Ivan Vazov and the Gorge

van Vazov was among the first passengers on the line through the Gorge (March 1897). Vazov visited Lakatnik four times, usually with friends. He went for a walk through the rocks, entered the Temnata Dupka cave, and went to the village of Lakatnik. The beautiful views unfolding before him astonished him. He kept travel notes, sparing no superlatives for the previously unknown areas. He published his enthusiastic impressions in the travelogue " Iskar Gorge " - in the newspaper "Mir", year III, issue 372 of 6.4.1897. He explained that the travelogue was "Travel notes on the Sofia-Roman railroad".

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  Vazov shared that when the train stoped at the “Lakatnik” station, a wonderful sight opened before his eyes. The railway station was then located opposite the Temnata Dupka cave, under the current old school. The note is titled “Milkova Livada”/At that time, the village of Gara Lakatnik did not exist. The area was called Milkova Livada, and the stop on the railway line was “Lakatnik Station”. The village of Lakatnik itself was 8 km up the mountain/. Here is a quote from the travelogue:
  “Wonderful rocks from the north. On their incredibly steep peaks stand solitary stones in the shape of sphinxes, idols, pagodas, strange towers. I imagine that I am traveling through the Inn Valley, in the Tyrolean Alps. The Giant Wall is wonderful. The eye cannot stop looking at this play of nature! Go, gentlemen, and look at the rocks at Milkova Livada”. Vazov was impressed by the Gorge and, in addition to his travelogue "Iskar Gorge", he used it many times in the following years as a theme or as a background in his stories and poems. The most famous stories he wrote in the Gorge are “Grandfather Yotso Looks” and “A Bulgarian Woman”.
  “Iskar river! It has drawn a whole poem of wonderful landscapes, beautiful and mysterious valleys from the solitudes of the Stara Planina (The Balkan Range).” Ivan Vazov came to the Cherepish Monastery in 1899. He rode a horse into the Vratchanski Balkan, led by Tsene Koikin from Lyutibrod, to see the burial place of Hristo Botev. In 1907, Vazov visited the monastery again and spent several days in the area. Now in the Cherepish Monastery has a museum corner dedicated to the patriarch of Bulgarian literature. Already in his advanced age, on a doctor’s prescription, Ivan Vazov spent about twenty days in the fresh air in the Gorge in two consecutive summers (1918 and 1919). He stayed in one of the neighborhoods of Bov – Kosushtitsa. The house in which he was accommodated (owned by Ivan Danchov) is called by the locals “Vazov’s house". There the writer rested, took walks, alone and with a guide, thr