Things to Do in Artvin: Karagol, Savsat and the Highlands

--- title: "Artvin travel guide: Two lakes called Karagöl, Macahel, and roads that make the map a liar" description: "An honest guide to Artvin, Turkey: the two separate Karagöl lakes in Borçka and Şavşat, the UNESCO biosphere reserve at Camili, Kafkasör, Hatila valley, the Cehennem Deresi canyon, the Coruh and its dams, real driving times, when to go and what to eat." city: "Artvin" lang: "en" ---

Artvin: a province measured in vertical metres

Artvin sits in the far north-east corner of Turkey, on the Georgian border. It is mountainous, heavily forested, and the Coruh river runs through it. That reads like a geography lesson, but it is the single thing that decides how your trip goes. In Artvin, places are not next to each other. They are stacked on top of each other. You look at the map, see forty kilometres between two points, and what you actually get is a road that climbs out of one valley floor, crosses a pass, and drops into the next. Straight-line distance means nothing here.

The population is as layered as the terrain. Georgian, Laz, Hemsin and Turkish communities live intermixed. Most villages carry two names: the official Turkish one and the older one people still use. Spend the morning on a dry rocky slope above Ardanuç and you can be standing in permanently wet forest above Borçka two hours later. Same province, same day.

Who is it for? People who enjoy driving, who do not mind spending a good part of each day on the road, and who can live with forest and fog. Who is it not for? Tight schedules, and passengers who get carsick on switchbacks. There are two mistakes people reliably make. The first is planning Artvin like a coastal drive: this place in the morning, that place at noon, somewhere else by evening. The plan collapses by lunchtime on day one, because the road does not care about your arithmetic. The second is misreading the weather. Arriving in mist and going home three days later having seen nothing at all is a genuine possibility, and it happens in midsummer too.

Quick answer

Artvin works if you give it five or six days minimum and sleep in each district. There is no version of this trip without a car.

• The roads: double every drive time the map gives you. This is the most important practical fact about the province, and it is not an exaggeration.
• The route: Artvin town, then Borçka and its Karagöl, then Macahel, then Şavşat, then Ardanuç.
• There are two different lakes called Karagöl, one in Borçka and one in Şavşat. Half a day of driving separates them.
• Best time: late June to early September for the highlands, October for autumn colour. Fog and rain are possible year round.

1. Artvin Kalesi

The castle sits on a rock spur above the Coruh at the entrance to town, also known as Livane Castle. The Georgian king Ashot III had it built in 937; the Ottomans took it in the mid-16th century and enlarged it. High walls wrap the rock, a multi-storey tower survives in reasonable condition, and a four-cornered structure on the east side was probably a church. Inside are the remains of a cistern and traces of Georgian wine vessels.

It is not a big site and it does not take long. The value is in where it stands rather than what it is. From up here you understand why the town exists at this spot: the river valley passes directly beneath you, and this rock controls the gap.

Military restrictions kept it closed for years. After restoration in 2004 and floodlighting in 2012 it opened to visitors. Opening hours can still change, so verify officially. Look at the valley before you look at the walls, because you will spend the next five days in its branches.

2. Kafkasör Yaylası

A forested upland pasture directly above Artvin town, roughly eight kilometres out. The road leaves town, coils upward and delivers you into fir and spruce in about twenty minutes. Going from the warm dry valley below to cool damp forest that quickly is the cheapest possible demonstration of how this province is put together.

Kafkasör is known for its festival in late June, with bull fights and karakucak wrestling. Large numbers of people come in from outside the province and the pasture is unrecognisable for those few days. The festival does not fall on the same week every year and the programme changes, so verify your dates officially.

The rest of the time it is a quiet forest recreation area: meadow, trees, a few paths. If you only have time for one thing near town, Kafkasör makes sense, because it is the closest real yayla to the centre and half a day covers it. It is not a substitute for Şavşat or Macahel, so do not go expecting one.

3. Deriner Barajı

Just east of Artvin town, on the Coruh. It is one of Turkey's tallest dams and the scale takes a moment to register: the valley is already narrow, and the dam closes that narrow gap with a wall of concrete. The road runs past it, so no detour is needed.

Deriner is in this guide for what it explains, not for how it looks. Most of the Coruh you will see in this province is no longer a river. It is a reservoir. The Deriner, Borçka and Muratlı dams stopped the flow through Artvin one after another, and when the Yusufeli dam came online in 2022 the upper catchment changed too. The old villages, fields and roads on the valley floor are under that water. The calm turquoise you drive alongside was something else forty years ago.

Knowing this does not spoil the trip. It just makes it honest. You do not need to plan around the dam; you pass it anyway. Photography rules may apply in the dam area.

4. Hamamlı Manastırı (Doliskana)

A 10th-century domed cross-plan Georgian church in Hamamlı village, in Artvin's central district. Roughly 20 by 14 metres externally, so not small. It is thought to have been built under King Bagrat III and repaired under Sumbat I. Every other building of the monastery complex is gone. The church is all that is left standing.

It served as the village mosque from the late 20th century until 1998, when the village built a new one and emptied it. Today it stands abandoned. This is the first instance of a story you will meet again and again here: Georgian church, then mosque, then abandonment. Artvin's Georgian architectural heritage is remarkable and almost none of it is looked after.

The village road is narrow and the signposting is poor, so save the location on your phone before you set off. Whether you can get inside depends on the day. If it is locked, the outside is still worth the stop: the stonework and the proportions of the drum read perfectly well from the churchyard. Half an hour.

5. Borçka Barajı

Driving down from Artvin to Borçka you have a long lake on your right for most of the way. That is the Borçka dam's reservoir. The dam itself is an 86-metre earth-fill structure on the Coruh, built between 1998 and 2005 and operational since 2005. It produces around 1,039 GWh a year from about 300 MW of installed capacity.

This pin is less a destination than a set of driving directions. The entire Artvin to Borçka route follows this shoreline, and the drive is genuinely good: steep forested walls on both sides, still green water in between. The road is paved and comfortable by local standards, but it passes through single-lane tunnels and narrow sections.

The colour of the water changes with the season. After rain, the sediment the Coruh carries turns the reservoir brown; in dry spells it goes close to turquoise. This is a river that moves roughly 5.8 million cubic metres of sediment a year, so cloudy water here is normal rather than pollution.

6. Borçka Karagöl

Read this carefully. Artvin has two lakes called Karagöl. This is the one in Borçka. The other is in Şavşat, and half a day of driving separates them. This is the most common mix-up about the province, and plenty of people have booked a hotel in the wrong district because of it.

Borçka Karagöl is about 25 kilometres from Borçka town, at 1,480 metres. It is a landslide-dammed lake: material broke off the slope, blocked the Savgule valley, and water collected behind it. The slide probably happened sometime in the 1800s, though that is not certain. The lake is two bodies joined by a channel, the larger around five hectares, 25 metres at its deepest.

It looks a lot like the Şavşat one: dark water, wooded slopes running to the shore, mist on the surface in the morning. The road is narrow and the last stretch is hard work, and it can close in winter and early spring. Verify officially or ask locally that it is open, because closures here do not reliably show up on maps.

7. Camili (Maçahel)

Macahel is an enclosed valley on the Georgian border and Turkey's first UNESCO biosphere reserve, added to the Man and the Biosphere network on 29 June 2005. The reserve covers 27,152 hectares and contains six villages: Camili, Efeler, Kayalar, Düzenli, Uğur and Maral. Twelve more villages sit on the Georgian side. The 1921 border agreement drew a line through the middle of the valley.

What matters here is the old-growth forest and the bees. Around 70 percent of the valley is forest and fruit trees, mostly beech and chestnut. The pure Caucasian bee is protected here, and Camili has held a bee and honey festival every August since 1981.

Access is the hard part. Camili is 50 kilometres from Borçka, but those kilometres cross the Küçükyayla pass at 1,815 metres and are measured in hours. There is a control point at the pass, and a military restricted strip runs along the border itself. November snow closes the road for two to three months. Verify entry conditions officially, including whether ID or a permit is required.

8. Maral Şelalesi

In Maral village, at the far end of the Macahel valley. It is one of the reserve's six villages and among the closest to the Georgian border. The waterfall is in forest near the village.

The falls are not Turkey's biggest and do not, on their own, justify a day of driving. The point of coming is different: having reached Camili, you carry on to the end of the valley and physically register how far this closed system runs. Along the way you pass the scattered settlement pattern, houses set five or ten minutes' walk apart, and small clearings cut into the forest. The drive is what explains how the reserve actually works. The waterfall is just where you stop.

Getting to Maral means staying at least one night in Camili. Coming from Borçka, seeing Maral and returning the same day is theoretically possible, but it means spending the entire day in the car, and you do not want to descend that pass in the dark. Check road conditions locally.

9. Karçal Dağları

The range that closes off the Macahel valley from the south. It is the highest massif in Artvin and the reason the valley is as isolated as it is. The pass you cross to reach Camili is a shoulder of these mountains, and there is no other way in.

Treat Karçal as a reference point rather than a stop. For as long as you are in Macahel this wall stands behind you, and in clear weather you can see snow on the upper slopes in midsummer. This one massif explains why the valley's climate differs from Borçka below, why snow shuts the road in November, and why the bee population stayed pure here. Put a mountain across a valley and everything inside is left to itself.

There are walks into the range, but they are guided, serious and season-dependent, not a day out. Restrictions may apply on some routes given the border. If you are planning anything here, work with a local guide and verify officially whether a permit is needed.

10. Şavşat

The base for Artvin's highland and lake country. The town itself is small and is not the attraction, but every road to Karagöl, Sahara, the castle and Tbeti branches from here. Everyone who comes to this part of the province ends up sleeping in Şavşat, because there is no sensible alternative.

The country around Şavşat is the greenest and most highland in character in Artvin. The slopes around town are spruce and fir, and as you climb, the forest opens into meadow. Livestock still moves up to the pastures in summer, which means the yayla here is a working thing rather than a signpost.

The practical point matters: basing yourself in Şavşat and making day trips out beats trying to sleep somewhere new every night. Getting here from Artvin town already costs you half a day. Give it two nights minimum. There are places to stay in town and in the surrounding villages, but they fill in summer and during festivals, so look early.

11. Şavşat Kalesi

Also known as Satleli Castle. Satleli village was later absorbed into Şavşat town, which is why it now goes by the town's name. On architectural grounds it is dated to the 9th century, built under the Georgian Kingdom. It was one of the centres of the historic Shavsheti region.

The plan is close to a rhombus, roughly 82 by 68 metres on the diagonals, built from medium rough-hewn stone blocks. It is partly ruined: the east and west walls have survived better, and the round tower at the south-east corner was added later than the one at the south-west. Inside, the apse and north wall of a single-nave church are still standing.

It does not take long, and you should not expect a maintained museum. This is a ruin. But it is close enough to Şavşat that it needs no day of its own; call in on the way to Karagöl. The church remains inside show the layers of this province in one frame: a Georgian castle, a Georgian church inside it, and silence on top.

12. Tbeti Kilisesi

In Cevizli village, Şavşat district. The first stone church here was built under Ashot Kukhi of the Bagrationi dynasty, between 896 and 918. It was enlarged and rebuilt in the early 11th century, with additions continuing into the 13th, and was one of the most important religious centres in the region.

What you see now is largely rubble, and time is not the reason. The building was converted to a mosque in the 1880s, and the village built a separate mosque in 1889. Then in 1961, on the orders of the Şavşat district governor, dynamite was placed in the structure and it was brought down. The dome collapsed. What stands today is damaged walls.

There is no point softening this. If you want to see what happened to Artvin's Georgian heritage in one place, it is here. The stonework in the surviving walls still shows how good the thing was, which makes the visit stranger rather than easier. Narrow village road, poor signposting, save the location in advance. Half an hour is enough, and it stays with you longer.

13. Karagöl-Sahara Millî Parkı

The national park covering both the Şavşat Karagöl and the Sahara plateau. It is 3,766 hectares, declared on 31 August 1994. The park has two separate sections: Karagöl, a forest-ringed landslide lake, and Sahara, an alpine pasture between 1,700 and 1,800 metres. Sahara is 17 kilometres from the district centre; Karagöl is 45.

Surveys have recorded 562 plant species across 80 families, 57 of them endemic. The dominant trees are Oriental spruce, Scots pine and Caucasian fir. There are bears and wolves, partridge and falcons, trout and carp in the lake. Those numbers look dry, but they tell you something: this is a working forest ecosystem, not a viewpoint.

You can see Sahara and Karagöl on the same day, but the distance between them takes far longer than the map suggests. If you are doing both, start early. Park entry, fees and camping rules can change, so verify officially. There is a small lodging facility in the Karagöl area with very limited capacity.

14. Şavşat Karagöl

The most photographed place in the province and the famous one of the two Karagöls. About 25 kilometres north of Şavşat town, at 1,630 metres. Five hectares of surface, 33 metres at its deepest. It is a closed basin with no outflow, and the water is mildly alkaline.

Like the Borçka one, this is a landslide-dammed lake: a mass came off the slope, blocked the valley, and water gathered in the hollow. Two lakes formed the same way and given the same name explains why the confusion is so widespread. The difference is the forest. Here the fir comes right down to the shore, and with the colour of the water it produces the image people mean when they say Artvin.

Timing decides everything. Early morning, with mist still on the water, is the best of it. By midday the light flattens and the crowds arrive. The road climbs out of Şavşat and the last section is narrow. It can be closed in winter, so verify the road officially if you are travelling out of season.

15. Ardanuç Kalesi

Also known as Gevhernik Castle, from the Persian for fine jewel. It stands on a rock in Ardanuç's Adakale quarter. It is said to have been built in the 5th century under the Georgian king Vakhtang Gorgasali and rebuilt and reinforced in the 9th century by Ashot I Kuropalates, when it became the political and economic centre of the Klarjeti region. The Ottomans took it in 1551.

It is heavily ruined today. There is an outer and an inner castle, with fragments of wall still up. The site runs about 220 metres long and 55 at its widest, so the plan is long and thin. Inside is the single-nave Petre-Pavle church, built from unworked white stone blocks. The apse survives to two or three metres, and there are traces of blue paint on the walls, meaning it was once frescoed.

It is a first-degree archaeological site and excavation began in September 2021. An active dig can change visiting conditions, so check before you go. The climb up is short but steep.

16. Cehennem Deresi Kanyonu

A correction first: this canyon is in Ardanuç, not Borçka. It is very frequently misplaced. Its official name is the Cehennem Deresi Canyon Nature Park, declared on 1 May 2018, covering 31.8 hectares.

The canyon runs 2.5 kilometres and reaches 200 metres deep in places. The width varies from around 70 metres down to very tight passages. It sits at the 25th kilometre of the Artvin to Ardanuç road, 7 kilometres from Ardanuç town. You do not need to organise a separate trip: you drive through it on the way to Ardanuç anyway. The nature park is open 24 hours.

Scale is what makes it. The road enters the valley, the walls jump up on both sides, and the sky narrows to a strip. Get out and walk, because the proportions disappear through a windscreen. Facilities are limited. Development plans, including a glass walkway, met local opposition on environmental grounds, so what is actually on site may change over time. Verify the state of the canyon walking path officially.

17. Hatila Vadisi Millî Parkı

Ten kilometres west of Artvin town, reached by a stabilised road. The park is 16,988 hectares, declared on 31 August 1994. The Hatila stream and its tributaries have cut the valley into a V, and in places the slope gradient runs between 80 and 100 percent. That figure sounds abstract. In practice it means the valley walls are close to vertical.

The interesting thing here is the vegetation. The park holds more than 500 plant species, some of them endemic. The valley shows Mediterranean climate characteristics and contains relict plant communities rarely found elsewhere in Turkey. So this valley, ten kilometres from town, is a different system from the Black Sea forest all around it. Bears, wild boar, wild goats and eagles are present, and there is trout in the stream.

The road is stabilised, and that is worth taking seriously. Think twice about a low car, or about going in straight after rain. Do not let its closeness to town make Hatila look easy. Verify road conditions officially. Allow half a day.

18. Çoruh Nehri ve Yusufeli

The Coruh rises in the Mescit mountains and runs roughly 438 kilometres before reaching the Black Sea near Batumi. It was considered one of the world's better whitewater rivers, and the hundred-kilometre stretch around Yusufeli held some of the most demanding rafting and canoeing water anywhere in the country.

The past tense is deliberate. The Muratlı, Borçka, Deriner, Artvin and Yusufeli dams are all in operation on the river. The Yusufeli dam, at 275 metres, is the third-highest double-curvature concrete arch dam in the world. Impoundment began in the first days of 2022 and construction finished on 22 November 2022. The dam forced the relocation of several villages along the riverbed and of Yusufeli town itself. Old Yusufeli and most of the classic rafting run are under water.

There are still sections where rafting operates, but this is not the old Coruh, and not everything in promotional material is current. If you are considering rafting, verify with the operator which section, what flow and what grade you are actually being sold.

Roads and distances

Read this as the most important section in the guide. Roads are the one thing that breaks planning in Artvin.

The rule is simple: double whatever drive time the map gives you. Navigation apps compute these roads on straight-line logic and are wrong constantly. What actually happens is that the road starts on one valley floor, coils upward for kilometres, crosses a pass and descends to the next valley floor. The elevation swings between 1,000 and 1,500 metres over and over. It is not the number of bends that matters but their nature: most are full hairpins, and you slow for oncoming traffic.

Concretely. Artvin town to Şavşat costs you half a day. Borçka to Camili reads 50 kilometres, but it crosses the Küçükyayla pass at 1,815 metres and is measured in hours. Between the two Karagöl lakes, both in the same province, there is half a day of driving.

What follows from this. Target one district per day. Sleep in each district and do not be precious about moving base. Do not drive after dark: night driving on these roads is tiring, unnecessarily risky, and you see nothing anyway. Refuel before you drop below half a tank, because there are no stations on the highland roads. Livestock, machinery and landslide debris on the road are all normal.

Closures are a real risk. Highland and pass roads shut in winter and early spring, and Macahel is cut off entirely for two to three months after the November snow. Even in summer, heavy rain can put a slide across the road, and none of this reliably reaches the mapping apps. Before any mountain road, and before Macahel in particular, verify officially or locally that it is open.

Getting there

Flying is the sensible option. Artvin has no airport of its own. You have two choices: Trabzon Airport or Rize-Artvin Airport. Rize-Artvin is geographically closer, but the schedule is thinner than Trabzon's, so check both when you look for tickets. From either one you continue by road, and that road is not short.

After that it is straightforward: you need a car. There is no realistic way to do this province without one. Intercity buses reach the district towns, but almost nothing in this guide is in a district town. You cannot get to Karagöl, Macahel or Hatila on public transport. Village minibuses exist, but they run infrequently and on local schedules that have nothing to do with sightseeing.

Pick the car up at the airport; the choice in Artvin town is thinner. Higher ground clearance helps for Hatila and some highland roads, though it is not essential. Check the rental company's contract terms on unpaved roads, because some exclude them.

The Georgian border crossing is at Sarp and Batumi is close, so combining Artvin with Batumi is popular. Taking a rental car across a border usually requires separate paperwork and permission. Talk to the rental company in advance and verify current border rules officially.

When to go

Late June to early September for the highlands. Outside that window the high ground is either closed or of uncertain access. July and August are the safest months: roads open, the pastures in use, and the Kafkasör and Camili festivals both fall in this period. The trade-off is that this is also the busiest time.

Autumn is the famous season. In October the beech, chestnut and hornbeam turn and the province becomes the thing you have seen in photographs. Both Karagöls look their best. But autumn is also when rainfall climbs and fog thickens, which means the best possible view and no view at all sit in the same week. The first half of October is the safer bet.

Spring arrives late. Even in May you can find snow above 1,500 metres and many highland roads have not opened yet. The lower ground and the country around Ardanuç are fine in May, but it is too early for Karagöl and Macahel. Winter is a serious decision: snow closes the roads, Macahel is cut off for two to three months, and most of this guide becomes unreachable.

On fog and rain, be clear: both are possible in any season. Artvin takes a lot of precipitation and cloud frequently sits down on the slopes. Do not stake a single viewpoint on a single day.

What to eat

Muhlama. Cornmeal, butter and cheese, cooked and served in the pan, stretching off the spoon. It is the signature dish of the region and it turns up at breakfast and at lunch. The version made up on the pasture with real butter and the version made in town are different things. It is heavy, so go easy on the portion if you are driving afterwards.

Macahel honey. From the pure Caucasian bee, produced inside the biosphere reserve. You can buy it from producers in the valley. The name gets used widely, so it matters where you buy it.

Laz böreği. Called a börek but it is a dessert: thin pastry layers with custard between them and icing sugar on top. Specific to the eastern Black Sea and common in Artvin.

Beyond that, trout is everywhere and standard at the streamside places. The Ardanuç and Yusufeli side is a different proposition from the coast: a drier climate, so fruit and vine products carry more weight. Change valley and the cooking changes with it.

Frequently asked questions

**How many lakes called Karagöl are there, and which one should I visit?** Two, and both are real. Borçka Karagöl is 25 kilometres from Borçka town, at 1,480 metres. Şavşat Karagöl is 25 kilometres north of Şavşat town, at 1,630 metres, inside the Karagöl-Sahara National Park. Both are landslide-dammed, both are ringed with forest, and their photographs look almost identical. The famous one is the Şavşat lake. Half a day of driving separates them, so basing yourself in one district to see the other does not work. Watch the district name when you book.

**Do I need a permit for Macahel?** I am not going to give you a firm answer, because I could not verify one. Here is what I did establish: the valley is on the Georgian border, a military restricted strip runs along the border itself, and entry to the valley is through a control point at the Küçükyayla pass at 1,815 metres. So there is at least a checkpoint, and you should have ID with you. I could not find a current, official source on whether a permit procedure exists, or whether different rules apply to foreign nationals. Verify with the Artvin Governorship or the Borçka District Governorship before you travel. Guessing at this one would not be responsible.

**How many days do I need?** Five at a minimum, seven to be comfortable. Roughly: a day for Artvin town and Hatila, a day for Borçka and its Karagöl, at least two days for Macahel including a night in the valley, two days for Şavşat and its surroundings, a day for Ardanuç. If you genuinely only have three days, drop Macahel and stay inside the Artvin, Şavşat, Ardanuç triangle.

**Can I do it without a car?** Realistically, no. Buses will get you to the district towns, but almost nothing in this guide is in a district town. Village minibuses exist but run rarely and not on visitor schedules.

**Are the roads really that bad?** Not bad. Slow. The main roads are paved and maintained. The problem is not surface quality but geometry: constant climbing, constant bends, constant descent. Artvin town to Şavşat takes half a day. The road into Hatila is stabilised, so a low car needs care. Do not drive in the dark or straight after rain.

**What do I do if fog means I see nothing?** It is a real possibility and it happens in midsummer. The only answer is flexibility: put the viewpoints in the middle of your schedule rather than at the end, so a bad day can be retried tomorrow. Fog sits high and it is usually clearer lower down, so build your plan B at low altitude. Artvin Kalesi, Ardanuç Kalesi, the Cehennem Deresi canyon and Hamamlı Manastırı all work on a grey day.