Pobiti Kamani

Pobiti Kamani — "the beaten-in stones", often called the Stone Forest — is a field of natural stone columns scattered across the sandy hills west of Varna, in north-eastern Bulgaria. Hundreds of pillars stand in the sand like the trunks of a petrified wood — hence the popular name — many five to seven metres tall and anything from about thirty centimetres to three metres thick, rough and pitted, sometimes hollow inside. The formations are spread over a strip roughly 8 kilometres long and 3 wide, in several distinct groups; the main group, Dikilitash, alone holds more than 350 stones.

Their origin puzzled scientists for a long time. The Russian archaeologist Victor Teplyakov described them in 1829, and early theories ranged from petrified trees to coral growth to purely mechanical erosion. Current research reads them as the remains of an ancient seabed seep system: in the Lower Eocene, around 50 million years ago, methane-rich fluids rose through the sediments of a shallow sea, and microbes that fed on the gas cemented the sand around each rising plume into a tube. When the soft sand was later washed and blown away, the hardened tubes were left standing.

The groups have their own character. At Strashimirovo the stones stand in rows and swell in the middle, while elsewhere pillars lean together, break off or lie like fallen logs in the sand. The site has been protected as a natural landmark since the late 1930s, and in low evening light the whole place looks less like Bulgaria than like a small desert.

The geology is the astonishing story here: a fossil record of gas escaping from an ancient sea floor, now standing on dry land a short drive from the Black Sea coast.

Getting there

The main group lies about 18 km west of Varna on the old road toward Sofia; the listed nearest town, Asparuhovo, is about 16 km away. Varna Airport (VAR) is about 10 km away. The site is easiest to reach by car or taxi from Varna.