Dublin to Sofia – Into the Heart of the Journey

I set out on a journey that would stitch together two of my enduring passions: the long, slow, night-bound rhythm of train travel and the raw, untamed beauty of mountain trekking in places where life still clings to tradition. This route, from the Balkans to the Caucasus, promised both — steel rails by night, high ridgelines by day — and the chance to meet people whose stories are carved into the landscapes they inhabit.

The plan was simple enough: leave Dublin in the evening and arrive in Sofia before the day was spent. Yet travel rarely keeps to script. By the time I stepped off the plane, Sofia’s clock was already deep into tomorrow — seventy minutes past schedule and well into the small hours of 3 August. The city greeted me with a hush, its streets lit by amber lamps, its Orthodox domes brooding under a sky still warm with summer.

A taxi carried me through the silent avenues, past Soviet blocks and quiet cafés where chairs stood stacked like tired sentinels. At last, I reached Agora’ Boutique, a small refuge on Uzundzhovska Street. Its doorway glowed like a beacon, promising rest before the road — or rail — began in earnest.

This was merely the prologue, the overture to something far greater. From Sofia, the journey stretches eastward: the legendary Balkan Express, the sleek Turkish high-speed trains, the languid Dogu Express winding through Anatolia, and finally the rugged trails of Georgia. There, among medieval stone towers and glacial rivers, I will walk for days through the Svaneti, sharing bread and wine in family-run homestays, listening to stories as old as the mountains themselves.

It is a path for those who believe the world is best discovered at its margins, where borders are porous and maps begin to blur. And it begins here, on a quiet night in Sofia, with the promise of rails and ridgelines ahead.