The postcard view
The classic shot of the whole lake, minaret and village is taken from up here or from the pull-offs on the road up.
Mrtrkl — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Serra Kiziltas — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Serra Kiziltas — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Serra Kiziltas — CC BY-SA 4.0
The photograph of Uzungöl you saw before you booked, the one with the whole lake in frame, the minaret in the middle and the village wrapped around the shore as if painted, was not taken from the waterside. It was taken from this side of the mountain: from Karester, or from one of the pull-offs on the road up to it. Karester is the nearest of the summer pastures above the lake and the standard place to stand for the top-down view of Uzungöl. As the crow flies it is only a few kilometres away, but the road corkscrews up for roughly 12 km from the village, and every hairpin makes the lake smaller and prettier. The plateau itself is a seasonal livestock pasture in Çaykara district: scattered timber yayla houses that families move up to with their animals in summer, and a tea house or two that open with the season for çay and sometimes a village breakfast. There is no market, no restaurant row, no waymarked trail. The place is not the point; the view is. On early mornings a sea of cloud fills the valley and the lake seems to float on it, then the mist thins and everything comes into focus. Arriving before nine gives you the best odds. The track is narrow, steep and partly unpaved, which is why hotels sell it as a jeep excursion of two to three hours, often bundled with Demirkapı or Sultan Murat plateau into a full day. In summer a hire car will make it if it has decent clearance and the road is dry, but a jeep with a driver who knows the bends is easier with a family and safer after rain. This is a strictly seasonal outing: roughly late May to October, and in winter snow closes the track completely. Two honest notes. First, fog and rain are normal in these mountains even in August, and you can climb all the way up and see nothing; ask your driver what it looks like at the top before you pay, and do not book on the first overcast morning. Second, this is a stop, not a destination: half an hour for photographs and a glass of tea, then back down. Give it a full day only as part of a wider plateau circuit. Children enjoy it and the air is cool and clean even at the height of summer, but the road is no place for a pushchair or for anyone who struggles with hairpin bends.
The classic shot of the whole lake, minaret and village is taken from up here or from the pull-offs on the road up.
Early mornings often fill the valley with mist so the lake seems to float on it before it clears.
A working summer pasture, not a resort, with a tea house or two serving çay and breakfast in season.
Karester Yaylası, Çaykara district, Trabzon
Yes if the morning is clear: it is the closest and quickest plateau, and the famous view cannot be had from the shore. Two to three hours is enough. If the sky is overcast, walk around the lake instead and save the money, because fog can hide the whole scene.
Karester is for the view of the lake. Demirkapı (the Haldizen valley) is for wide open highland scenery and glacial lakes well away from it, and Sultan Murat for high grassland at around 2,000 m. With a full day, the combined tours usually make Karester their first stop; with only a morning, Karester alone is the one to take.
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