The road to Hell: A spinechilling Bulgarian road trip
I found the entrance to Hades in Bulgaria Angharad Salazar Llewellyn, 36, South London
Careering down a narrow road in rural Bulgaria, swerving to avoid potholes, we looked out at the wild, rugged Rhodope Mountains with a growing sense of unease. My friend Sabina and I had booked a week-long trip to travel across Bulgaria by car, exploring the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia, and Plovdiv, the second biggest city in the country. But here we were now, in the middle of nowhere, on a treacherously narrow mountain road with a sheer drop down one side, with just a paper map, written in the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet, to guide us.
‘Is it just me, or do you feel a bit…scared?’ I gulped to Sabina. And things were about to get much darker. You see, we were looking for the gateway to Hell!
Ancientlegend
Our destination was the Devil’s Throat Cave, a place shrouded in legend. According to ancient Greek myth, this is the exact place where the musician Orpheus, who sang and played so beautifully that even animals, rocks and trees danced to his tunes, entered the Underworld to beg for his wife Eurydice back from the terrible god of the Underworld, Hades.
The story goes that, heartbroken when his true love Eurydice was killed by a snake, Orpheus ventured down into the Underworld to charm Hades and his wife Persephone into giving Eurydice back to him by playing them music on his lyre.
Orpheus was such a talented musician that Hades and Persephone agreed to let him retrieve his wife from the Underworld, but with one condition - he must not look at her on the way out of the cave. They’d almost made it out of
Legend says Orpheus visited here
the cave when, convinced that he’d been tricked and that Eurydice was not following him, Orpheus made the fatal mistake of glancing over his shoulder. Poor Eurydice was trapped in the Underworld forever. With the help of our map, we eventually located the cave, positioned at the side of a small road with a few small gift shops nearby. We joined a guided tour and were led towards the entrance, said to resemble the Devil’s head. As we walked inside,
I gasped – then relaxed. I thought I’d seen the Devil – and I had – but just an etching of his head! Once inside, I turned to Sabina and mouthed, ‘Wow!’ The cave is a giant waterfall, with water from the Trigrad River pouring down the Devil’s ‘throat’ and crashing down 42 metres into the darkness below. The roar of the waterfall took my breath away. It’s so loud that the cavern below, a vast, eerie twilit chamber that could easily fit a two-storey building inside, is called The Hall of Thunder. Gingerly, Sabina and I clambered down the 300 rickety steps that led to the caverns below. It was a long way down, and terrifyingly slippery at times as we descended 500ft - retracing Orpheus’s steps into Hades. The eeriness doesn’t end there, either. As you continue into the darkness, scenes from the Greek myth are carved into the Hall of Thunder, giving it a surreal and truly hellish feel. The cave itself is a huge labyrinth. It’s a curious fact that anything that falls into its waters is lost within the underground river system forever. Nothing carried into the Devil’s Mouth Cave by the river ever surfaces from it on the other side. This includes two divers who tried to unsuccessfully map the cave system back in the ‘70s. Their long-dead bodies are still in there somewhere…
Nephelim’shaunt
No wonder people think this place is the gateway to the Underworld. It seemed entirely feasible to me that Hades and all sorts of evil spirits might be down there somewhere, in the labyrinth beneath my feet. The Nephelim – fallen angels, cast out from Heaven for having sex with mortals – are said to live there, too. I was relieved when we started making our way back up towards the light.
As we passed a bubbling spring of water nearby , the guide told us that it was said to have been created by Orpheus’ tears as Eurydice was taken back down to the Underworld. Apparently, it has healing powers – but by now, I was feeling thoroughly spooked.
We jumped back into the car and headed to the city of Devin. Checking in at the Persenk Hotel, Sabina and I wrapped up in luxurious, white towelling dressing gowns, gazed out from the balcony and indulged in a cocktail and glass of wine after our spooky experience.
Unlike Eurydice, we’d escaped the Underworld unscathed. Earlier, we’d been looking into the jaws of Hell – and now we were experiencing sheer heaven! Bliss!