Cappadocia, Nevsehir, Turkey
It is an incredible place you must see. Even the author Patricia Schultz talks about Cappadocia page 472 in her book “1000 places to see before you die.” This is a proof of this beauty. When you enter the area with your car the panaroma will amaze you. You will forget to close your mouth after you said “WOW” This is the land of "fairy chimneys". This is the land of Cappadocia. Cappadocia means “the land of beautiful horses”. The formation of this landscape is all natural cause. The erosion, water and wind… All took place in this amazing region to form these amazing structures, chimneys. Why do they call these fairy chimneys though? Old people had told for generations that fairies used to live in these chimneys. They believe that probably because the structures were too hard to be built or form. So the fairies used their magic wound and created these houses to live. Most of these chimneys have rooms carved in them and used as houses for decades by the different civilizations who passed through from this area. Some of them are rented by villagers to use as pensions and hotels today. The government holds the ownership and this way controls the use of these structures and makes sure they are preserved well while they are serving the domestic and foreign turists as wonderful hotels.
Staying in one of these cave rooms is a fantastic experience. You feel like in the time all those people lived. The rooms stay at the same temperature all around the year. It is around 15 C/60 F. The chimney/ cave material which is mostly clay keeps the humidity and the temperature stable so even when it snows in winter you wouldn’t need so much heat to keep yourself warm. Also it is a great conditioned environment for wine making. That's why you will see lots of vineyards and wineries in the region.
What can you do in this area?
The region has different towns, Goreme (which means “you should see” in Turkish), Urgup, and Uchisar. Goreme has most of these fairy chimneys. In Goreme, a balloon tour would be a great thing to start your day. Your day has to start early, getting up at 4.30 am and getting picked up by the tour operators are the first things to do. They take you to an empty space between those fairy chimneys and serve you breakfast with coffee and herbal teas and muffins while you watch them blow the huge balloons that will take 30 passengers each. You get excited by waiting. There are so many balloons and you wonder which one is going to take you to see the incredible landscape from the sky. There are two different tours with two different durations as two a.m. and two p.m. A.M. one is for the sun rise and P.M. one is for the sunset. You can take any of these tours with the option of one hour or two hours durations. Of course if the time goes up, price does too along with the altitude :) since the balloon is raised to a higher altitude. But it is worth to see. You can take pictures and enjoy the cool weather which will turn really hot if you are there in summer. But I recommend you to go there early or late Summer or the end of Spring and beginning of Fall. There are a lot to see and you don’t want to walk around these places when it is 43 C /110 F outside. There are several valleys with different formations but caused by the same natural effects. There are also many churhes in the area built in these chimneys, caves. The Ihlara Valley is one of them. This valley used to be used as a monestery area for the priests and nuns to worship and get trained. The area also was used by the priests to rest and think about their religon and God. If you take a walking tour in this valley, you will get a chance to see some of these churches with some incredible paintings on the ceilings and walls. The history and stories about these paintings are going to amaze you. At the end of this little journey you will find yourself at a restaurant that is founded on top of the river that had formed this valley. You can have traditional food here and fresh-water fish and traditional turkish yogurt drink “ayran”.
There are some farmlands in this valley. The local people say the temperature and the humidity are very suitable for farming. When it gets cold in winter and hot in summer, the valley has the perfect temperature for their crops. Local people usually have vineyards. And in Urgup, there are famous wineries that produce very tasteful wines. Again the region is very suitable to grow grapes.
In Goreme and Urgup, there are two underground cities that are built by the Hitits to fight with Romans. These underground cities were built going down two floors first to keep the food from going bad and for storage but then the villagers started to use them for protection from the wars that happened in the region. They made some changes to them though. First of all they needed more space because they were going to use this city to live for a while. They carved down 5 more floors which made it 7 floors. It goes 65 m/ 214 feet down under the ground. Then they added more rooms on the sides for families. Each family had their own room. They made rooms for making wine, rooms for animals, kitchens, praying room, even a bar and a school. Every house above ground in the village back then had a secret tunnel that connects to this underground city, because when the enemies come they would crawl in these tunnels to come to the underground city to stay safe. Today some of these tunnels are still open in some of the old houses. And this city feels like it has air conditioning because like everything else they built air tunnels so cleverly that circulate the air and creates a nice breeze inside these rooms.
The town center has several gift shops, jewelry stores, carpet and rug stores. The carpets are very unique and famous in this region so make sure to take a look and try to bring home a little souvenir.
At night, the view takes another pretty look. Most of these fairy chimneys are illuminated. And you can just enjoy this beauty while you walk around the town or having your dinner or sipping your Cappadocian wine...
