A globetrotter at heart, since she was a little girl Elena Koleva has dreamt of exotic lands and little-known places of beauty in Bulgaria. She was only 4 when she learnt to read. That was when she found, in her granddad’s library, a book called Atlas of the world. “I would spend hours leafing through it. I would picture the outlines of continents and countries in my mind, I was absolutely mesmerized by the strange names and would imagine what it was like to be there,” Elena Koleva says in an interview with Radio Bulgaria’s Miglena Ivanova. When she got a little older, Elena made up her mind to make her dreams come true and to travel the world. But as she found out, when one dream comes true, it paves the way for the next dream. So, she created her blog in which she posts fascinating stories from her travels and provides tourists with the information they need about the places she has been to – in Bulgarian, English and Spanish – of course, with lots of superb photos capable of whetting the appetite for travel of even inveterate homebodies.  

“The important thing is to take pictures of the moment and the emotion,” Elena says when asked about her photographic skills. During the past year alone, she has been to different countries in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa, has flown over the giant marine sinkhole called the Great Blue Hole off the coast of Belize and over the Nazca desert in Peru, and has traveled to two deserts and two jungles.

Her dream now is to travel the whole of South America with a rucksack and a camera, and to set foot in New Zealand and the Faroe Islands. And though she has seen so many of the world’s marvels she believes the most exciting of all journeys is the one that lies ahead. But the world is full of all sorts of things, Elena says, and in her travels she has seen things which have made her said:

“I’ll give you an example with something that happened just recently in Guatemala. We went to see an awesome waterfall in the jungle, where the water is hot but the river itself has cold water (the Aguas Calientes Waterfalls). It was in the middle of the forest. On our way there we saw a group of children – half-naked, unwashed, but with a smile on their faces. I talked to them for a bit – I asked them their names, their age, and then we continued on our way. But on our way back from the waterfall I saw the same group of children – they were balancing bags full of wood on their heads. I still get the goosebumps when I think about it, it is a picture I will carry with me always.”

Her travels to different continents, her encounters with places known and unknown have led Elena Koleva to love and appreciate the wealth of the Bulgarian lands all the more. On weekends, when she has the time, she makes her escape from Sofia to traverse Bulgaria.

“Every nook and corner is magnificent in its own way,” she says. Asked which places she would recommend to foreign travelers, she says:

“We have magnificent nature and so many beautiful places we can be proud of. Maybe I would take them to see some lesser known villages in the Rhodopes, like Mugla, Manastir, Kosovo. I love the views towards Iskar Gorge. That too is a wonderful part of the country, not so popular tourist-wise. There are some magnificent places along the Black Sea coastline as well, with secluded beaches but, to be honest, I prefer not to reveal their whereabouts.”

Translated from the Bulgarian and posted by Milena Daynova

Photos: Elena Koleva