Cappadocia (Turkey)

Background
**********
I had heard great things about the Turkish region of Cappodocia and it had long been on my list of 'must visit' locations so this March my husband and I booked a one week trip with the adventure travel company Explore. We travelled from Istanbul to Konya on an overnight train, which easily beat the wheels off any of the many sleeper services I've tried around the world. From Konya it was another 4-5 hours by bus ...
.../>
If you are thinking of doing something like this yourself, I can certainly recommend the train journey but would not advise staying in Konya - I've been for business and it's just a rather bleak industrial town (good if you want to meet biscuit manufacturers but not many people do!)

Where is Cappodocia?
******************
The simple answer to that is - slap bang in the middle of Turkey. It's in the central ... more

Background
**********
I had heard great things about the Turkish region of Cappodocia and it had long been on my list of 'must visit' locations so this March my husband and I booked a one week trip with the adventure travel company Explore. We travelled from Istanbul to Konya on an overnight train, which easily beat the wheels off any of the many sleeper services I've tried around the world. From Konya it was another 4-5 hours by bus to the town of Goreme in the heart of Cappodocia.

If you are thinking of doing something like this yourself, I can certainly recommend the train journey but would not advise staying in Konya - I've been for business and it's just a rather bleak industrial town (good if you want to meet biscuit manufacturers but not many people do!)

Where is Cappodocia?
******************
The simple answer to that is - slap bang in the middle of Turkey. It's in the central Anatolian plane - a long way from the seaside and, at the time of writing, a long way from Van province where the bird flu problems have been to date.

Why would I want to go to Cappodocia?
********************************
Well, that's pretty much what my parents asked me. Why go to Turkey and not go to the seaside? If you want a beach holiday or a lazing around the pool trip, this isn't for you. However, Cappodocia has some of the most spectacular and eerie scenery in the world and it's perfect for an easy-to-moderate walking holiday especially if you like a combination of history and topography.

Millions of years ago - some estimates say about 10 million so geologically speaking, that's the week before last - volcanoes erupted in the region covering the land with thick layers of volcanic ash and debris called Tufa. Tufa is soft and crumbly. Later volcanic activity covered the soft tufa with a thick layer of basalt - a much harder, blocky rock that will be familiar to anyone who has seen the Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland. As the rock weathered over millions of years, the land formed itself into a unique and distinctive landscape with tall columns of soft tufa, topped by blocks of basalt. Fortunately, the folk who saw these towers and named them Fairy Chimneys were less smutty than most of my friends who think they look like giant phalluses (photos below to prove the point).
So, attraction number one - the Fairy Chimneys

Human Influence
**************
The rock is soft and crumbly so it's not much cop for building houses. There's not a lot of good mud either so the local folks discovered centuries ago that the easiest way to make a dwelling was to hollow out the rocks and live inside. They built complex 'cave' dwellings that were relatively warm in winter and cool in summer. People still live in these cave buildings today and give us:
Attraction #2 - troglodyte villages and funky housing that looks like something from Grand Designs

Religion
*******
Cappodocia was part of the ancient eastern Roman Empire and became an area much inhabited by Christians from what we'd today call the Greek Orthodox church. They built fabulous chapels, churches and monasteries out of the rocks. The decorated them with gouache and frescos with intricate bible tales. And then, in the 1920s when the Greeks and Turks fell out big style, all the Christians headed back to Greece abandoning their chapels and leaving us:
Attraction #3 - fabulously decorated rock cave churches

Fighting and Hiding
*****************
Cappodocia lies in a strategically important area on the east-west route through the middle east and so has been the sort of place that, whilst quite fun to live in, tended to get fought over a lot over the centuries. The locals responded to this by building fabulous underground cities - with hundreds of interlinked rooms like giant human termite mounds. Allegedly there are about 200 of these underground towns in the Cappodocia region. Each time the enemy came rolling through, the entire town or village took to the underground homes and hid - sometimes for months at a time. Like giant nuclear bunkers filled with water, food and wine. Today the locals still use some of these and create new ones to store their crops but thankfully, they don't have to go and hide any more.
These give us attraction #4 - underground cities.

Fortresses
********
Nor surprisingly, some folk like to run and hide whilst others stay and fight. The rock fortress of Uchisar is a spectacular site - carved out of a large rock, it gives views for tens of miles all around and is well worth the climb. We arrived just minutes after a delegation of the South Korean Ministry of Defence and were amazed to be allowed to go in to the fortress with them. There are a few other 'hisars' in the area, but Uchisar is hard to beat and forms my:
Attraction # 5 - fantastic fortress.

Ballooning
*********
Cappodoccia has some of the best conditions for hot air ballooning in the world. Each morning as the air in the valleys warms up, it travels up the valley and rises. Balloonists ride the air current up the valley sometimes hovering no more than a few feet about the apricot trees, almost close enough to touch the chimneys. I had wanted to balloon for as long as I can remember so this was something I had to do. For just a shade over £100 each, we had an hour and a half in a big balloon travelling through the valleys, between the chimneys, breaking a couple of trees and then finally taking off over the plane at about 40km per hour. Magic. If you book a balloon trip in the UK, I'm told that you can wait weeks for the right conditions so if you always wanted to try it, this is a great opportunity for:
Attraction #6 - fab ballooning

Walking
*******
We have a walking holiday most years and this is one of the best we've done. Yes, there's a lot of up and down and the ground underfoot is quite friable and crumbly. It won't suit you if you don't like hopping across rivers and scrambling up hills but it's superbly peaceful and very beautiful. If you like your walking to give you history and beauty, it's a great place to go. In mid-March, we were hitting the very beginning of the season and it was a touch on the chilly side - April to mid May should be excellent and October to mid November is also apparently very good
Attraction #7 - great peaceful walking

Eating and Drinking
****************
Most of the food is very cheap in Cappodocia - we were spending around £2-3 for lunch and £5-8 for dinner most days. The drink is relatively expensive - well it's a predominantly Moslem country so that's fair enough. Specialities include fabulous lentil soups, lots of meaty kebab-type things for the meat eaters and for me, my favourite is the Turkish Pizza - a boat shaped pizza that beats the Italian version by a mile. There's also an odd local speciality where the meat and sauce is cooked up in a sealed pot which is then smashed open at the table - a bit of a gimmick but I'm told it's quite tasty.

In Goreme there are lots of excellent restaurants - from a few pounds up to tens of pounds. Check the menu outside and look out for great value set meals. Turkish restaurants tend to give a lot of free food - fabulous bread, sometimes salads and often free fruit for desert. Even free coffees sometimes so if the café owner says he wants to 'offer' you something, don't say no - you might offend him and miss out on some real goodies.
Attraction #8 - the Turkish Pizza

So that's my summary of what to see and do in Cappodocia - don't let the bird flu nonsense put you off, this is an excellent place full of friendly people and great things to do. Take a look at my photos if you are interested.

Thanks for reading
 

...less