Kotel is a mountain town in the eastern Balkan range, set in a hollow between forested ridges, and it has produced more famous Bulgarians than a place of its size has any right to. During the National Revival, its merchants and sheep breeders grew rich trading across the Ottoman Empire, and their sons became writers, teachers and revolutionaries. Sofroniy Vrachanski, one of the first great Bulgarian writers, was born here, and so was Georgi Rakovski, the founder of the organised revolutionary movement, whose name the town's museum carries. The old Galata quarter, with its dark wooden houses and narrow lanes, survived a great fire in the nineteenth century and gives a sense of how the town once looked.
Kotel is also famous for its carpets. The local kilims, flat-woven rugs with bold geometric patterns in red, black, blue and green, are among the best known in Bulgaria, and the craft is still practised, with a school and a museum dedicated to it. The surrounding mountains are karst country, with caves and springs, and the town's natural history museum has displays on the local wildlife and geology. Nearby, the village of Zheravna is one of the best preserved Revival villages in the country, with wooden houses, cobbled streets and a museum in the home of the writer Yordan Yovkov.
The riding around Kotel is a delight. The road south to Sliven climbs out of the town and crosses the mountains through forest and meadows, with a good set of curves and views over the ridges before dropping to the plain. The road north toward Varbitsa and Omurtag runs through valleys and over the passes of the eastern Balkan range, with forests, villages and little traffic. Smaller roads lead to Zheravna and other villages, narrow and winding. Asphalt quality changes village by village, and cows treat the verge and the lane as one pasture.
Kotel has a filling station, shops and a handful of taverns, which makes it the obvious place to fill up before the mountain roads. The town has a quiet, slightly old-fashioned atmosphere, and a stroll through the Galata quarter is a pleasant way to stretch out after a few hours on the bike. Sliven, about twenty-four kilometres to the south, is the nearest large town, with more services. The mountains are cool in summer and can be snowy in winter.