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Caption: Up, up and away.. CAPPADOCIA
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Caption: A few whoosing breaths of fire up we went, a yellow orb rising in a sea of hot-air balloons like the sun brightening the morning sky.
Here are my thoughts when I stepped into the promised land of Goreme, Cappadocia..
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Caption: The day I travelled to Goreme, I decided to take an airplane.
Turkish domestic flights are often much more expensive if purchased outside of Turkey. I already had a reliably fine Turkish travel agent to make everything--including reservations--went smooth.
FYI, if you go to Goreme by land, that'll take 454 miles, 10 to 12 hours.
Video of Göreme
Caption: Entering Goreme
Picture of Göreme
Caption: I was climbing over craggy canyons, pink mountains and mushroom shaped rock formations called fairy chimneys.
Cappadocia is a UNESCO World Heritage Site whose economy survives on tourist flocking to see the fairy chimneys, cave dwellings, vast underground cities and ancient Christian churches carved into mountainsides. Because of its popularity, hundreds of hotels are poised to handle ballon nookings.
The cave hotels, hundreds of which are packed onto a hillside in the small tourist town of Goreme, are a must-do. Pick one with windows to avoid feeling claustrophobic.
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Caption: Staying one night in Cappadocia feels like the whole year..
Picture of Göreme
Picture of Göreme
Caption: The formations and hillsides served as year-round homes, and the caves also provided safety for persecuted Christians of the 10 to 13th centuries.
Visitors can climb through some of the houses of worship, decorated inside with elaborate murals, at the famed Goreme Open Air Museum. The museum is walkable from Goreme's town center.
The Christians also built extensive underground cities, where they hid from attackers, sometimes for months at a time. Two are open to visitors.
At Kaymakli Underground City, you duck through narrow entryways into family rooms, living quarters, kitchens and even chambers where they buried their dead. They also brought down their livestock and made wine in buckets carved into the soft stone walls.
Aboveground, you can hike through valleys with names such as Love, Red and Rose; climb cave castles, which are natural fortresses pitted with tunnels; and scramble through fairy chimneys at Pasabag.
The fairy chimneys have been created over eons by erosion. The soft, white rock at the bottom of the formation erodes more quickly than the sturdier rock at the top, leaving the mushroom shape.
Picture of Göreme
Picture of Göreme
Caption: EVIL EYE
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Caption: Out of town on the Cavusin road we passed a lone Aussie bar which had a tree laden with nazar boncuğu or evil eye talismans – blue glass against a cobalt sky.
The Evil Eye Tree. In Turkey, and Greece, the Evil Eye has a deep cultural symbolism and the talisman is fixed to anything perceived to attract greed, envy, or ill-will to ward off the evil eye.
We noticed the nazars all over Turkey; secreted over doorways, nailed to the masts of boats, embedded into thresholds and displayed in shops, bars and restaurants, there was even one on our hotel key fob.
The evil eye tree dripped with glinting glass eyes which looked like small shiny fruits ripe for the picking – at a small cost of 1TL.
Video of Göreme
Caption: Balooning
Over
Pinnacles
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Caption: We chuckled nervously, but it got our blood pumping in the thinning atmosphere. So did what we saw next.
We slowly spanned up a hillside and hundreds of balloons exploded into view, a colorful melange hovering above the valleys cut like lightning into the Turkish region of Cappadocia.
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Caption: Thanks to timelapse..
Video of Göreme
Video of Göreme
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Caption: Scenic
Soulful
Magical
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