A world away from the country’s beach resorts is a mountainous region of dense forests, hilltop villages and hairpin bends – perfect to explore by car
A
rainy part of the world where locals’ tea-drinking habits verge on obsessive. That may sound familiar, but a shared love of tea is where similarities between Turkey’s Rize province and the UK start and end. In fact, this corner of the country feels more like a mythical land, a fairytale mix of mist-shrouded mountains and dramatically plunging valleys cloaked in impenetrably deep, dark forests.
Despite the dramatic landscapes, international tourism has never really taken off here. Running between the eastern edge of the Black Sea and the rugged Pontic Alps, just shy of the Georgian border, it’s been a tricky spot to reach, historically (a bus journey of about 19 hours from Istanbul – though an airport opened in 2022, which cuts this to two hours).
I became intrigued by Rize when researching a book on the world’s best road trips. I spent weeks cruising the globe’s highways, country lanes and mountain passes via Google Street View. When I reached Turkey, I noticed a long green belt running along its northern coastline and discovered a land of dense tea plantations, cliff-hugging roads, roaring rivers and wooden villages.
