AT A GLANCE

Why go?

In the cedar-scented Çaydere forests inside Kızıldağ National Park, a stream of startlingly cold water pours out of a low opening in the mountainside. This is Pınargözü — the 'eye of the water' — the mouth of Turkey's longest cave, and the day-use picnic area that has grown up around its spring. It is one of those rare natural sites where the headline attraction is something you can hear, feel and photograph but never actually walk into: the cave itself is reserved for technical cavers, while the clearing around its mouth belongs to families, hikers and anyone who wants lunch next to one of the wildest springs in the western Taurus.↗↗↗

Set at about 1,550 metres on the slopes of Mount Dedegöl, roughly eight kilometres from the district town of Yenişarbademli in Isparta Province, the picnic area is the easy, public front door to a cave system that has defeated expeditions for sixty years. Survey teams have mapped between nine and sixteen kilometres of gallery without ever finding the end, and the full extent remains unknown. What visitors get for free, instead, is a shaded glade with picnic tables, barbecue pits and benches, the sound of a permanent gale roaring out of the hillside, and drinking water so cold that the 4–5 °C spring is described as the coldest natural water in Turkey.