Barhal, Artvin. A very beautiful valley in North-East part of Turkey. If you know Turkish, you may want to read this.
Until 1950′s there wasn’t any road to this valley and people had to climb across the Kaçkar Mountains in order to go to the closest city, Rize. It would take days to go, and days to come back. It is not hard to imagine that this place was not a junction for many travelers; travelers who were, in a sense, envoys of different cultures and traditions. This unique place has many endemic flowers and insects waiting to be discovered. But also because of it’s remoteness for hundreds of years, it also has been a cradle for an endemic culture and social structure. Traditions in Barhal Valley is quite different than the general social conventions of Turkey. Both its diverse wild life and its culture and traditions very well deserve to be protected.
But unfortunately, due to the lack of common sense and reason, Turkish government is about to build one of the largest dams in the world into this valley, which will eventually fill up a good portion of it with water.
