Sea of clouds at dawn
A white floor fills the valleys beneath you and leaves only the ridgelines as islands; worth rising before the sun on a clear morning.
Robot8A — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Robot8A — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Robot8A — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Robot8A — CC BY-SA 4.0
At two thousand metres, nearly a full kilometre above Uzungöl, lie the pastures where Murad IV halted his army in 1635 on the way home from the Persian campaign and led the Friday prayer; they have carried his name ever since, and the stone from which the sermon was given is still kept here. But nobody sets an alarm for four in the morning for the history. They come for the sea of clouds: a white floor filling every valley below you until the ground vanishes and only the ridgelines are left as islands. Catch a clear dawn above it and this is among the finest things you can see anywhere in northern Türkiye. It is a working summer pasture, not a resort: plain timber yayla houses, a few tea huts, cows grazing across the meadows, a mosque, a grocer and a bakery, a handful of modest pensions and one small hotel, electricity, drinking water and toilets, and that is roughly the full inventory. On Martyrs' Hill lie an officer and seventy Ottoman soldiers killed facing the Russian army in 1916; their trenches still score the turf, and thousands climb up each year in late June for the commemoration. A small cemetery, but it explains why these quiet meadows belong to the country's memory and not merely its scenery. Getting there from Uzungöl: about 45 km via Çaykara on the paved road, or shorter over the upland tracks the jeeps use, an hour to an hour and a half either way, the final stretch an unpaved mountain track that turns to mud after rain. Most Uzungöl hotels sell a shared jeep day trip pairing Sultan Murat with the Karester and Haldizen plateaus - the easier choice for families and for anyone who would rather not put a hire car through it. The season runs from June to early October only; snow shuts the road for the rest of the year. Even in August, when the coast swelters, dawn up here can hover near freezing, so bring proper jackets. A plain warning: fog can swallow the view entirely, and then you have driven an hour and a half, the last part of it rough track, to look at a meadow inside a cloud. Ask the hotel about conditions that morning and postpone if the cloud is sitting low. With toddlers and pushchairs it is hard going - rough grass, no paths, a jolting road. Without Martyrs' Hill and the sea of clouds, Sultan Murat is a pretty pasture like a dozen others; with them, it is worth getting up before the sun.
A white floor fills the valleys beneath you and leaves only the ridgelines as islands; worth rising before the sun on a clear morning.
The graves of an officer and seventy Ottoman soldiers who fell to the Russians in 1916, with their trenches still visible in the turf.
Uzungöl hotels sell a single day taking in Sultan Murat with the Karester and Haldizen plateaus, sparing your own car the dirt track.
Sultan Murat Yaylası, Çaykara, Trabzon
Take the jeep. The last kilometres are a dirt track with no barriers, slow and tiring in an ordinary car and worse after rain. The shared trip usually bundles two other plateaus into the same day, and the drivers know when the sea of clouds is actually showing. A private car buys you only flexibility of timing, and you want four-wheel drive to feel comfortable.
Honestly, not with under-fives: an hour and a half each way, the last stretch jolting, rough grass that defeats a pushchair, and a cold dawn even in August. With older children who enjoy jeeps, cows and clouds at their feet, it becomes the adventure of their holiday.
Sign in to write your review of this place.
No reviews yet — be the first.