After the fiery summer of ’25 a new camp location had to be found. Clearly, my father couldn’t risk his camp to become a collateral victim of what increasingly looked like a village war of attrition between the fishermen of Stanevo and ‘alien’ intruders. The bone of contention were the fishing resources around Km 727. Putting on fire enemy sensitive assets seemed to be the main weapon of the conflict. To date, a total of 80 acres of industrial vineyard had been destroyed, together with related infrastructure. The vineyard was the only source of employment for the run-down village and that was a well-aimed blow. On the side of the adversary, their new cabin now lay in ruins and their ambition to establish themselves at the location was cut in the bud.
Accepting with understandable bitterness the state of affairs, my father’s team of jackal researchers set out to find a location for a new round of bait-site studies. The silver lining to this dark cloud was that a new location and a hopeful contact with a new jackal family would serve to check the hitherto stated argument. Namely, that it is the whole family who help the Mother in rearing the cubs, as also that there could be an ‘old bachelor’ individual who stays on with the family in the role of an ‘uncle’.
Besides my father, the team consisted of long-time supporter and co-author Prof. Nikolai (Niki) Spassov of the National Natural History Museum, and Dr. Blago Koytchev, expert in Forest Ecology and Bulgarian Mountain wolves.
The original plan for the exploratory trip had been to canoe down the river, starting from the beginning of the Bulgarian part of the Danube at the land border with Serbia, and paddle downriver until a favourable location was found, near or far. But then it turned out that Niki Spassov had good friends in the village of Vrav, 30 km to the north of the port city of Vidin. Friends of Niki’s since secondary school days, they were enthusiastic about hosting the planned jackal-research activities of the team and extended warm welcome for the group to visit at first opportunity. As seen in a satellite photo from GoogleEarth, below, Vrav was very close to the beginning of the Bulgarian part of the river.
The journey began in the early morning of 8 July in a Soviet GAZ jeep - a true Cold War relic. Blago had brought it to life after finding it in an Army car-cemetery somewhere, and it performed quite convincingly. The only snag (as my father put it) was that the engine would die down in neutral gear and had to be revived every time forward propulsion was needed.
One way or another, the Warsaw Pact veteran reached the top of the Petrokhan Pass where the engine needed to cool down as well as the intrepid researchers. This was mid-summer ’25 with record breaking temperatures.
Impressive performance indeed as during summer 2024 I found myself at the same spot with a BMW 4X4 and no such smile on my face. I had to return for repairs in the capital city, mounted on a road assistance trailer.
But back to the trip to Vrav. The road continued to Montana and from there on to Vidin. The stretch from Montana to Vidin was closed due to road works, so that a detour had to be made via the Village of Archar or Ratiaria in Roman times (properly Colonia Ulpia Ratiaria). The place used to be a river naval base for the Romans and an integral part of their system of fortifications along the Danube (Istrum) border. My father was of the opinion that the present roads’ better days had been at the time of Emperor Vespasian when the foundations of Ratiaria were laid down.
It was about lunchtime when the centre of Vrav would be seen.
Niki’s school-time friend Petar was waiting for them there and immediately took the group home for a generous lunch and much-needed rest. Plans were made about how to proceed further.
