I will never forget the visit to Girdev Lake. Sometimes the best road maps can be deceptive. My fresh EuroMap indicated a scenic journey across the mountain on a fine road.
Expect an evil dirt track, big holes, large puddles and big stones that smash loudly into the chassis all the time. The demands on a driver in a normal car was so that finally I simply stopped the car, walked out of it and told my companion that I was absolutely and totally finished driving that day.
But how beautiful it is up here! Colours are intense, green fields climb every possible place along the climb of mountains, that seem to be brown on the west side, lightly grey on the east. There are even small settlements here, traditional hunter lodges that merge with the mountain, and shy herdsmen attending their sheep and goats.
The Girdev Lake is seasonal, and rests on an altitude of 1880 metres. Steep mountains frame on all sides, the Akdağ the highest rising some 900 metres up from the lake.
The the north of the lake are a few Lycian remains. Nothing impressive but it is fascinating to see how the ideals of urban life styles were acted out in antiquity on such a remote place.





The lake rarely turns into a lake. What you see here is the reason; the river is simply to thin for such a large basin.

Practicalities
There are no services here. From the lake itself, Elmalı is 50 km east, Gömbe is 25 km south, Fethiye 85 km west, all having hotels and restaurants, and connections of public transportation.