Abant is a crater and alluvial lake in the Abant mountains, thirty-four kilometres south-west of Bolu, sitting at 1,328 metres above sea level. It covers 127 hectares, is eighteen metres deep and is fed by groundwater; the hills around it rise from 1,400 to 1,700 metres.
It is a place people come to for the day and also to stay, and it is worth seeing in any month of the year. Because of the richness of the plant life and the space it offers for open-air recreation, 1,196.5 hectares around the lake were declared a national park and taken under protection.
The tree cover is Scots and black pine, beech, oak, poplar, ash, hornbeam, willow and juniper, with rhododendron, tamarisk, hazel, medlar, spindle, hawthorn, holly, rosehip, fern, bramble, strawberry, mint, raspberry, ivy, nettle and horsetail beneath them. Water plants and water lilies crowd the edges of the lake, and on the slopes above it grows the Abant crocus (Crocus abantensis).
Getting there
- Access
- Leave the Ankara–İstanbul D-100 road or the TEM motorway at the 203rd kilometre and follow twenty-two kilometres. The lake is thirty-four kilometres from Bolu, 225 from Ankara and 258 from İstanbul. Private public buses run to it from central Bolu every two hours.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Bolu as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 0.6 °C in January to 20 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in May (61 mm) and lightest in August (24 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
