04-Aug-2003 -- We were resting at Troyan Balkan. At 8am we headed towards the confluence.

Its really interesting the logic of people that make roads between populated areas. In this part of the world in order to get to a particular part, you have to make a lot of efforts. After 4 hours of traveling from Apriltsi to Elena, we are finally at about 3km straight line from the confluence. We have to reach Debeli Rat village. Its a piece of cake – a piece of cake?!? The road to the turn for the village was winding for the next 12km. The problem was that we ran to a moskvich (an old car), which refused to let us go in front of him. You should know, that in Bulgaria, very often people who drive moskvich, do not pay attention at lights signals, sound signals, shouting, etc., the only thing that grabs their attention is the censure words towards the names of their aunts. Then they stop, get out of their car and while they go to the trunk to get some instrument – that’s your chance to get in front of them! Finally we made it to the turn for Debeli Rat village.

Unfortunately, the road was no longer with good road coverage. With every other turn, in front of us was a beautiful view, which has stopped not only our breath, but also our vehicle. We entered a village with approximately 20 houses. All of them with specific architecture, dating two centuries ago. Can you imagine our surprise, when we reached the village and on the table it was written - Tanki Rat village. It turned out, that somewhere, somehow we`ve missed the turn. But as a big specialists with GPS, we've found out that the confluence was in the middle between the two villages.

After two hours of wandering through the steep slopes of the Balkan, covered with elm trees, through which there was a slight satellite signal, we`ve finally made it to the confluence. Its interesting that in about 300m from it, a fox family live. Our dog was pretty sad he wasn't born a hunting dog!