The Bagpipe Society

A Bulgarian Bagpipe Expedition

It all started with the fact that I had a gaida to pick up. But things got out of hand, and before I knew it I had packed up my van and was off down the autobahn heading for Plovdiv.

My first stop was high up in the Rhodope mountains at Gela, birthplace of Orpheus and site of the great gaida festival on Ilinden - St Elijah's Day. It's a spectacular site - a huge amphitheatre of meadow in the middle of the mountains - and was already filling up with cars and campervans the day before the festival officially started. Whole pigs were already roasting on spits at the open-air restaurants (any Bulgarian festival worth its salt turns over at least 20 pigs a day) and a little boy was running up and down with his toy gaida, making bagpipe noises (at least, I suppose they were meant to be bagpipe noises).

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