Turkey
Çıldır Lake
Horse-drawn sleighs cross a frozen lake while fishers haul yellow carp through the ice.
The lake freezes so solid that horses trot across it pulling wooden sleighs, their breath hanging in the minus-twenty air. Fishermen crouch beside holes drilled through the ice, hauling out carp and the lake's prized yellow fish, while the volcanic hills of the Kars plateau rise white and sharp against a pale sky. Çıldır in winter is a landscape from another century.
Çıldır is Turkey's second-largest freshwater lake, lying at 1,959 metres near the Armenian and Georgian borders in the far northeast. From deep winter into early spring the lake freezes hard enough to carry the horse-drawn sleighs, and ice fishers work the holes as their grandparents did. The surrounding plateau is herding country, where highland villages have made kaşar cheese for generations, and in summer the water warms enough for a swim off grassy, undeveloped shores. The ruins of Ani lie an hour to the south, making Çıldır part of one of Turkey's most historically dense corridors.
Couple
A horse-drawn sleigh across a frozen volcanic lake at sunset is winter romance at its rawest. Warm up with roast goose and aged cheese at a lakeside guesthouse.
Family
Children ride the sleighs wide-eyed, watching fishermen pull carp through ice holes. Animals, snow and hands-on tradition beat any theme park.
Friends
Ice fishing, sleigh rides and the raw beauty of the frozen northeast, then Ani and Kars for a frontier road trip.
- In deep winter the whole lake freezes solid enough for horse-drawn sleigh rides across the ice.
- Fishermen cut holes and haul out carp and the lake's prized yellow fish, a practice unchanged for generations.
- In summer the lake warms to around 20°C for swimming from grassy, undeveloped shores.
- In nearby Ardahan, aged Ardahan beyazı cheese is eaten in thick slabs with dark local honey.
Kars kaşarı, aged cave cheese with a sharp bite, sliced thick beside the frozen lake.
Slow-roasted goose, the winter staple of the villages ringing the water.
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