Anyone who is even remotely interested in looking at the world from the window of a car will instantly know that driving through Bulgaria's lesser and off-the-beaten track roads is absolutely the best way to take in the natural and cultural beauties of this country and to experience a first-hand interaction with its people. Notwithstanding the pitfalls – these include, but are not limited to, bad or non-existent asphalt, unpredictable and uncared-for potholes, confusing signage, maniacal drivers and traffic cops that contribute to the problems rather than try to solve them – driving in Bulgaria is in actual fact a lot calmer than driving in southern Italy, or in Paris. In the previous issue of Bulgaria's English Monthly we offered you a selection of Best-of scenic drives – and we got overwhelming response from readers. Here we go with Part 2, guaranteed to prevent you from falling asleep at the wheel (pun unintended) for weeks if not months. Please note that all of these drives will be on roads (no off-road experiences involved). All of them are easy to moderate, but will obviously require good driving skills and a bit of common sense. Happy exploring!

Sinchets-Dzhebel 

Road 5082

Sinchets is a tiny hamlet in the heart of the Rhodope and Dzhebel is a small town at the foot of a Rhodope hill, but the road connecting them is a pure pleasure to drive. 

Go there in spring and everything around you will be in full blossom. This is a territory of Bulgaria populated mainly by ethnic Turks. Consequently, some elderly folk may be unable to speak Bulgarian, so asking for directions will be met with bewilderment. Take in the numerous mosques of various sizes, sometimes perched on incredibly picturesque hills. Stop for a picnic at one of the several lay-bys.

Rusenski Lom 

Road 501

Few Bulgarians can imagine that the Danubian Plain, which is mainly flat, holds such a cliffy gorge as the one along the River Lom, just a few miles out of the major town of Ruse.

Once you've entered the village of Shtraklevo, where there is a disused airport, continue along Road 22 until Nisovo, a non-decrepit village surround by huge cliffs. There isn't much to see inside the village, but you can go for wine tasting at the local winery. What will justify your stopover at Nisovo is the old cemetery. It may be hard to find as few locals will be able to give you proper directions, but its highly unusual headstones, dating back probably to the 16th or 17th centuries, have spurred the imagination of many. At one point a notorious Bulgarian archaeologist even pronounced the graveyard as belonging to... the Knight Templars. The truth is a lot more mundane. This is where the victims of a plague epidemic were buried.

Further on along Road 202 you will get to the village of Cherven. A magnificent and well-preserved Medieval fort sits perched on top of a hill over the village. Take in its remaining tower. Distinctly regal, it was used as the prototype of the famous Baldwin Tower at Tsarevets, in Veliko Tarnovo, when it was erected in the 1930s.

On Road 501 you will end up in the village of Ivanovo. This is one of the few places in Bulgaria where there is a cluster of rock churches, replete with naivist but sometimes surreal clerical frescoes. Park and walk up the path to enter a couple of them. The artwork is mesmerising, especially as you picture in your head the bearded Medieval monks who spent years carving the rock and painting it.

Balgarevo-Shabla 

Road 901

In the 2000s Kavarna, where this drive starts, used to be known as Bulgaria's Capital of Rock-and-Roll, owing to an enthusiastic mayor who brought over local and Western groups for open-air concerts. A change of local leadership brought this to an end, and now Kavarna is back to its dusty and uninteresting normal. A couple of miles northeast of town, however, the fun begins.

Your first stop is the village of Balgarevo, which is not very interesting, but which is the home of the Bulgarian Gagauz, an obscure minority of ethnic Turks who've adopted... Orthodox Christianity. Some of the older Gagauz still speak Turkish.

A deviation east of Balgarevo will lead you to Cape Kaliakra, a major attraction as its huge reddish cliffs fall a few hundred feet into the Black Sea. On the tip of the cape you can walk through the gates of an ancient fort, parts of which still remain. Look back to the mainland and you will see some of the most iconic sites of the northern Black Sea coast: a bay entirely formed of precipitous cliffs.

There are just three villages on Road 901, the most interesting of which is Kamen Bryag. Detour, and you will end up at the trailhead of a path going through a plateau called Yaylata. A recently built Late Antiquity fort on it is an eyesore, but if you visit in early May you will see hundreds if not thousands of wild peonies growing by the calm waters of the Black Sea. There are a couple of interesting caves to explore in what is thought of as one of the last continental stretches of the great Eurasian steppe.

Further up north you will pass by the village of Tyulenovo. The name is suggestive – in Bulgarian it means the Village of Seals – but actual seals have not been seen around since at least the 1950s.

What happened at approximately the same time is the Communist government discovered what it thought was a significant oil field just by the road. It built the infrastructure and it started extracting oil, but the fields soon ran dry and the oil turned out to be substandard. Bulgaria never became a new Kuwait, but you can see bits and pieces of industrial archaeology as you progress north along the road.

At one point after Tyulenovo you will see... a lighthouse emerging right in the middle of the road. This is of course an optical illusion as no one would build a lighthouse in the middle of a road. The lighthouse itself is interesting. It was erected by a French company in the 1850s when Bulgaria was still a part of the Ottoman Empire, in an effort by the High Porte to modernise its realm. You can go up right to the lighthouse but you cannot enter as the guard is under orders to tell you this is a top-secret military territory. Look carefully at the wall, and you will see the telltale personal signature of the sultan still preserved on it. So much for military secrecy.

Shipka Pass 

Road 5

For you this may be yet another Bulgarian mountain pass, but for every Bulgarian schoolboy Shipka evokes a famous poem by Ivan Vazov which describes the fierce battles between Russian Imperial forces, joined by Bulgarian volunteers, and the Ottoman Army, in 1877.  The Russians won, paving the way to victory in the 1877-1878 war, one of the results of which was Bulgaria's independence.

At the southern trailhead of the pass, in the village of Shipka north of Kazanlak, there sits the magnificent Russian Church erected to commemorate the fallen Russians. It was built in the early 20th century and was run by Russian emigres, but ownership was transferred to the USSR after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. In the 1930s Stalin granted the ownership rights to the Kingdom of Bulgaria on condition that... no Russian emigres would be included in its governing board.

What lies ahead of you is a winding road gaining about 5,000 feet in elevation all the way to the ridge of the Stara Planina. From there there is a side daytime-only road that can take you up to the very top. 360-degree panorama views will leave you stunned. On top of the hill there is a huge stone monument to commemorate the Shipka battle, and on the lower slopes you can see numerous Russian monuments and weapons left over from the heady days of 1877.

East of Shipka Peak you will note a bizarre man-made construction perched on a hill. It resembles... a flying saucer. This is the remains of  one of Communism's best-known follies, a Party House that was constructed in the early 1980s and that was supposed to celebrate the triumph of Communism in Bulgaria. It has long been abandoned and is now in danger of caving in. Colloquially, it is known as, well, the Flying Saucer.

Trigrad-Yagodina 

Road 197 to Yagodina, unnamed road to Trigrad

The Trigrad-Yagodina drive will take you through some of Bulgaria's most dramatic scenery, including the Gorge of Trigrad and the Buynovsko Gorge. Precipitous cliffs, whitewater rivers, waterfalls and pristine nature, several major caves will evoke nothing lesser than Yosemite.

The narrowest point of Buynovsko Gorge is known as Wolf's Jump

One of the most important caves in the region is called the Devil's Throat. It is replete with a river that gushes into a huge black hole resembling a throat, and its enormous underground galleries stupefy. The site is so enchanting that a local legend tells Orpheus descended  through it into the underworld to seek his beloved Eurydice.

The Yagodina Cave, next to Yagodina, is thought of as Bulgaria's perhaps most beautiful. It was inhabited by prehistoric men.

Devil's Throat Cave

What the wild Rhododendron is to Strandzha, so is the Haberlea to the Rhodope. Because it has no equivalent anywhere else in Europe, it does not even have an English name. The tiny flower, in bloom in May-June, is known for its extreme ability to survive. Dried-up flowers are known to have started growing again after a few years' time the moment they are put in water. Locally it is known as the Tears of Orpheus, but some people name it the Immortal Flower.

When night is about to fall, the whole experience of driving through these gorges on a road that can hardly make space for two vehicles to pass will assume otherworldly, perhaps sinister dimensions.