We don’t recommend you to try dancing barefoot on a smoldering fire like the author of this story did. You can get a sense of what it is like by reading Resource Travel’s piece The Last of the Ancestral Fire Dancers in Bulgaria. It reveals the inside story of two Bulgarians, father and son, who perform an ancient ritual called nestinarstvo. The article is written by Anna Pelova, Great Nomad’s Founder. Follow her journey and see if she succeeds in her fiery adventure.
When I ask Ivan to teach me how to dance barefoot on top of a smoldering fire, I secretly expect to learn his secret trick and be one of the only people outside of their circle who knows how it actually works. He agrees to show me and we arrange to meet in Yasna Polyana, a village near the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast. Maybe he will spray my feet with something to protect them from the burning embers. Perhaps this is just a visual illusion and barefoot fire dancers are like magicians pretending to cut bodies in half. Looking forward to an exclusive story, I travel to the village, passing through flocks of storks that are covering the green meadows. It is as if they are snow. I not surprised that upon arrival I see the statue of a wooden stork, Yasna Polyana’s treasured symbol.