Karagöl-Sahara National Park covers 3,251 hectares in the Şavşat district of Artvin, in the far northeast, and was declared in 1994. It is a park in two parts, and its name is simply the two parts joined — it also appears the other way round, as Sahara-Karagöl: the Sahara section, a stretch of dense spruce and fir forest with open recreational ground, and the Karagöl section, a landslide-dammed lake ringed by spruce. Spruce and fir are the dominant trees throughout, and alpine zone species are found at and around the Kocabey plateau.
This forest matters well beyond the region: it falls within one of the 25 terrestrial ecoregions the IUCN identifies as the world's most biologically important, is listed by WWF among 200 priority ecoregions, and sits on the transition between the Eurosiberian and Irano-Turanian phytogeographic regions, in the Colchic sector. A doctoral survey carried out between 1997 and 2002 recorded 872 plant taxa here, from 91 families and 364 genera, of which 54 are endemic; the threat status of 103 taxa was assessed.
The animal list is equally specific. The brown bear, strictly protected under the Bern Convention, lives inside the park. The directorate counts 128 bird species, 50 of them endemic or at risk under the European Red Data Book of vertebrates, and 45 mammal species, five of them endemic and at risk. Among breeding birds it singles out the Caucasian black grouse and the Caspian snowcock, and the area is one of the important habitats of the Caucasian viper.
Both sections take day visitors for picnicking and tent camping. Karagöl is the more built-up of the two, with a hotel, a cafe-restaurant, open-air event grounds and a children's playground, and it is the section where you can stay overnight indoors; concerts, country weddings and private functions are held there. Sahara has toilets and a country restaurant. Sahara is 87 km from Artvin and 17 km from Şavşat on the Şavşat-Ardahan road; Karagöl is 95 km from Artvin and 25 km from Şavşat, reached mostly on asphalt.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Artvin as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 2.8 °C in January to 21.3 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in December (87 mm) and lightest in August (29 mm). Long-term means for 1949-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
