Yedigöller is a beech valley in Bolu, in northern Turkey, with seven lakes strung down it, every one made by a landslide. The slopes gave way at different points, each slide dammed the water behind it, and the hollows filled. They sit in two groups, three on the valley floor and four on a shelf above, and a single path links all seven: you can walk the chain end to end in a few hours. The water moves between them as well as under them. In spring the whole chain runs full and spills from one lake into the next, and below Nazlıgöl the outflow drops away through the trees at a spot the park simply calls Şelale, the waterfall. The rest of the year the forest is the reason people come. Oriental beech turns gold and copper from mid-October into November, while the firs stay green, so the slope reads as a mosaic rather than a wall of red.
That window is about two weeks long, and the whole country takes it. The two hours worth having are at either end of the day: the evening when the last cars pull out, and the dawn before the first arrive. There is a campsite inside the park if you want them. After a cold night the mist lies low on the water at first light, and you watch the trunks step out of it one at a time; it is gone an hour after sunrise. Dry beech leaves let go one at a time, and you hear each one land. In January 2026 a camera trap at Deringöl filmed a Eurasian otter, an animal that settles only where the water is clean. And the seventh lake is not always there. Kurugöl has no supply of its own. Spring rain lifts Nazlıgöl until it spills through a channel into the hollow next door; when that stops, the hollow drains and dries. Its name says so: the dry lake.