We really really liked Cappadocia. It was a soft, warm, easy place where you could camp for next to nothing and spend the cooler hours of the evening walking through beautiful valleys the likes of which I’ve never seen before.

 

We based ourselves in village of Goreme. On the horizon above the village is a snow-capped extinct volcano, it's this mountain that millions of years ago jettisoned tons of ash over the area, the ash solidified and then slowly began to wash away.  What's left now is an area full of fissure-like valleys with walls of pastel coloured rock. The rock is rounded and smooth, from the distance it looks like cornices of snow, up close it’s crumbly to the touch.  Some valleys have widened over the years and the cornices have separated off and formed pillars and columns standing alone or in groups in the middle of fields.  What makes the place even more amazing is that the dusty ash/earth is incredibly fertile and these magical valleys are filled with flowers, vines, apricot and peach trees.

 

Nature aside, since days of the Hittites (that's 1700 BC - “well old”) humans have been carving their homes, stables, dove cots, store cupboards and places of worship into the rock. These valleys are riddled with intriguing doorways often leading into echoey long-abandoned eating halls, viewing platforms or ancient churches. Walking through the valleys free to explore these man-made caves it’s all to tempting swing your hips like Lara Croft or think about that scene out of Indiana Jones.  It was truly amazing to be able to climb up, in and through thousand year old churches filled with 12th Century Greek orthodox frescos and multistory monastery complexes.  

 

The only drawback is that Cappadocia is no longer a hidden gem.  In the complex of rock churches near the centre of the village, there were coach-loads of queues trying squeeze into the small churches blocking the doors (and therefore the light) and pissing us off!  But despite the tourists it’s still a fantastic place, on our walks and bike rides around the village we were more or less on our own.

 

HA