An emerald green valley stretching between thick forests of pine and fir trees, with clusters of houses like dots on the valley floor and slopes. The villages of at most twenty houses are set in a landscape whose picture postcard scenes are reminiscent of the Swiss Alps. At the highest point of the valley is Tavaca, a neighbourhood of the forest village of Gökçealan near Türkeli in Sinop. Tavaca's inhabitants are Circassians whose ancestors migrated here from northern Caucasia. In the winter months only two or three of the around twenty families remain in the village, but in the hot summer months it overflows with the inhabitants and their visitors.

Here, as throughout the Black Sea region, houses perch like birds on hilltops and steep slopes. The typical wooden houses are set on patches of levelled ground, in gardens surrounded by wooden fences. They are built over basements known as hayatalti consisting of stables for the animals and firewood store.

From the entrance above a flight of six steps leads up to a large balcony with wooden posts known as the hayatönü, which provides a cool shady place to eat meals in summer. The balcony opens onto a rectangular hall surrounded by four or six rooms.

The roofs of the houses are tiled with slate, and the wooden facades are carved in relief with motifs and inscriptions, some religious in character, such as 'Allah' and 'Bismillah', and others the surname of the owner and date of construction. The motifs derive from Circassian culture and consist of weapons such as the long barrelled guns that are held sacred in Circassian tradition and daggers, which are ornamented as richly as the owners can afford. Among the tombstones in the village cemetery are those of their ancestors who first settled here. These stones are inscribed in old Turkish script and the tops carved in the forms of turbans and the fur hats known as kalpak. Everyone in the village is related to everyone else, and the atmosphere friendly.

As well as drinking tea at every opportunity, the Circassians make a special infusion of their own from fresh pine cones, and this fragrant red tea is said to be good for the stomach and digestive complaints. Traditional Circassian generosity and hospitality are displayed in lavish and cheerful meals. Dishes tend to be filling, and meat and milk products such as yoghurt predominate. One speciality is haluj, a triangular fried pastry filled with cheese or walnuts, which is eaten instead of bread with yoghurt, clotted cream, butter and honey. When paying visits to relatives and friends, guests often cook a batch of haluj to take as a present. Another delicious dish is boiled chicken served in a sauce called sipsi made of maize flour, walnuts, butter, coriander and other ingredients cooked slowly over a wood fire in a special earthenware casserole known as a çöven. This is eaten with 'pasta', a kind of soft bread made of maize flour which is also cooked in a çöven.