There are still places in the Balkans where the mountains feel almost untouched by time. Along the Vrashka Chuka to Kom trail, nature still sets the rhythm: the grass sometimes rises waist-high, juniper bushes swallow the path, and the views toward neighboring Serbia unfold into endless ridges of mountains. You can hike for hours without seeing another person. Just tracks left by deer and wild boar, an old dirt road once used by border guards, and the wind sweeping across the ridge.
It’s hard to believe this is Bulgaria. Harder still to imagine that, until recently, almost nobody was allowed to walk here.
For decades, this remote corner of northwestern Bulgaria lay along the Iron Curtain. The border with Serbia, then part of Yugoslavia, was tightly controlled, and the mountain trails were used mostly by armed patrols. After the fall of communism in 1989, the region slowly emptied out. Trails disappeared beneath brush. Shelters crumbled into ruins. One of Europe’s wildest mountain corridors—now part of the European Green Belt, a network of protected landscapes stretching along the former Iron Curtain—was nearly forgotten.
Until Ivaylo Markov decided to return to the beginning.
Ivaylo is a filmmaker—a director and cinematographer—but he’s also deeply rooted in the Torlak region of northwestern Bulgaria. His father comes from the village of Gorni Lom, his mother from Rakovitsa. Maybe that’s why he sees the Vrashka Chuka to Kom route as the missing first chapter of a much bigger story.
Because if Kom–Emine is Bulgaria’s legendary long-distance hike, this is its prequel.
The famous Kom–Emine trail crosses the entire Balkan Mountain range from west to east, ending at the Black Sea after roughly 370 miles. According to Ivaylo, though, the real beginning lies farther west, at Vrashka Chuka, the northwesternmost peak of the Balkan Mountains in Bulgaria. Adding this stretch extends the journey by another 80 miles. More days on foot. More wilderness. More silence.
Ivaylo founded the Torlakia Association and started almost from scratch. Together with volunteers, the group clears old border patrol paths, cuts through fallen trees, installs trail markers and signs, and restores abandoned shelters. Some days end knee-deep in mud with tea brewed on a camping stove beneath Mount Kopren. Other nights stretch into long conversations around a fire—about old Torlak dialect words, local history, and how you bring life back to a place most people have already written off.
But the trail is about more than hiking.
It’s an attempt to help northwestern Bulgaria shed its reputation as an abandoned corner of the country and reveal it instead as a place of staggering beauty, layered history, and enormous potential for adventure tourism. With support from volunteers, local municipalities, and partners including the America for Bulgaria Foundation, new water access points are being built along the route, shelters are being restored, and more overnight accommodations are planned.
In 2025, legendary Bulgarian mountain runner Kiril Nikolov, known as Disl, completed the route in under 24 hours. In 2026, the trail officially joins the Balkaniada mountain race series.
But the real magic of this place has nothing to do with competitions or records. It’s the feeling that you’re walking through somewhere genuinely untamed. No souvenir stands, no loud music, no lines for photos. Just mountains: raw, quiet, immense.
And the reminder that there are still places in the world where getting a little lost can help you find something important.
For trail information, route stages, volunteer initiatives, and logistical support, visit torlakia.bg/en/marshruta. Because trails like this don’t stay open on their own. Someone has to keep walking them.
