Day 4: Part OneThis was our top day - in more ways than one. We rose soon after the drummer's visit to prepare for a dawn airballoon ascent. We had chosen to fly with the "Kapadokya Balloons" company. This comes highly recommended by the Turkey Travel Planner website (a brilliant resource). It is, I think, the most expensive of the companies at 230Euro/400YTL/£184 per person. What you get for your money is to go in a small group, in our case just 8 of us in the basket (plus pilot). Some companies have large baskets and sometimes cram in 30 people. You get an extended flight of between an hour and half and two hours, in comparison with other companies that you see landing after 30 minutes or so. You will be the last ones in the sky when you come to land. And you get to fly with Lars (a Swedish pilot with 30 years of experience) or his British wife Kaili (who is also very experienced). We flew with Lars who gave us detailed explanations about the technology and techniques of airballooning.
Kapadokya Balloons has a choice of launch sites allowing the pilots to select the best place for that day's weather conditions. Our two yellow and blue striped balloons rose together at surprising speed. First thing in the morning the air is cold and sinks down the valleys; it is a katabatic wind. The balloon, of course, drifts with it. But the speed and direction of drift differs at different heights. So "steering" the balloon depends on reaching the appropriate height for the route you wish to take. At one point one of our fellow passengers asked: "Why are all the other balloons going down?". Our pilot explained: "They aren't. We are going up". We rose to 5,500 ft. The only sensation of movement was a slight breeze created by our ascent. Lars told us that sometimes the appropriate drift would be in a just a thin layer of air, perhaps only 70 ft; which I guess is just about the size height of the balloon itself. Carried silently by the drift we gently headed down towards Goreme; sometimes high above the valley, sometimes brushing the tops of the foot-high weeds on the clifftops (yes, literally).
As the air warmed the katabatic wind died down, leaving the eight and half ton mass of the balloon hovering over Goreme; in fact hovering over our hotel where we could clearly see our room and our little dark red Fiat parked close by. Then, as the air became even warmer, the anabatic wind began with the air now rising, taking us up Pigeon Valley towards Uchisar and its prominent castle. We drifted over fairy chimney houses, our shadow passing their windows, flirted with the eroded cliffs, and played hide-and-seek in the gullies in between. Flying close by the castle we came into land in a field beyond where the landrovers and trailers were waiting for us.
We had all been trained in the emergency landing procedure in case the basket tipped because of the strength of the breeze carrying away the huge fabric envelop above us. We all had to face away from the direction of flight firmly gripping the blue rope handles (not the red ones). If we felt the basket tipping over we had to crouch so that our heads were below its rim. So we all tensed as we approached the ground, and approached it nearer, and nearer and then stopped. Lars had us hanging four ft above the ground next to the trailer. Now how you get eight and a half tons of balloon to hover I have no idea; it was just awesome. Two assistants ran over from the trailer and pushed the basket towards it and it hovered directly overhead. Then we descended the last four inches and we didn't even feel it when the basket came to end of flight.
To celebrate our survival the assistants decorated the basket with branches and flowers and we toasted ourselves and the crew with champagne and cherry juice cocktails. From start to finish - what an absolutely brilliant experience.
TAKEOFF
OUR SISTER BALLOON
CLIFF-HOPPING
KELEBEK PENSION
FAIRY CHIMNEY HOUSE
COOEY - WE'RE UP HERE
HIDE-AND-SEEK
PIGEON VALLEY UP TO UÇISAR CASTLE
CELEBRATING OUR JOURNEY AND SAFE LANDING