Doors Are Optional Extras

A lot to catch up on! We’re in Cappadocia in Turkey for a week. This trip came about after our plans for an Iraq trip fell apart due to YAADITG (Yet Another American Debacle In The Gulf). Cappadocia has been on our wishlist for a long time, because of its rich history and incredible geology. A recent episode of Amateur Traveler, along with William Dalrymple’s From The Holy Mountain helped solidify our plans.

Normal first-blog-of-a-trip rules apply – I’m barely awake as I write this. Beautiful prose, it is not.

We left Minneapolis late on Friday, and made it to Nevsehir in Cappadocia late on Saturday, via Amsterdam and Istanbul. We’re staying at a very funky place in Urgup called the Sacred House – it’s like something straight out of a Dan Brown book, a place where a satanic sect would be plotting world domination.

We got to bed a little after midnight, with our alarm set for 5am. Oof. But, one of the main reasons folks come to Cappadocia is to take a hot air balloon ride, and it’s always best to plan those for the start of your trip so you have some flexibility for rescheduling.

We got picked up around 5:30, collected a few balloon-mates from other hotels, and then watched while our balloon got inflated. (We booked with Kapadokya Balloons.) I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking – we had about 90 minutes of flight time. Unlike our balloon trip in Morocco, this one got both very low and very high. At times, we could have grabbed the leaves from trees. At other times, we were well over 1100 meters above the ground. As our flight came to an end, our pilot executed a perfect landing right on the back of a trailer being towed by a Land Rover.

We made it back to our hotel around 9:30 and dug into an amazing breakfast. A comical number of dishes came out, each a delightful few bites. After a shower and a quick rest, we drove to the nearby town of Goreme for the next activity: borrowing a Fiat Topolino for the day.

I imagine you’re all aware of the Topolino, but in case you’ve forgotten: it’s a two-seat electric “quadricycle” which can go a maximum of 45kpm, has a range of about 75km, and offers doors as an optional add-on. It’s essentially the same vehicle as the Citroen Ami and the Opel Rocks. It exists so that folks in Monaco have something cute for shuttling between the yacht and the villa. Traversing gravel roads in rural Turkey probably wasn’t the original design intent, but the customer is always right.

We booked a Topolino for 4 hours, and the plan was to explore a few of the nearby sites, do some hiking, and enjoy the ridiculousness of the car. Mission accomplished in all respects. We started with coffees at a scenic overlook, then drove to an area called Rose Valley for some hiking.

At this point, we should probably briefly explain why Cappadocia is an interesting destination. It starts with the geology – 30 million years ago, the area was covered in volcanic tuff (consolidated ash) in a series of eruptions. Tuff weathers aggressively, leaving behind amazing geologic features. It’s also easy to carve, making it ideal for building dwellings in the sides of cliffs, underground tunnels, and so on. The remoteness of the area and the ease of carving the rock have drawn people for millennia. The region was especially important for early Christian groups and other religious sects. The hills and mountains of Cappadocia are riddled with rock-cut churches, monasteries, and hermitages.

We didn’t have a specific hike in mind, but started wandering up a valley and exploring some of the carved rooms. Eventually we picked up a trail with some handwritten signs pointing to a church. The landscape is otherworldly, and you can follow a valley spur to discover entire carved villages, without a single tourist anywhere to be seen.

We returned our Topolino mid-afternoon, then drove our actual rental car to the Göreme Open Air Museum, a site with numerous rock-hewn churches. Some of them have vibrant murals dating back over 1000 years. As we explored, we both reflected on the similarities and differences with our recent visit to Lalibela in Ethiopia. There are strong connections in the faith traditions on display, and the pragmatic use of soft volcanic rock is similar. But whereas the churches in Lalibela are still living, functioning spaces, here they’re purely on display for tourists, Orthodox Christianity having been mostly wiped out in Turkey.

We wrapped our day with an exploration of the town of Urgup itself. Like much of the region, it’s benefited from a building boom over the past 20 years, as tourism has grown enormously. You can’t go more than a few steps without coming upon another newly built “cave hotel”.

We’ve got a couple more days in this area before we head to our other destination for the trip, Sanliurfa. The balloon ride was the only must-do activity, so we’re looking forward to a lot of exploration.