Shiroka Laka is what a Rhodope village looks like when someone has decided not to knock it down. Tall stone houses with whitewashed upper floors and overhanging wooden balconies stack up the hillside above a small river, joined by lanes of cobbles that are steep enough to test a pair of motorcycle boots. The roofs are of heavy stone slabs, the walls are thick, and the whole village has been declared an architectural reserve, so the character of the place has been preserved with unusual care.
The village stands about ten kilometres from Chepelare in the central Rhodopes, a region of dark forest, deep valleys and high pasture that has been home to shepherds, charcoal burners and woodcutters for centuries. Shiroka Laka is best known for its music. Folk song and the gadulka and the gaida, the Rhodope bagpipe, have long been part of life here, and the village houses a school of folk arts where young musicians learn the old repertoire. If you walk along the main street on a summer evening, you may hear someone practising, and the sound carries a long way in the stillness.
The village is also famous for its kukeri, the masked dancers who appear at the start of spring to drive away evil spirits. Dressed in shaggy costumes with huge bells at the waist and elaborate masks, they leap and stamp through the streets on the Sunday and Monday before Lent. The Rhodope festival, called Pesponedelnik, has been held here for decades, and draws visitors from all over Bulgaria. It is a loud, colourful and slightly alarming spectacle, and a reminder that pagan customs run deep in the Balkan countryside.
The ride up the Chepelare valley from Bachkovo is one of the finest in Bulgaria, a sequence of flowing bends beside the river, climbing slowly through forest of beech, spruce and pine. The road surface is mostly good, but can be patchy after the winter, and trucks carry timber on the main road, so overtake with care. The air is cool and resinous, and in autumn the leaves turn bright gold and red.
The village is small and does not have fuel. Chepelare, about ten kilometres away, is the nearest sizeable town and has stations, shops and cafes. Locally you can eat well, with a few family restaurants serving bean soup, grilled meat and a thick yoghurt that tastes of the pasture, and prices that will make you wonder what everyone else is charging.