Sideways

Yesterday we had to travel to the near city and that was a great opportunity to admire Rila mountains from a farther point of view and to pass by some pretty sideways along the road. Our middle destination was Plana mountain, it is a low one, however it offers a spectacular view of Rila and Vitosha mountains. As Monday is for the mountains here on Steemit (#mountainmonday), I hope you like my Bulgarian mountain conributions :)

One alternative way for me to enjoy the mountain glory, besides being there, is one of the roads between Samokov and Sofia. For most of its length you can see jaw dropping landscapes and without counting I am sure I know at least 20 very pretty sideways around it, so it is always worth it to have a lot more time for this only 1 hour long trip.

I have two very nice books called "101 sideways" (in Bulgaria), from the first one I have already visited most of them in the area, but in the second there were some places that I didn't know about.

As I learned from the book, this little chapel in Plana mountain with a tree near it more than a hundred years old, is a favorite place of photographers as it is located on a very large open meadow with a perfect view of Vitosha and it is a great place for watching sunsets and sunrises. As a sunrises/sunsets chaser that information was very valuable for me, so I hope I'll return soon there to contemplate one.

Only a couple kilometers away in the same village (Plana) with an amazing location is the only stupa in Bulgaria (a sacred place for Buddists). It creates a very interesting result of mixture of cultures and if you can forget for a moment where you are, especially with the dancing because of the strong wind himalayan flags around the stupa and the view that immediately makes you stop talking and just looking, you can feel like you're in Tibet.

While we were coming back using another road without any view the sky suddenly became red and we had to quickly find a higher place to see what exactly was going on. We were a little bit late for the show, but still it was great.

Do you see the ski
pistes? There are some lights below them - this is the town where I live. Yesterday was a Bulgarian holiday about forgiveness, so we had a big ritual fire for banishing winter demons, so that was the last sideway for the day :)