The Stryama is a river in southern Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

, an important left tributary of the Maritsa

Maritsa

The Maritsa or Evros , ) is, with a length of 480 km, the longest river that runs solely in the interior of the Balkans. It has its origin in the Rila Mountains in Western Bulgaria, flowing southeast between the Balkan and Rhodope Mountains, past Plovdiv and Parvomay to Edirne, Turkey...

. The river is 110.1 km long and has a drainage basin

Drainage basin

A drainage basin is an extent or an area of land where surface water from rain and melting snow or ice converges to a single point, usually the exit of the basin, where the waters join another waterbody, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea, or ocean...

 of 2,853 km².

The Stryama takes it source from the Balkan Mountains

Balkan Mountains

The Balkan mountain range is a mountain range in the eastern part of the Balkan Peninsula. The Balkan range runs 560 km from the Vrashka Chuka Peak on the border between Bulgaria and eastern Serbia eastward through central Bulgaria to Cape Emine on the Black Sea...

 under Vezhen Peak, named Kameniditsa in this section, turning east at Stryama Station to pass close to Klisura

Klisura

Klisura is a small town in the Karlovo municipality of the Plovdiv Province in central Bulgaria. It is situated in a valley surrounded by the Balkan Mountain range and Sredna Gora...

 and turn southeast at Rozino entering the Karlovo Plain. It then makes a turn south at Banya, forming the Stremski prolom (Stryama Gorge) between the mountains Sashtinska and Sarnena Sredna Gora

Sredna Gora

Sredna Gora is a mountain range in central Bulgaria, situated south of and parallel to Balkan mountain range and extending from the river Iskar to the west and the elbow of Tundzha north of Yambol to the east. Sredna Gora is 285 km long, reaching 50 km at its greatest width...

, where the Dalga Vada separates from it to later flow into the Maritsa as a separate river. Afterwards the Stryama passes a number of villages to empty into the Maritsa 15 km east of Plovdiv

Plovdiv

Plovdiv is the second-largest city in Bulgaria after Sofia with a population of 338,153 inhabitants according to Census 2011. Plovdiv's history spans some 6,000 years, with traces of a Neolithic settlement dating to roughly 4000 BC; it is one of the oldest cities in Europe...

.