A mediaeval fortress known to only a handful of people and a completely unknown museum of mining – Pernik's tourist landmarks wouldn't exactly justify a detour from the main road to Thessaloniki or Skopje. What's more, this town of 80,000 is known for certain quirks more likely to put off rather than attract. The local driving culture has become a generic name for the no-holds-barred, catch-me-if-you-can manner in which Pernik drivers use their old Volkswagens as offensive weapons. The townscape of this mining community is dominated by deserted smelters and slag heaps. Fans of the Lord of the Rings – the film, that is – go so far as to joke that Peter Jackson needn't have gone as far as New Zealand to shoot the Mordor scenes.

Nevertheless, for three consecutive days each year Pernik is in the spotlight – as the host of Bulgaria's foremost kukeri games.

The antics of the kukeri, or mummers, are among Bulgaria's most recognisable traditions, although you won't come across them in everyday life. In olden times this festival, which celebrates the rebirth of nature, used to be an annual fête in small towns and villages. The men would put on scary masks and dress up in costumes cobbled together from animal skins, horns and birds' wings. Metal cowbells clustered on their belts, they would set off to roam the village. They would stop at each house and act out raunchy pantomimes, whose unequivocal message was that the performers wished fertility to the household.

After this, all the inhabitants would gather in the village square to watch the time-honoured climax of the performance – one which James Frazer would have certainly included in The Golden Bough had he known about it. The kukeri would elect a "king." He would start to plough the land, but was then ritually killed, only to rise from the dead at the end. In the meantime, the rest of the kukeri chased after the girls on the streets, trying to touch them with long poles dyed red. The rest of the villagers enjoyed a mock wedding ceremony of pretend newlyweds officiated by an equally pretend priest. The couple then gave a naturalistic interpretation of how the human race came to be – from the wedding up to the birth of a child (a puppet made out of rags).

Kukeri rituals differ across Bulgaria. Each region has its own style of costumes and its own masks. In western Bulgaria, for instance, kukeri don motley rags and wear masks, which can be as tall as 1.5 m, made from birds' feathers. The name also varies: kukeri is used mostly in the eastern regions, while survakari is preferred in the west. You can also come across appellations such as babugeri, arapi, chaushi and even dervishi.

Equally movable are also the dates on which the kukeri games take place. Generally, the festival occurs between Christmas and Sirni Zagovezni (the day before the start of the Lenten fast).