Çal Mağarası

Çal Cave is a long karst cave carved by an underground stream in Çal Mahallesi, in the inland district of Düzköy in Trabzon. The Trabzon Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism places it about five kilometres south-west of Düzköy, at 1050 metres above sea level. Wikipedia gives the distance from the district as 11 kilometres and notes that sources put the altitude anywhere between 1050 and 1116 metres. Ministry pages describe the road from the city centre as a little over fifty kilometres long. The cave was not found by a scientific survey but by people living nearby, as Prof. Dr. Osman Bektaş, a retired geology professor of Karadeniz Technical University, told TRT Haber. A team from the same university later studied the cave, after which the Trabzon Special Provincial Administration laid wooden walkways and lighting. According to Anadolu Agency, the cave opened to visitors in 2003 after this work. According to TRT Haber, the Trabzon Metropolitan Municipality later won the tender to operate the cave and started a renovation that planned to rebuild the walkways with non-rotting materials. Its story begins with limestone. According to Wikipedia, water seeping from the surface dissolved the limestone, and fractures in the rock widened into a channel carrying water underground. During a period of regional uplift the flow that carved the channel stopped, and stalactites and stalagmites began to grow in the swallow holes where water once seeped in. The whole process is thought to have taken about eight million years. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism's Trabzon page also simply describes the cave as an underground water channel. The part visitors walk is only a small fraction of the cave. Anadolu Agency reports that explorers have so far reached a depth of eight kilometres, but only about one kilometre has been fitted with walkways and lights. The cave's operator told the same agency that his team walked for sixteen hours by torchlight to reach the eighth kilometre, finding lakes, waterfalls and bats in the closed section. The Ministry page writes that the cave is "also regarded as the second longest cave in the world"; this is a local description, and the true length is still not fully known. Inside, the path forks after a short level stretch. About two hundred metres from the entrance the cave splits into two branches; the left branch is about 150 metres long and the accessible part of the right branch about 400 metres. At the end of the left branch is a chamber with a shaft through which water from a sinkhole above pours in. Sixty metres into the right branch lie a small lake and the cascade that feeds it, the most photographed corner of the cave. According to the Ministry page, stalactites and stalagmites start to become dense after the first hundred and fifty metres. What people talk about most is the air and the water. Because cracks and sinkholes in the ceiling connect the cave with the outside world, there is a gentle flow of air inside; Anadolu Agency describes it as the feeling of walking through a valley while underground. The depth of the stream running through it changes with the season, rising to a metre and a half in wet periods and dropping to twenty-five centimetres in summer. The dry air at the entrance gives way to humidity raised by the stream further in, so a light extra layer is useful even in summer. The press has also reported days when the entrance was temporarily closed because the water rose too high; if you are going in a rainy week, ask about conditions beforehand. Directly above the cave, on a hill that commands the surroundings, stands the ruin of a small castle, and both the Ministry page and the press mention it together with the cave. Around the entrance there are basic facilities such as a picnic area and a country tea house. The cave is kept open all year; for visiting days, opening hours and ticket information, check the current announcements of the cave's operator and the Düzköy authorities. The wooden and metal walkways can be wet, and shoes with non-slip soles are the one real requirement of this visit. Access is by road, and public transport does not reach the cave directly. According to the Ministry page, you reach it by an asphalt road that turns right before entering Düzköy and passes through the settlement of Çal. On the same trip you can also visit the Düzköy highland pastures and Kadıralak Nature Park in Tonya to the west. For those coming from Akçaabat on the coast, Sera Lake and Hıdırnebi Plateau are the natural start of this mountain road.