Author Topic: A Trip to Kapadokya  (Read 20739 times)

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Offline Colwyn

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A Trip to Kapadokya
« Reply #10 on: October 08, 2008, 14:13:30 PM »
Day 3

Having been driving for two days I was pleased to park up the car for our stay at the Kelebek. After two days of driving we planned a fairly relaxed day. Göreme would be a very pleasant small Turkish town (or large village) without the fairy chimneys; with them it is an enchanting place. Around every corner, overlooking the bars and restaurants, the stacks loom overhead. Many have been carved to form houses or apartments. It is a good place to relax.

CHIMNEYS IN GÖREME



But first we went for a walk. We took the dolmus up the hill to Uçhisar and went up to the castle which is reputed to be the highest place in Kapadokya (obviously not counting the volcanoes). The castle is a set of rooms quarried out of a huge rock that commands miles of surrounding countryside. It is a pretty stiff climb to the top, but worth it.

UÇHISAR CASTLE




CASTLE FROM TOP OF PIGEON VALLEY



From there we hiked down Pigeon Valley (good walking shoes recommended) bach to Göreme. The valley has this name because of the many pigeon lofts it houses. These, like the houses, are cut into the soft rock. The fertility of Kapadokya is achieved by mixing the tufa soil with guano (pigeon sh*t to you) collected from these lofts. If walking down the valley stick to the left hand side. The path/s are generally pretty good but Hilary didn't like one rather narrow track in a steep place, and cutting across when steep slope with unstable shale underfoot. At one point the path led us to a six foot drop which we decided to aviod and then had to scout around for an alternative route. In short, just about enough difficulty to keep us alert. It took a little more than an hour before we arrived at the outskirts of Göreme, mostly because of the time I spent taking pictures.

PIGEON VALLEY




PIGEON LOFTS




APARTMENTS





We decided that we had had enough exercise for one day and spent the rest of the afternoon at the Kelebek pool or lounging on the divans on the terrace enjoying the spectacular views through a glass of Efes.


POOL WITH A VIEW




THROUGH A GLASS BRIGHTLY








KELEBEK TERRACE VIEW



« Last Edit: October 09, 2008, 13:29:50 PM by Colwyn »

Offline Cavfan

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A Trip to Kapadokya
« Reply #11 on: October 08, 2008, 16:17:05 PM »
It all looks and sounds gorgeous! The pension looks like something from the Holiday Programme!

Offline pookie

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A Trip to Kapadokya
« Reply #12 on: October 08, 2008, 16:23:22 PM »
June feels a long long time to wait now I've seen your thread Colwyn !  Looks like it will be worth the wait though.  And you can't imagine what effect the photo of the chilled efes had on me  ;):D

Offline Colwyn

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A Trip to Kapadokya
« Reply #13 on: October 09, 2008, 14:36:20 PM »
Day 4: Part One

This 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





Offline Colwyn

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A Trip to Kapadokya
« Reply #14 on: October 10, 2008, 15:30:56 PM »
Day 4: Part Two

We got back to the Kelebek in time for breakfast on the terrace. We then set off to walk to the Göreme Open-Air Museum. A signpost said it was 1km away; seemed more like 2 miles to us. The museum is in a bowl where a small valley broadens out. From 900 to 1200AD it was a major Byzantine Christian centre with a monastery, nunnery and many small

churches all of them carved into fairly chimneys and cliffs and most with murals of Biblical and other religious scenes - but we didn't spot St George who apparently killed his dragon on top of nearby Erciyes Da&gi (we didn't know that, did you?). One of the churches is known as The Dark Church and has the most spectacular rock paintings. This we thought was because the lack of light inside had led to them not fading. The real reason however is rather more prosaic; for centuries it was used to house pigeons and the walls were covered with pigeon ****. Only after 14 years of scraping them clean did the paintings reappear.

GOREME OPEN-AIR MUSUM




NUNNERY




ROCK CHURCH




ROCK PAINTINGS INSIDE THE DARK CHURCH







Walking back to Goreme the day had become hot so the little roadside bar half way to town was an irresistible magnet. We sat with a couple of frosty Efes. We saw an elderly, white haired couple also walking back to Goreme. We had seen them first coming down one of the very steep stone-cut stairways from a rock church. She was quite sprightly, he less so but was determinedly plodding round. He apologized to all the people at the foot of the stairway for keeping them waiting. "Come on ‘Dobbin' " she encouraged. Like us they found the bar irresistible, came in for a beer, and we got to talking.

They were on a driving tour that made our trip sound a trivial jaunt. Although English and with their main house in Surrey (where they didn't stay much; she also had a flat in Cyprus close to her yacht in Paphos harbour) they lived mostly in the French Pyrenees. From there they had driven a camping van across Western Europe, through Romania and Bulgaria, and across Turkey. He was 79 and she in her early seventies. We were impressed at the adventure. But this was nothing special for them. He was a retired BBC Foreign Correspondent. Later, by Googling, I discovered he had been an "Africa hand" in the 1960s and 1970s including reporting on the horrors of post-liberation Congo and Idi Admin's Uganda).  She was a former travel writer.

They were on their way to Gocek to go on a cruising holiday in an eight-berth catamaran with some old chums. They were staying a few more days in Goreme and were wondering what to do. Airballoooning was outside their budget. We told them of a trip we were going to do the next day and, although they didn't like organized tours ("They are just hard-sell shopping trips usually") they thought it sounded OK and they would think about it. We said our goodbyes and continued our walk back to Goreme marvelling at the stamina, determination and sheer adventurousness of the English upper-middle class - the stuff that built the Empire and all that.



Offline Colwyn

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A Trip to Kapadokya
« Reply #15 on: October 12, 2008, 10:54:49 AM »
Day 4: Part Three
 
After another beer in Göreme we returned to the Kelebek for a some lounging about, a swim, and a siesta to prepare us for the evening's trip. We had booked for a Whirling Dervish ceremony (50 YTL each) and were taken there on a mini-bus for the two of us. Hilary had been wanting to see such a ceremony for a long time and we had not managed to fit one in when we were in Istanbul. However, only a few miles away near Avanos one was held at a caravansaray - one of those fortressed waystations that protected travellers on the Silk Road with a central courtyard where the camels rested surrounded by rooms for the traders and their valuable goods.

Turkey's Whirling Dervishes are members of the Mevlani sect of Islam centred on Konya. Their Sema ceremony represents a mystical journey of man's spiritual ascent to Perfection and then return to everyday life as a mature being. The Sema has seven stages.
1. A eulogy to the Prophet and all prophets before him.
2. A drum sounding the Divine Order.
3. An instrumental improvization symbolizing the Divine Breath.
4. Salutations from the dervishes to each other.
5. Whirling (Sema) - four symbolic dances  - the main part of the ceremony.
6. Reading from Qu'ran.
7. A prayer.

Though neither of us are religious we found it very moving with spiritual playing of instruments, singing and dancing. Quite ethereal. Not all agreed. Four of the people with whom we had shared an airballoon basket were also  there. They were very disappointed and one said "What a rip-off!". I don't know what they expected. perhaps they were looking for some manic wild spinning, or a kind of circus show. They didn't seem to have read the leaflets for the trip that told what the Sema ceremony is about. It isn't crazy berserking. It is a highly disciplined form of religious dancing. We were sorry that they didn't appreciate; but we will remember it for the rest of our lives.

I can't show you our photographs of the ceremony because we weren't allowed to take any. Instead I photographed the tacky tourist trinket Hilary bought at a Göreme Panorama View stall and the rather nice pen-and-ink drawing that Hilary she got in Ürgüp. Or you can view a fragment of a ceremony at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=S45OJnQp6mI which, although US, is the closest on YouTube to the experience that entranced us.

A DERVISH




DERVISHES AWHIRLING



« Last Edit: October 14, 2008, 13:34:43 PM by Colwyn »

Offline Colwyn

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A Trip to Kapadokya
« Reply #16 on: October 13, 2008, 17:02:17 PM »
Day 5: Part One

We thought that the next day might be a bit of a let down after the wonderful stuff we had experienced the day before. In fact we had a lovely day. We had booked with the Hiro travel agency for a full day tour - at 50YTL per person this seemed a very good deal. Indeed I doubt whether we could have done it cheaper had we travelled by ourselves once all the entrance costs, the meal , and petrol costs were added up. And we had an excellent guide as well.

We walked down to the otogar to find we would travel by mini-bus. Hilary sat and waited for others to assemble. They were all backpackers in their early 20s. In total there were 12 of us. We set off up the hill to Uçhisar and stopped outside the Göreme Panorama Camping Park where two more travellers got on board. You guessed, it was the elderly couple we had met the day before. So the complete party was now 14, a very good size for a day trip, and we were no longer the oldest.

The mini-bus went to Nevsehir and then turned south. We traveller thtough fertile countryside with fields of pumpkins (grown for their seeds) and potatoes (which are a major export of Kapadokya). The rural transport of choice was the horse, especially pulling carts but also carrying huge loads on their backs. We were heading for Derinkuyu where there is the largest of the excavated underground cities. Apparently there are over a hundred of these in the region, with 36 being open to the public. They originate as far back as Hittite times (1500-1300 BC) and have been expanded over the centuries since then. They provided havens for the local population against marauders and people could live in for several weeks with their own water supply, food stores, stables and ... wine presses (nice sense of priorities).

What do you have in mind when going to an "underground city" for the first time. I vaguely assumed we would be in a mountainous, or at least hilly, area and the city would be cut into the side of it. But when the bus pulled up in the car park we were in the middle of a broad flat plain. If the guide hadn't pointed it out we would never have noticed the top of a ventilation shaft in some long grass. The original entrance way would have been similarly difficult to find. The city was right under our feet and went down eight levels. We entered by steep steps then along narrow corridors with small rooms on each side and occasionally leading into large open spaces. Millstones could be wheeled across the passageways to block any raiders and were fixed in place by chocks in the little rooms cut by the side of the tunnels. Wells sank deep below the city and ventilation shafts rose from Level 8, through the higher levels, up to the surface. Animals were kept in stables near the entrance because they couldn't get into the bowels of this extraordinary place. Quite an experience.

DOWN STEPS




ALONG CORRIDORS




PAST LITTLE ROOMS




INTO BIG SPACES




AND PEERING UP VENTILATION SHAFTS



Offline Colwyn

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A Trip to Kapadokya
« Reply #17 on: October 14, 2008, 13:49:52 PM »
Day 5: Part Two

Our next destination was the Ihlara Valley. This is the most spectacular canyon of Central Anatolia being cut by the Melendiz river that rises on Mount Hasan - one of Kapadokya's great volcanoes. The river never gets to the sea as it seeps away underground a few miles north of the canyon but, even in summer, it runs quite strongly at Ihlara. We arrived at the intricately named "Ihlara Valley Touristic Installation" and descended the 360 steps to the canyon floor stopping off at the rock-carved Agaçatli Kilise (Church Beneath a Tree). The valley has a dozen or so of such churches but we only visited the one - just as well, we were a bit "churched-out" from the previous day. The canyon in the midst of such a dry, sun-scorched landscape, is wonderfully green and refreshing. We walked down the valley for an hour or so, taking a break to cool our feet in the river, before arriving at Belisirma and delightful restaurants with pontoons over the river to take an excellent lunch - and the odd bottle of Efes.

LOOKING DOWN INTO CANYON




DOWN BY THE WATERSIDE




THE GREEN VALLEY




COOLING OFF




A RELAXING LUNCH


Offline wickwilly

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A Trip to Kapadokya
« Reply #18 on: October 14, 2008, 17:59:10 PM »
wonderful photographs. Thankyou for sharing them with us.

WW

Offline Firo

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A Trip to Kapadokya
« Reply #19 on: October 14, 2008, 19:02:54 PM »
Fab pics we must have been there at the same time as you. One of the natural wonders of the world and highly recommended.
Fi




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