The Beşparmak range stands on the border of Aydın and Muğla and was called Latmos in antiquity. Rising from the eastern and north-eastern shores of Lake Bafa, it is as significant for its history as for its landscape.
Paths that have been walked for centuries run between tamarisk, olive and red pine. In the Byzantine period they were the way up to the monasteries, and probably, in earlier ages, the route of processions to the sanctuary of the gods of weather and rain on Tekerlek, the highest point of Beşparmak. Villagers still use them to reach their olive groves and the neighbouring villages.
These paths, along the shore of Lake Bafa and over the Latmos mountains, form part of the Carian Trail, the longest waymarked walking route in the country.
What lies along this stretch is the reason to walk it: the remains of the ancient city of Herakleia, the Latmos rock paintings dated to eight thousand years ago, the Byzantine monastery of Yediler, and a little beyond the monastery, frescoes painted on an umbrella-shaped mass of rock.
Getting there
- Access
- Leave the main road at the town of Bafa and, after about ten minutes by bus, you reach Gölyaka village — also called Bucak — at the foot of the Beşparmak mountains. The climb starts from the village.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Aydın as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 8.2 °C in January to 28.4 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in April, May, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (126 mm) and lightest in August (6 mm). Long-term means for 1940-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
