The Seven Rila Lakes and Rila Monastery

This tour is with an intensive hiking & sightseeing program, which shows you the best of the natural and cultural merits of the Rila Mountains: Rila Monastery (UNESCO) and the Cirque of The Seven Rila Lakes. The program doesn’t allow much free time on either site, but it is quite enough to explore both places.

The tour begins with an early transfer to the Rila Mountains, followed by a brief cable car ride to the Seven Rila Lakes Cirque. The glacier lakes are between 2100 and 2500m/6800 and 8200ft above sea level, with a name fitting their shapes, like Babreka (the Kidney), Okoto (the Eye), and Salzata (the Teardrop). As we need to follow a strict time schedule depending on your fitness we can either walk the whole trek around all lakes or make the stroll shorter and skip some of them (normally the two highest ones).

After hiking around one of Rila’s most remarkable and beautiful parts, we are transferred to the Rila Monastery: the largest and most significant Bulgarian Orthodox Church establishment. The 20m/70ft high walls shelter impressive cloisters, a church, and a chapel with unique murals and a museum collection.

Languages

Audioguide available in English, Spanish, Italian, French, German or Russian.