Leaving Popovets

July 14, 2022

Frank taking a group selfie with a family under grapevines in Popovets, Bulgaria — Last breakfast at the Trakiya guesthouse, with a family from France and their hosts.

Day fifty-eight, Bulgaria. Goodbye to Anil and to the Bakalnitsa Trakiya, my guest house in Popovets. At breakfast I make friends with a couple from France. I will miss this place and the plain way of living out here.

But I have things to solve. This journey is mostly an inward one, and inside me there are beliefs at work that I want out.

And there is time. I still have some, but the winter is coming, and from October it starts getting cold in Tibet, which does not make Kailash any easier to reach. Besides, the countries that will actually test me are next. Turkey. Iran. India.

So: on. I leave the village. On the way to the next place I go with the French family to see an old ruined city nearby.

Village street in Popovets, Bulgaria, with a white pickup, a trailer and people on a bench in the shade — Simple life in Popovets mostly takes place in the shade.

Guest room at Bakalnitsa Trakiya in Popovets with iron beds, a dark wardrobe and a crocheted tablecloth — My room on the day I left, the towel still over the chair.

Wooden gate and picket fence with flowering trumpet vine, an old platform scale in front, in Popovets — One last look at Popovets: a scale, a gate and a lot of summer.