Seven Rila Lakes

Worth a detour

The classic Bulgarian mountain day: a chairlift, then a climb past lakes named for their shapes — the Tear, the Eye, the Kidney — to a ridge where you can see all seven at once. Start early; by midday in summer the path is a queue. The lift shuts for maintenance on the last Monday of the month, which turns the outing into an unplanned 600-metre climb.

Story

Background

Seven cirque lakes sit on a staircase of rock steps between 2,095 and 2,535 metres, each named for what it looks like. The Tear is highest and smallest. Below it the Eye, almost circular and, at about thirty-seven metres, the deepest cirque lake in the country. Then the Kidney, the Twin, the Trefoil, Fish Lake, and the Lower Lake at the bottom of the flight. The water drains from one into the next.

The chairlift from the Pionerska station above Panichishte covers around six hundred metres of ascent in under twenty minutes and drops you by the Rilski Ezera hut. From there the standard circuit climbs to the viewpoint above the Tear, where all seven are visible at once, and comes back down the other side: about eight kilometres, 470 metres of climbing, five hours at an unhurried pace.

Two things shape the day more than the walking does. The first is the queue — on summer weekends the wait at the lower station is long in the morning and often worse coming down in the afternoon; and on the last Monday of every month the lift does not run at all, which makes those six hundred metres yours to walk. The second is 19 August, when the Universal White Brotherhood gathers on the broad ground beside the Kidney and dances paneurhythmy in a great circle at sunrise. It is worth seeing once, and it is the worst possible day to come for the quiet.