into the gorge, at Ochindol village. The 2005 monument represents one of the best known literary characters in Bulgaria, the Dyado, or Grandpa, Yotso from the short story Dyado Yotso is Looking On by Ivan Vazov. The story is about a blind octogenarian from an isolated hamlet in the Iskar Gorge who is fascinated by every single sign of Bulgaria's independence from the Ottomans; from the uniforms of an official and a soldier to the newly-built railway.
So far, more than 4,500 have been discovered and mapped. The number is so high because 22 percent of the country is covered with karst, a topography created when water soaks, dissolves and carves sedimentary rocks, mainly limestone, dolomite, and marble. Over millennia, the water shapes the karst into a variety of forms both on the ground and deep below. Caves are some of the most spectacular results of this activity.
The compacted ice on the pavements. The impassable streets. The grey, yellow and black hues the snow assumes from the dirty city air. Not. Enjoyable. At. All.
In Bansko, however, one can easily love snow from the appearance of the first snowflake in December to the thaw in April. Snow here is 100 percent for fun.
The mastodons roamed along the banks of a river, munching on the vegetation under the canopy of a tropical forest, oblivious to the screams of the monkeys and the presence of rhinos, but watching out for the lions and sabre-toothed tigers that were never far from the watering hole.
Nothing is deeper than the Iskar River, says the folk song of the Shopi, the Bulgarians who inhabit the area around Sofia. This song is the ultimate proof of the Shopi's proverbial stubbornness and local pride, and yet the Iskar River is indeed remarkable. Gushing out in Bulgaria's highest mountain, the Rila, it begins its life when two smaller rivers, the Beli, or White, and the Cherni, or Black Iskars, converge. It then heads towards the Danube, arriving there after a journey of 368km (the Beli Iskar lenght included).
Springing from the most prominent Bulgarian mountain ranges, they carve, wind and splash their way though ravines and canyons and across plains, passing by cities ancient and new, before they finally join together just after the border with Turkey and flow south until they reach the Aegean.
Each of these rivers has its own route and landmarks.
"Danger! Crossing is forbidden!" Makeshift signs adorn the wooden bridges that until not so long ago used to provide a hair-rising and yet fascinating glimpse of the Negovanka River and the rugged rocks of the Emenski Canyon, near Veliko Tarnovo. The path leading to the high point of the trail, the nearby Momin Skok, or Virgin's Jump, waterfall also shows visible marks of decay: planks are missing here and there from the wooden steps, particularly at the most precipitous part of the climb.
Stoney-faced and determined, Sylvester Stallone pilots a plane, shooting at a bunch of baddies holed-up in a phantasmagorical cave. There are gunshots and wisecracks, and then the airplane enters the cave with a bang.
The scene from The Expendables 2 is pure fiction, but something in it is completely real: the cave where all the action takes place is one of Bulgaria's most fascinating natural phenomena.
Even if you think you know this part of the mountain range, you are certain to come across strange landmarks and strange stories. Some of them are natural, others are man-made, and what they have in common is their ability to inspire the imagination.
Perperikon
In 1808, a German geographer, August Zeune, erroneously referred to southeastern Europe as "The Balkans" because he thought the Balkan range ran all the way from the Black Sea to the Adriatic. It doesn't. It exists entirely in Bulgarian territory: from the border with Serbia to the Black Sea coast at Cape Emine (Emine being a pretty common female Turkish proper name). The Bulgarians themselves refer to the mountain as "The Balkans" only in a poetic context. In everyday speech, The Balkans is just Stara Planina, or Old Mountain.
Traditional architecture and music, great food, and mystic landscapes: the Rhodope, the mountain range that covers a significant part of the south of Bulgaria, is cherished by nature lovers for many a reason. Its strange rock formations are one of them.
Made with stout beams and massive stone foundations, the houses smell of ageing wood and geraniums planted in old earthenware pots. The streets are made of cobbles.
Sadly, the old Rhodope villages are slowly disappearing. Some have been transformed beyond recognition by their inhabitants, who fancy new plastic window frames over wooden ones, and shiny roof tiles over stone slabs. Others are dying out, with their ageing and diminishing inhabitants leaving their abandoned houses to the mercy of the elements.
They are finally home: after flying thousands of kilometres from Africa, the storks have returned to Bulgaria, back to their old nests. Even more have passed through the country, on their way farther into Europe; according to the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds, about 75 percent of the storks on the continent arrive through Bulgaria.
Rural tourism in Bulgaria was barely known 20 years ago, but in the early 2000s it experienced an EU-funded boom.
But in the late 2000s the still ongoing economic crisis hit and now many guesthouses are struggling to survive with the decreased number of visitors. In the western fringes of the Rhodope, however, is a traditional village which is still one of the best places for rural tourism in Bulgaria.
How to define the source of a river is often a tough question to answer. Is it where water springs from the ground for the first time, or is it the place where two or more streams merge into a larger flow? Even the source of the Danube, Europe's largest river, is contentious: at least three springs claim to be the beginnings of the mighty river.
The name of Sinemorets, Bulgaria's last village on the southern Black Sea coast before Rezovo and the border with Turkey, is relatively new. It means "Blue Sea" and was given in 1934, as a replacement for the older name of the village, which was derived from the Greek galasios, or azure.
In the 19th Century, cartographer Guillaume Lejean discovered with amazement that the Bulgarian stretch of the Danube was less well known than the Nile. In 1933, Patrick Leigh Fermor described the Bulgarian bank as terra incognita "the least inviting country in Europe, except Albania." Were they right?
The north Bulgarian Black Sea coast is rich in places where wild nature still outdoes property development, but few places can compare to Yaylata.
Climate change is not just a modern concern, and the rock formation near the village of Stob, on the road to Rila Monastery, is evidence of this.