Guide
The Zap is the largest river in Hakkari, crossing the province roughly from north to south and carrying its water to the Tigris south of Mosul. It runs 310 kilometres in all, of which 189 are within Türkiye, passing east of the city of Hakkari and turning south again east of the Altın mountains; the river is seven kilometres from the city centre. Fed by rain, snow and glacier melt, it rises in spring and early summer and falls in winter, and with an average flow of 86.5 cubic metres per second it is one of the fastest snow-fed rivers in the country.
That makes it suitable for water sports, and rafting, canoeing and river skiing are all possible on it. The steep, deep valleys along its course are the other attraction, for looking at as much as for adventure. One feature to watch for: rock masses that have rolled down the slopes have lodged to form natural bridges, which local people call the Devil's Bridges. The stretch of the valley between Hakkari and the Iraqi border has a character of its own. At the thirty-ninth kilometre of the valley are the Sine rocks, and in that area, 110 metres along the road to Beytüssebap, you reach the Melise stream with the Ceman meadow and its copse, one of the greenest and most attractive spots in the region.
