The kaya valley is just a ten-minute drive from Olu Deniz yet a million miles away in terms of ambience and the typical visitor of this area.

The valley floor is surrounded by the peaks of the mountains which stretch to the very ends of the Fethiye Peninsula. Tracks and single track roads wind along the valley floor through tiny hamlets, past fields full of wheat and tobacco and finally on to the regions' secluded beach at Gemiler.

Kayakoy is, of course,now famed for being the inspiration for Louis de Bernieres novel Birds without Wings. The Greek village of Kaya was abandoned following the forced exchange of populations agreed between Turkey and Greece in 1922. Until then it had been a thriving community for centuries and at the time of the exchange had a population of 20.000. In the intervening years the town has been left to crumble into disrepair leaving in its wake an eerie and captivating 'Ghost Village'.


In the years of 1900, Kayakoyu was an important settlement center with a population of 20.000. It was vacated in line with an exchange agreement signed between Turkey and Greece in 1922. Today Kayakoy looks like a "Ghost Town" where two churches and a school are in the process of restoration with the aim of establishing a village of peace in the region. On the slopes, there are stone houses built in typical Mediterranean style, not overshadowing one another, schools, churches, chapels, workshops and other buildings, as well as intercrossing narrow streets, all of which are reminiscent of an architectural laboratory. Kayakoyu is under protection as a prominent sample of the Anatolian cultural mosaic and will become a village of friendship, peace, science and arts in the near future, when the restoration and planning efforts are completed.

A few kilometers from Oludeniz and Fethiye, climbing past the ancient fortress and rock tomb of King Amyntas, the pine trees give way to the bucolic landscape of the Kaya Village. Here a dwindling number of local families still tend the land and tend their animals. Some of old Greek stone houses have been carefully restored to provide atmospheric and peaceful holiday homes. Visitors can walk, cycle or even horse-ride around the pathways and lanes of the valley pausing at the simple teahouses, restaurants and general stores or continuing the few kilometers down to Gemiler Beach. Perhaps everyone's most vivid memory of Kaya Valley is the haunting choreography of the houses, shops and churches of the once thriving Greek town of Levissi.