Bulgaria: Batak Town and Cycling the Kartela Pass
Batak town is about 11 km from Eco Camping Batak, at the bottom of a long steep hill. The central square has an ATM next to a large café, as well as a history museum featuring the anti-Ottoman Uprising of April 1876, which began in this area. There is also an ethnographical museum and a café offering pizza and burgers (and better coffee). Young storks clappered their bills in a pair of untidy nests atop the large Orthodox Church, lovingly kept and open to visit, tended by a friendly woman of the parish. The older walled church of St Nedelya was also freely open. In its bare interior, information boards, bullet holes and cases of skulls and bones attest to the Turkish massacre of thousands of the local Orthodox Bulgarians, including the women and children who took refuge in the church in May 1876. Click here for more grizzly details, but not for the faint-hearted.
Click here for more information and our review of Eco Camping Batak and here for our photographs of that campsite.
Click here for more information and our review of Eco Camping Batak and here for our photographs of that campsite.