The man on the plane asked if I’d left my brain in the Departures lounge. ‘You’re travelling all the way to Cyprus to see the Karpas Peninsula?’ he said with a snort. ‘You can see that in two hours. What’ll you do for the rest of the week?’

I wasn’t sure how to answer. I’d been seduced by tales of deserted villages, abandoned Greek monasteries and miles of pristine beaches inhabited only by turtles. This, I’d been told, was the lost corner of northern Cyprus, a wild and slender peninsula that pokes like a bony finger into the Mediterranean. Few Cypriots visit the Karpas, and even fewer tourists. It was, said one, the land that time forgot.

Undeveloped and unspoiled, it’s one of the last corners of the Mediterranean that’s yet to be overrun. And that is how it will remain, if Zekai Altan gets his way. Zekai is the owner of the Nitovikla Garden Hotel, an idiosyncratic eco-hotel that he runs with his wife, Kader.

Pure serenity: Golden Beach is a two-mile strip of white sand surrounded by clear seas and towering greenery

The Altans offer homespun, home-grown and resolutely organic holidays – so much so that you half expect to find fish in the swimming pool. Their vegetables are home-grown, pomegranates are plucked from the trees in the courtyard garden. Even the wine and grappa is home-made: it comes from Zekai’s organic vineyard.

Zekai has created a hands-on programme for guests who want to experience an older, more authentic Cyprus. It’s all about life in the slow lane, where local traditions and customs still hold sway over modern life. (It’s no accident that Zekai has chosen a snail as the symbol for his hotel).

His eco-programme changes with the seasons. Depending on the time of year, you can pick olives, harvest grapes or go bird-watching. ‘But first of all,’ he says, ‘you’re going to learn how to bake Cypriot bread.’

Our teacher is an octogenarian villager named Hatice, a feisty spinster who smokes like a trooper. She shows us how to knead the dough, or rather, beat the hell out of it, pummelling it with arms like hydraulic pumps. Once the dough’s kneaded, moulded and coated in sesame seeds, we bake it in Zekai’s 400-year-old wood-fired oven.

The oven is just one of the many authentic features of his eco-hotel-home. A chiselled stone crucifix above the entrance hints at its once-Greek occupants: the village church, visible from the courtyard, now stands adrift and abandoned.

Giles makes bread with an octogenarian villager Hatice who 'smokes like a trooper'

The Nitovikla Garden Hotel sits amid a typically half built jumble of dwellings with rusting steel rods poking out of every rooftop

Later that morning, Zekai drives me to the nearby lagoon in his ‘eco jeep’ in order to collect firewood from the olive and carob trees. This protected land is perfect hiking country, with well-marked trails and unexpected sights on route. Zekai points out Phoenician tombs hewn from the bedrock and Byzantine olive mills half-swallowed by sand. He talks of eco tourism with evangelical zeal: given half a chance, he’d put global warming into reverse. Nothing escapes his eco eye. As we drive along the coastline after the first rainstorm in months, he explodes in anger when he sees men collecting snails to eat.

‘They lay their eggs after the first rain,’ he explains. ‘If they eat these ones, there’ll be none next year.’

The Karpas Peninsula is best explored by car, for public transport is scarce. We drive through an empty landscape of barren hills and lonely valleys. And then, unexpectedly, we come across a burst of gaudy colour in the form of flowering bushes, brilliant purple in the sharp sunshine.

We stop at the village of Kaleburnu, where Zekai introduces me to Kemal, maker of traditional flutes and brooms. The scene before me is one that you find right across Cyprus: one man working and eight men watching.

‘It’s life in the slow lane,’ says Mustafa in perfect Essex English. I ask where he got his accent. ‘I’m from Romford,’ he says. His friend adds: ‘And I’m from Lewisham.’

Green days: Pull up a table at the Nitovikla Garden Hotel, Zekai’s eco hotel in northern Cyprus

The landscape turns lunar after the village of Dipkarpaz and the villages are few and far between. We pause at a bluff of rock that towers over Golden Beach, a two-mile sluice of sand with a lone sunbather soaking up the heat. A further 30 minutes along a single-track road brings us to the windowless ruins of the Apostle Andreas monastery, a Byzantine shell clinging to the storm-fractured shoreline.

We push even further eastward on a pocked dirt track until we reach the blustery tip of Karpas, all rock and gorse. ‘When there’s no heat-haze, you can see Turkey,’ says Zekai, ‘even though it’s 50 miles away.’

His home village, Kumyali, can’t compete for beauty with others on the peninsula. The Nitovikla Garden Hotel sits amid a typically half built jumble of dwellings with rusting steel rods poking out of every rooftop. But if you’re seeking authenticity, then this is the real deal.

As I slurp my evening glass of organic wine, I think back to the man on the plane who said you could do the Karpas Peninsula in two hours.

You could do it in two hours. But you’d need a helicopter. And you wouldn’t see anything at all.

TRAVEL FACTS Anatolian Sky Holidays (anatoliansky.co.uk, 0844 273 3586) offers a seven-night Traditional North Cyprus Eco Tour from £599pp. This includes return flights, transfers and transportation, half board accommodation at the Nitovikla Garden Hotel, excursions and activities. Advertisement



