Heading south from Sofia, the first town in the Struma Valley of any significance is DUPNITSA , which is still known to some locals by its Communist-era name Stanke Dimitrov (Stanketo for short). Its only real claim to fame is its tobacco industry: every year some eight million kilos of the stuff passes through Dupnitsa's warehouses and processing plants, the river is tinted a nicotine yellow, and you can see huge quantities of tobacco growing, or spread out to dry, throughout the surrounding countryside. However, the only reason for travellers to come here is to catch a bus to more appealing destinations - notably Rila Monastery.

If you have an hour to kill, there are a couple of monuments worth a look. Just off the modernized main square is a sixteenth-century mosque , whose simple domed structure has an elegance that displays Ottoman architecture's debt to Byzantine church building; it currently houses a bookshop. Behind it is the Okoliiskata kâshta , a house of the same period that once served as the konak of the Ottoman governor, and is now a small art gallery.

A more exciting prospect is to follow some of the hiking trails into the Rila Mountains, that begin a few kilometres southeast of town at the village of BISTRITSA . From here, you can follow a path to the Otovitsa hut, with the shortest most southerly route leading to the Byal Kladenets hut. About seven hours' walk from Bistritsa another lodge, Ivan Vazov , is well placed for various hikes - for example to Mt Damga (1hr 30min), the Seven Lakes (2hr 30min) or Mt Malyovitsa (6hr 30min). The altitude up here is well over 1524m, so make sure you ask about current weather conditions and travel properly equipped.