You may have heard of the saying that tourism is the industry without chimneys. However Cappadocia is an antithesis for this saying. Because it is full of fairy chimneys!
Last week we spent three days in Cappadocia. The fairy chimneys were like a celebration of geological rock formations in the middle of Anatolian moors. We landed to Kayseri Airport in the morning of Tuesday, picked up by the tourism agency and brought to our little cave hotel made of regional rocks.
Afterwards we went to ride a horse for couple of hours in the Swords Valley, Rose Valley, Red Valley and Çavuşin residential area. It rained while we were at the back of the horses and it was so calm. We learned from the horses’ caretaker Kutsi that there is a big population of wild horses up to 500 around Erciyes Mountain.
Later our local guide Ali picked us up by a jeep for a crazy ride around Love Valley, Uçhisar, Ortahisar, İbrahimpaşa Village and Pigeon Valley. We drank champagne at sunset with the beautiful view of Göreme, where the hot air balloons take off early in the mornings.
We didn’t prefer to take a balloon tour since it was pricy and depended on the weather (and it was risky for us). Our guide Ali told us that there are between fifty to a hundred balloons in the air every morning. I wish I could see such a magical view. May be next time!
On Wednesday, we joined the Green Tour for a full day with our friendly tour guide Oğuz. The tour was called “Green” as it covered an hour long walking in the Ihlara Valley that is a 16 km long canyon outside of the Ürgüp area.
Our favorite attraction was the thousands of years old Derinkuyu Underground City. It was amazing to see how the very early Christians, who were escaping from the pagan Arabs and Romans, took shelter in this Hittite founded underground city of 55 meters depth.
And finally on Thursday we took the Red Tour with the tour guide Ali the second. We started with a visit to Uçhisar Castle. Then continued to Göreme Open Air Museum with many cave churches dating back to the early periods of Christianity.
The most surrealistic landscape that we have seen was Devrent Valley, also known as the “Imagination Valley”, where the rock formations looked like a camel, Smurfs’ houses, a whirling dervish and you name it! It was as if looking at the clouds and imagining shapes, only with different rock forms that eroded in different scales. The fairy chimneys are actually still in process of formation, as there are baby chimneys and adult chimneys. We can only observe a short period of their millions of years long lives. We felt like we were in a fantasy world with these surreal shapes.
For dinner, we ate at the same Kebapzade Restaurant for consecutive three evenings in the center of Göreme. We realized that they had an Islamic tendency (reversed cutlery on purpose?!) but the food was delicious. There were also a few Chinese restaurants as many Asian tourists crowded the area. We learned that it was due to a popular Chinese song by Zhang Chi called “Dai ni qu luxing” (I will take you to travel) that includes a line saying “I want to take you to romantic Turkey.” No wonder why Cappadocia is popular among the Chinese.
We left Cappadocia on Thursday evening and I can conclude that three days were sufficient to see around.