Trekking in Cappadocia

For those traveling from Antalya . We meet the sunrise on the bus. Outside the window there is a plain, and beyond the plain is the huge Erciyes volcano. We arrive in Goreme around 6 am. We check into a hostel or campsite, breakfast, shower and a short rest.

For those who arrived yesterday. If you want to do something in the morning, you can go to the Open Air Museum or pre-book a hot air balloon flight at your hotel. Flights usually take place at dawn. At 5 am you are picked up from your hotel and taken out of town to the hot air balloons. You spend an hour or an hour and a half in the air, then champagne, breakfast and return to the hotel around 8-9 am.

At noon, the group gathers in the central square of Goreme. We buy more water and move towards the Pigeon Valley. This uncomplicated and relatively shady valley is ideal for weary travelers. Winding among the intricate stone figures we will quietly approach the rock fortress in Uchisar. The rock, perforated with caves like Swiss cheese, is topped with an excellent viewing platform. This allows you to admire Cappadocia from a bird's eye view without resorting to expensive balloon flights.

We have lunch at the foot of Uchisar and move to the neighboring Valley of Love. The path here either runs down a narrow winding chute, or jumps out onto a breathtaking cliff with a view of protruding stone fangs from volcanic tuff. At the end we go to a small cafe, from where a minibus picks us up and takes us to Goreme.

 In the evening - free time to explore Goreme.  Here every second house is carved out of solid rock, so there is also something to see.

In the morning we will take a minibus to the other side of the Goreme valley to the Pasha Baglara stone mushrooms (one of the symbols of Cappadocia). From here begins an excellent view trail traversing the slopes of the Ak-Tepe plateau. About an hour's journey and we are at the ruins of a stunning cave monastery above the village of Cavusin. It is entirely carved out of a huge rock overlooking the plain.
  We go down a little lower and bury ourselves headlong into the intricacy of the passages of the Pink Valley. There are hundreds of paths and thousands of incredible stone idols among which you can wander for weeks. We will try to limit ourselves to a few hours (with a break for lunch). If you are in the mood, in the evening we will climb one of the peaks of Ak-Tepe, the so-called Sunset Point (Place for admiring sunsets). We return to Goreme, where there is another Sunset Point right above the village. You have already realized that watching the sunset is a mandatory part of the program and there is no way you can miss it. 

Today we need to get up early to prepare for the evening departure. We need to pack our things, vacate our rooms - we’ll leave our luggage for storage at the hotel. After breakfast, a minibus will pick us up we will travel to more distant attractions of Cappadocia. About an hour's drive from Goreme is the underground city of Derinkuyu. This is 8 floors of underground labyrinths (more than 80 meters deep), hundreds of rooms and halls that once served as a haven for 10,000 people. After exploring the dungeons, we will travel a little more. The slopes of another dormant volcano appeared on the horizon - Mount Khasan (height 3268 meters) and right in front of us The grassy steppe suddenly opened up into the steep cliffs of the Ihlara (Ykhlara) canyon. A deep river flows along its bottom, and therefore the canyon is surrounded by greenery (at that time like it’s almost desert at the top). After having lunch on the edge of the abyss, we will go down to the river. We will devote the next 4 hours to traveling along the bottom of this rocky gorge, visiting numerous man-made caves along the way (mostly cave churches with remains of frescoes and engravings). Having emerged from the canyon near Belisirma, we will transfer to the village of Selime. Here is the most impressive of Cappadocia's cave fortresses. Huge columned halls, observation towers and the unforgettable “Stairway to Heaven” (this is for the bravest) - an excellent training ground for the novice Indiana Jones.

By 7 pm we return to Goreme. The Cappadocia tour is over. You can fly home or take a night bus to Antalya (departure around 22:00). However, most often the participants stay in Goreme for one more night and fly away the next morning.

The closest airport to Cappadocia is in Kayseri. However, there is also an airport in Nevsehir, but there are much fewer flights there. Therefore, most often we fly home from Kayseri. From Goreme you can get there by minibus in 1 hour and 25 liras per person. From Kayseri you can fly inexpensively to Istanbul, and then transfer to a plane home. Most Turkish low-cost airlines sell through tickets (for example, Kayseri - Istanbul - Lviv) with a fairly convenient connection.