ABSTRACT
To travel by bus from Sofia to Karlovo, in the centre of Bulgaria's famous Rose Valley on the sunny side of the Balkan mountains, would yesterday have seemed as fantastic as to find omnibuses running “from the Bank to Mandalay”, But that was yesterday, To-day you may step in a motor-coach in Sofia at 9 a.m., travel for eight hours through remotest Bulgaria, crossing two mountain ranges on the way, and by five o'clock in the evening be deposited, shaken but triumphant, in Karlovo, the capital of the kingdom of roses, where the very air is scented with the all-pervading essence which is Bulgaria's most famous crop.
