Thirty kilometres east of the city of Denizli in southwest Turkey you see a yellow signpost pointing south to Haydarbaba Türbe and Kaklik Cave 3 kilometres away. Kaklik Cave was created by an underground stream eating away the limestone and sulphurous rock of the region. It seems strange that a cave should be situated not on the nearby Mount Malý, which rises to 1277 metres and is made almost entirely of marble, but on a flat plain covered with cotton fields and vineyards.

The mouth of the cave lies near Kokarhamam Spring - the name literally meaning 'smelly bath' on account of the sulphurous fumes! - which waters a reedy marsh crisscrossed by channels

These geothermal waters rich in lime and sulphur rush up from an underground course extending hundreds of metres below the surface, and since antiquity have been used to cure skin diseases and to irrigate the fields.

The cave mouth is a sink hole measuring 13 by 11 metres across and 8-10 metres in depth, created by the collapse of the roof above an earlier cave. Inside is a great stepped travertine resembling the famous white calcium carbonate deposits of Pamukkale. This has been created by the cascades of the underground stream, which forms a series of pools as it pours from one level to the next. Other small streams pouring in waterfalls down the north wall of the cave have created wall travertines in places.

When the roof of this cave collapsed, it formed a sink hole cone, over which lime-laden waters from a spring outside the cave flowed, depositing calcium carbonate in the form of travertine steps. This water flows into the cave mouth and pours down the steps from pool to pool, on which the sunlight falling at different angles through the day creates a scene of wonderful variety. The walkways through the cave pass on either side of this cone.

Interesting, beautiful and accessible, the cave is expected to attract great interest now that it can be safely explored.



* Dr Lütfi Nazik is a geomorphologist at the Institute of Mineral Exploration in Ankara