Almost every cup of tea served in Türkiye comes from Rize. The province sits where the Kaçkar Mountains drop into the Black Sea, and the combination of altitude, rainfall, and shaded slopes makes it the only part of the country where tea grows reliably.
The geography here is unusual even for Türkiye. The Kaçkars rise to nearly four thousand metres in a province that's barely fifty kilometres wide on the coast. Roads that take ten minutes on a map take an hour in reality, because most of them are switchbacks. The rainfall is two to three times what the Mediterranean coast gets. The colour green here is a different green.
The list below is built around the Fırtına valley and the upper plateaus, which is what most travellers come for. We'd suggest three days. More if you intend to actually hike. Bring a light rain jacket, even in August it rains for an hour or two most days, and then clears. And if you want to see these places in motion before you go, there are a few of our own films from the region further down the page.
