Zigana Mountain Pass, Hamsiköy Village and Karaca Cave Day Trip

Because Sumela Monastery sits in Maçka just off the historic Silk Road highway (D885) climbing south toward Gümüşhane, you can easily combine a morning visit to Sumela with a sweeping afternoon loop up to the alpine village of Hamsiköy, the 2,032-metre Zigana Mountain Pass and the world-celebrated dripstone formations of Karaca Cave.

1. Hamsiköy Village (At 1,300 Metres on the Northern Flank of Zigana)

Twenty-five minutes south of Maçka, turn off the main highway onto the old winding mountain road climbing through five interconnected mountain hamlets known collectively as Hamsiköy (from the Arabic Hams-i köy, "Five Villages", it has nothing to do with hamsi fish). Surrounded by towering Oriental spruce forests and wildflower meadows where cows graze on over a hundred endemic alpine herbs, Hamsiköy is the birthplace of Turkey's most famous dessert, PGI-protected Hamsiköy Sütlacı (baked rice pudding). Pull up a chair on a wooden veranda overlooking the snow-streaked peaks of the Zigana range (at original village spots like Osman Usta or Niyazi Usta) for a clay bowl of creamy pudding topped with freshly pounded hazelnuts, or walk/cycle the forest tracks up to the 19th-century stone churches of Çıralı and Dikkaya.

2. The Historic Zigana Pass (2,032m) and Limni Crater Lake

Above Hamsiköy rises the Zigana Pass (Zigana Geçidi), the dramatic geographical divide where the wet, emerald-green forests of the Black Sea suddenly end and the dry, golden continental steppes of Eastern Anatolia begin, crossed in 401 BC by Xenophon's Ten Thousand Greek soldiers (who famously shouted "Thalatta. Thalatta.", "The Sea. The Sea.", when they first glimpsed the Black Sea from the neighbouring ridges of Mount Theches) and later by Marco Polo's Silk Road caravans. Just below the pass at 1,700 metres sits Limni Lake Nature Park (Limni Gölü), a tranquil pine-ringed crater lake with wooden walking trails.

3. Karaca Cave (Karaca Mağarası, 75 minutes from Trabzon via the new Zigana Tunnel)

Thanks to the opening of the 14.5-kilometre New Zigana Twin Road Tunnel (the longest road tunnel in Europe), driving from Maçka under the mountain to Karaca Cave (near Torul in Gümüşhane province) now takes only 35 minutes. Although compact (a 150-metre figure-eight wooden walkway across four interconnected chambers), Karaca Cave contains one of the highest densities and widest colour palettes of dripstone formations (damlataş), translucent "elephant-ear" curtains, cave roses, eccentric helictites that defy gravity, and stepped travertine pools anywhere on earth.