Those blazes petered out quickly and after about six hours of struggling up the valley side through thick forests, clutching at bushes and ferns, no trail to guide me through the patches of green sunlight and musky darkness I came to some huge rock surfaces among the trees. Giant guardians of stone battlements I had to claw my way up gripping the stone, wedging myself in the grey folds inching my way up and over into a world of sweeping vistas, swaying grass and wide open rockscape. Finally the blue shapes peaks curved on every horizon, the pretty square of the Monastery far below decorated the valley and on the other side a moonscape of red, grey and black greeted me in the orange fading light of dusk. I was far from any sign and could see no shelter, the clear blue lakes set amid wandering snowdrifts slowly lost their color as the light faded and turned to black mirrors showing the ever bluer sky deepening, clear and holy to me. In the distance I saw some rock piles, Bulgarian “chortens” amid the lakes, I ran down the mountainside over hours as the winds appeared, sweeping invisible demons of rattling air kissing me with cold lips through the fabric of my clothes following one rock pile to another until yellow and white poles appeared and the sound of rushing underground rivers roared into earshot, waterfalls shining in the moonlight as a broad white mirror rose over the looming black shapes rimming the valley.

I finally saw the lights of a mountain hut glimmering on the blanket of braided green and silver on the high valley floor and began to see trail markers again as I rounded the rocks snaking my way towards a cold room and many bowls of hot bland lentil soup and stale bread I ate with the cheap sausage I brought along (which I had to throw away when almost a whole hairy eyelid emerged from its red and fat-spotted insides). The next day I woke to the sound of nearly one hundred sports university students from Sofia having tea at the hut on their way to climb the peak I had descended from last night. In the wake of their passing I again shot up the side of this valley cutting straight across as the crow flies to where I had seen the seven lakes region marked as two valleys over.

The valleys turned out to be very deep and the way down steep and loose, I surprised many herds of wild mountain sheep and deer on the way, their strong buttocks shown to me as they bounded away disturbed from my rock-dislodging descents (in retrospect this was very un-ecological!) and I headed up the sheer wall of the other valley side after undressing to ford a deep freezing but mercifully narrow river. On the way I found my self going through many small side valleys and seeing many small shining lakes of glacial meltwater with its peculiar blueness I don’t remember seeing on any map and finally reached the high signposted ridge overlooking some of the seven lakes and the fantastic landscape surrounding them, half uplifted tables of shaggy green contrasting with abrupt jagged peaks – the perfect bezel for seven shining blue lakes which each seemed to glow brightly with some inner light. I practically ran down to the first of these lakes and discovered two girls sunning themselves there by a rock, boots on and they smiled at me. I stopped spoke with them. “Do you speak English?, Spanski?” in a combination of English and Spanish (one of the girls believed she was a re-incarnated Andean Indian and thus had tried to learn Spanish – hmmm) and asked if they could watch my clothes for a minute. I stripped down and in a discrete corner of the lake swam for three minutes gasping because of the cold and thankful for this lake and the chance to at least rinse the sweat from my body. The girls showed me to the mountain hut nearby and told me about the place.