A Black Sea highland plateau above the tea gardens — Laz wooden houses in the cloud forest, thermal baths fed by mountain springs, and valleys that see 2m of rain a year
Ayder is a high plateau (1,350m) in the Kaçkar Mountains of Turkey's Rize Province, reached by a winding road that climbs from the Black Sea tea gardens through temperate rainforest. The Black Sea coastal range receives some of the highest rainfall in Turkey — certain valleys average 2,000–3,000mm annually — producing forests of beech, hornbeam, and rhododendron that are lush and misty for much of the year. Ayder's character is defined by its Laz culture (the Laz people are a South Caucasian ethnic group related to Georgians), wooden architecture, hot spring baths, and highland summer pasture…
The Black Sea region was historically part of the Pontic Greek cultural sphere, then Byzantine, then controlled by the Trapezuntine Empire (Trebizond) which held out as the last Byzantine successor state until 1461, eight years after Constantinople's fall. The Laz people along the eastern Black Sea coast converted from Christianity to Islam in the 18th century under Ottoman pressure but maintained their distinct language and cultural identity. Ayder was developed as a tourism destination primarily from the 1980s onward; before that, the plateau was exclusively summer pasture.