As I mentioned in my previous travel post, Istanbul has always been known for its crowd, traffic, unplanned urbanization, skyscrapers, immigrants and as an active city 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. On the other hand, Istanbul has villages where cows, sheep, geese and ducks still roam; it has forests, lakes, dams where you can relax and seas where you can swim. These are available on both the Anatolian and European sides of Istanbul. I preferably go to Beykoz, Riva, Şile, Ağva and the countryside of Kocaeli.
Decreasing the effect of the pandemic and the arrival of the summer months, people have started to focus on social activities such as travel, picnic, camping, going to sea. Although we have been going through economically a difficult period, people spend their weekends with such activities in order to relieve the pain of the pandemic in line with their own budgets. However, the Governorship of Istanbul prohibited any kind of fire in forest lands from July 5 to July 31. I think that it will partially restrict this kind of social activities in Istanbul. We will see whether there will be the control of this prohibition everywhere in Istanbul.
In the second weekend of June, I went to the shoreline of Ömerli Dam in Esenceli Village, located Şile district of Istanbul. This time, three friends met the day before and decided to go to Esenceli village and what we would do there. In the morning, we took the necessary materials for barbecue and picnic from the market and set off. Since Esenceli village is closer than Ahmetli village, where Darlık Lake is located, we set off a little late. Although we went for the first time, we did not need the navigation much. On the way to Şile, turn to the Kömürlük Village junction, follow the Esenceli Village sign and reach the village at first through the forest road. Just below the village there is the shore of the Ömerli Dam. Our journey took about 45 minutes.
The road going down from Esenceli Village goes directly to the middle and left of the dam. If you go from the junction on the right while going down, you will reach the forested hill on the right side of the dam. We first went down to the dam to explore. This is the left side of the dam, we decided to settle on the part with relatively few trees, but then we changed our mind when we saw the cars were entering through the forest on the right side of the dam. Since the weather was partly cloudy until noon, there was a big difference between the photos I took at noon and towards the evening.
We went back up and went up to the hill on the right of the dam from the junction on the right. Here is the right side of the dam:
Geri yukarı çıkarak sağ taraftaki ayrımdan barajın sağındaki tepeliğe kadar çıktık. Burası da barajın sağ tarafı:
After driving a little further into the forest, we parked the car. We took the materials we brought and looked for a suitable place with a beautiful view. Although it is a forestland, there is a slope downwards to the dam because it is hilly. There is a risk of falling or even rolling into the lake downwards to the dam shore, there are more flat lands where you can put tables and chairs and have barbecue. There were also people camping in the forest. We descended a little and settled in a place with such a view, about 5 meters from the lake. After resting for a while, we lit our samovar and had breakfast. We also had a barbecue in the afternoon. Since the weather was hot and windless, we stayed there for about 8 hours and enjoyed the forest air.
I can say that I like the shoreline of Ömerli Dam in Esenceli Village more than Darlık Lake. Compared to Darlık, it is closer to me and it has more flat lands. You can comfortably do picnic, barbecue or camping. There is no admission fee and you can find a toilet at the entrance. In addition, you can meet your needs such as food and drink from the stores very close to the dam.
I have the idea of going to places like this on weekends this summer.