TRAVEL

Bulgaria, sadly, is small enough to provide any true dark sky location like Norway, Scotland or the American Southwest. Wherever you travel in the Bulgarian mountains or along the Black Sea coast you will never be sufficiently removed from a city or town to be able to see all of the stars twinkling in a genuinely "black" sky. However, with a bit of research you will be able to at least observe the seasonal meteorite showers over the northern hemisphere. And with the right approach you will capture fantastic images that will stun friends and families back home.

Bridges are both feats of engineering and important gateways, and as such they have always attracted the human imagination. Since times immemorial, legends have been told of how the construction of a particular bridge is to be attributed to the Devil, or that evil spirits lived in it.

In the Balkans, there is a different legend about some old bridges such as those at Acra in Greece and on the Drina in Višegrad, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It attributes their durability and strength to a human sacrifice that the master builder had to make.

Since the construction of a cable car to Seven Rila Lakes, visiting one of Rila's most beautiful locations at an altitude between 2,095 and 2,535 m is easy. Hundreds of trekkers and casual tourists do it on a daily basis. However, the people who gather at one of the lakes on 19 August are are not tourists.

Dressed in white, they perform a strange circular dance on the green meadow, under the blue sky. They are the Universal White Brotherhood, Bulgaria's best-known esoteric teaching.

Going on your summer vacation to Greece? Returning from the Aegean? Whatever brings you to the southwest of Bulgaria, do take the time to divert from the main road and head to Teshovo.

To say that Teshovo is an out-of-the-way, off-off-off-the-beaten-track destination would be an understatement. Tucked into the hills south of Gotse Delchev, a mile at most from the border with Greece, it is an end-of-the-road settlement. It is now quiet and severely depopulated, though in the Communist period it sported a shoe factory.

Dividing Bulgaria into two almost identical chunks, the Stara Planina mountain range, sometimes referred to as the Balkan, has influenced this nation's life and history for many centuries. The massive land barrier protects Bulgaria's south from northerly winds. In the Middle Ages, it separated Bulgarians from their main enemy to the south, Byzantium, and consequently all the major capitals were located north: Pliska, Preslav, Tarnovo.

The statues that adorn Bulgarian squares, streets and historical sites represent this nation's modern history in miniature, but not always in the way their creators intended. Monuments built in 1878-1944 are elegant and relatively small in scale, in the best traditions of realism. Communism was the time of gigantic monstrosities of exposed concrete and steel that tended to symbolise the Communist Party's grip over society rather than evoke patriotic feelings. In the 1990s, few monuments were erected in Bulgaria: times were hard, and there was no money to spend on basics, let alone statues.

In a dismal present with little hope of a bright future, Bulgarians are increasingly searching for solace in their nation's glorious past.

Both mediaeval military might and the 19th century National Revival Period have been the darlings of the nation in the past few years. Reenactments of historical battles take place by the over-restored ruins of ancient forts, traditional peasant costumes are now de rigueur at weddings and proms, and the Horo is danced at every imaginable and unimaginable location and time.

In 1949, when hundreds of young Bulgarians enthusiastically built Dimitrovgrad, an entire town that would supposedly epitomise the triumph of Communism in their country, a 19-year-old man joined them. He was Penyo Penev. Born in the village of Dobromirka, near Sevlievo, he was one of the thousands of Brigadiri, or young "volunteers" working on Communist infrastructure projects, and was attracted by the idea of building Dimitrovgrad, the "City of Dreams."

Religion has been with humans since the dawn of Homo Sapiens, an evolutionary trait that appeared with the emergence of developed brains and language, tool use, morality and group living. Gods and deities changed, of course, through the millennia, constantly appearing and disappearing, transforming, adapting and beating the competition.

The constant change of gods and deities does not mean that sacred places changed with the same pace. A single place can be sacred to different faiths.

Overgrown remains of forts and temples, mysterious rock shrines: Bulgaria's historical heritage often makes you feel like an explorer. Long forgotten and known only to die-hard history enthusiasts, they bear witness to the vibrant communities that created them millennia ago.

Asara, near the village of Angel Voyvoda in the southeast of the country, is one of these.