Karagöl-Sahara National Park

The park has two separate parts. Karagöl - black lake - is a small landslide lake at around fifteen hundred metres, enclosed by dense spruce and fir that comes right down to the water and gives the lake its colour, with a walkway round part of the shore, bungalows and a campsite. Sahara, despite the name, is a highland meadow at around two thousand metres: an open basin of grass that fills with wildflowers in June and July, ringed by forest, used as a yayla and known for its colour. Both sit in the wettest forest belt of Artvin, where the eastern Black Sea rainfall meets the Caucasus foothills and produces old-growth spruce, fir and beech with an understory of rhododendron. Bears and wolves are present. Şavşat district also has the Cehennem Deresi canyon and a scatter of Georgian church ruins from the medieval kingdom that held this valley. Roads are mountain roads and winter closes much of it.

What you actually see

• Karagöl - the dark lake enclosed by spruce.
• Sahara meadow - the high basin and its wildflowers.
• The old-growth forest - spruce and fir on the slopes.
• The yayla use - summer grazing on the upper meadow.

When to go

June to September; the flowers on Sahara peak in June and July. Roads are snowbound from late autumn to late spring.

Honest expectations

Rain and mist are frequent - this is among the wettest parts of Turkey. Facilities are bungalows and a campsite at Karagöl and nothing on Sahara. Mountain roads are slow.

Nearby

Şavşat's Georgian churches are in the same district; Borçka Karagöl is north and Artvin town west.