Kukeri Pagan Festival
Monday, March 5th, 2007 at 2:04 pm 
boo!, originally uploaded by garthwalker.
This weekend a group of 6 friends piled into a rented van and headed for Shiroka Laka, a village in the southern Rhodope mountains of Bulgaria. The occasion was the annual Kukeri festival which draws large crowds to see the costumed beasts chase and assault them. It is a uniquely Bulgarian festival with roots as a spring planting and fertility rite.
We slept the night in the relatively nearby village of Momchilovitsi, and our second day in Shiroku Laka brought us boisterous crowds folk dancing (Horo) in the village center with a energetic band and singers playing National Music. A few of us joined in for a bit, but after tiring retreated to the sidelines to watch the spectacle with beer and snacks.
