Exploring the Cappadocian hills and valleys

Cave rooms at the Shoestring Cave House

Our research on hotels in Goreme ended with the Shoestring Cave House, a good find overall. Situated right in the center of Goreme and its various cave houses, most of the hotel's rooms are dug out of caves, which were surprisingly warm in the chilly weather of Cappadocia. Based on your budget and group size the hotel offers deluxe rooms with spacious bathrooms complete with bath et al, as well as dorm accommodation which for some reason reminded me of Snow White and the seven dwarfs with its many low ceiling-ed winding interconnected stone cut rooms :) This being the first location of our trip, and not wanting to lose any time, Neeta and I immediately set out for a hike in the valleys. Even before we checked in!

Our first walk was through the Pigeon Valley - a 5km trail from our hotel to Uchisar that offers spectacular views of the natural cliffs and man-made caves, intermittently winding through tunnels carved into the rock. You also see hundreds of pigeon houses carved into the rock formations by the early inhabitants - the story goes that these were made to make it easier to collect the concentrated doses of pigeon poo to make their soil richer for agriculture.

Our hike turned out to be more adventurous than we had planned for. We got lost almost at the start, but quite blissfully unaware of this fact, we followed an unpleasant peasant lady (or maybe she was just not in the mood for friendly banter), and came upon the sweetest and coolest wild grape shrubs scattered on the hill slopes. An absolute treat it was to be devouring bunches upon bunches of them till we were quite sick! Clambering over steep and flaky rocky hills, we finally reached Uchisar, a castle dug out from the rocks, and which offers a panoramic view of the hills, canyons and valleys.

There were more valleys to traverse...Rose Valley, Red Valley (because of the colours of the rock) and Love Valley (that is named for its interestingly shaped natural rock formations), but famished, we decided to return to Goreme, and settled into a nice open air restaurant for a nice hot Turkish meal (but let's leave more on the Turkish food for another blogpost).

Most of these locations are packaged as the Red Tour, but if you're ready for adventure, would recommend you do it on your own, rather than spend on a tour guide.

Over our three days stay in Goreme, we had walked, hiked, quadbiked, and pre-dawn hot air ballooned our way through and over other hills and valleys. Please do not give the quadbiking a miss - while this is not as heavily advertised / written about as the hot air ballooning, it is a great way to experience the valleys and canyons from right within the center of them!

On our way through Pigeon Valley

Mountain-fresh grapes

On the road - to the land of caves and fairy chimneys

We set out on the roadtrip (most of it by bus) on the night of Day 3.

Most of our bus travel was through the nights, making it efficient time wise as well as cost wise. If you want to do these places, be ready to traverse 600-700 kms by road, and between 8 to 13 hours of bus journeys. Neeta, in all her diligent research before the trip had also checked out the railways. But as they were then undergoing renovations on our route, we chose to take the next cheapest option.

We found bus travel in Turkey to be pleasant and safe. There was a uniformed steward in every bus, complete with tie and crisp white shirt. That they doled out complimentary juice, water and some delicious cake with chocolate filling increased the pleasantness quotient multi-fold. It is likely that the cakes get distributed in the middle of the night, so leave instructions with the attendant to wake you up / keep it aside for you as those supplies can be limited :)

Generally speaking, all public toilets in Turkey are clean - so every Lira you've gotta shell out for a pee is quite worth it.

Cappadocia, in the Anatolia region of central Turkey, was where we were headed first. Because it is nestled this much in the center of the country, a lot of tourists give it a pass. We met with a lot of cruise liner tourists who either made it to Istanbul....or came in to Kusadasi and Ephesus from the Aegean Sea....and got out of Turkey.

Giving Cappadocia a miss is not a good idea. Rich in its peculiar landscape and history, this area here has been formed over 60 million years of volcanic eruptions ((Mount Erciyes being the big one among three volcanos) that covered the plateau with layers of ash, lava, basalt and soft rock called tuff. Earthquakes and ongoing effects of erosion from wind, snow, rain have contributed to form the unique landscape that can be seen today - miles of cliffs and valleys in beautiful shapes and colours. Some of them are known as "fairy chimneys" where only the basalt lava stayed on the top, and the rain and snow and wind eroded the rock below.

The very soft rock also rendered it easy for early inhabitants to create caves with even primitive tools. Communities took advantage of this to make their home in the rock and under the ground. Which means some of what we see here are evidences of some very old human civilizations and their homes, churches and whole cities!

There are not too many buses that ply the Istanbul to Goreme route. Goreme Tours, Metro Tours, Cappadocia Tours are some of them. When doing bus travel in Turkey, and especially to the Cappadocia region - Make sure you know where the bus is going to drop you off. Some tourists have posted online about how they have been dropped off at Nevsehir with the assurance that there will be a shuttle from there to Goreme (or Urgup, another favourite tourist destination in this region), only to find upon reaching there that either they have to either fend for themselves or the shuttle is many hours away. We almost saw this happening ourselves. So check and double-check on this at the time of booking your tickets.

We reached Nevsehir early in the morning after a surprisingly fitful night of sleep. You start to really get a sense of "Cappadocia" only about 1 hour into your drive from Nevsehir..up until then you are mostly met with golden barren landscape, scantily interspersed with squares of grapevines.

Then they start peeking up...the odd-shaped hills...the "fairy chimneys"! Our bus took a few turns around the hills, and we were suddenly surrounded by the unique landscape everywhere in Goreme, a quaint little village. Most of the village has its homes and hotels built right into the caves and thereby its inhabitants are cave-dwellers...now that's what I'd call that unique!

A few turns around the hills and we were welcomed by the sight of houses carved right into the rocks, many of which are still inhabited. 

"Fairy chimneys" - Local legend has it that this land with its tall rock "chimneys" was the home of fairies. Some believed the fairies later became pigeons that were considered both sacred and agriculturally important (look later for Pigeon Valley)

Some of the caves are reminders of earlier inhabitants who made their homes, burial grounds here. Some just continue to be lived in...and with a chimney (and not just of the fairy kind)! :)

 

Let's meet up..how about Istanbul?

It all started with the idea of a reunion in Istanbul. By the time we were through with the planning and execution of it, it was a great reunion and a memorable after-reunion roadtrip through Turkey.  Ten of us from JBIMS + two spouses from Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Switzerland, Oman and US made up our reunion group, some of us meeting after 15 years. (My friend Neeta too joined me from Pune, though she chose that we meet only after the reunion for our trip thereafter).

One of the first sights I remember as we landed in Istanbul was of hillsides of red-roofed houses, and the Bosphorous, and the bridges connecting not only two sides of the city but also two continents - Asia and Europe. And as I traveled through the city, soaking in the sights and smells, I couldn't but help the strong feeling of this place having been around for a long long time!

As expected, the stay in Istanbul was spent catching up and chilling out with the group.  Interspersed with a pretty rushed tour of some of Istanbul's landmarks. The Hagia Sophia (Aya Sofia) is truly spectacular -- its scale, beauty of the architecture itself, the Christian frescoes are all magnificent. The Blue Mosque is nice too...tho I thought it was actually less blue than the image the name had conjured up in my mind!

I did also manage to visit the underground Basilica Cistern, very small parts of the Grand Bazaar (it is seriously massive, dwarfing our Crawford market in Mumbai many times). We did the Bosphorous ride too...and it was actually a bit of a bore after the hype surrounding it.

Istanbul's trams (and trains to more distant locations in the city) are very convenient to move about. Would strongly recommend that you take these (@ 3 Turkish Lira per ride) as you hop in and out of tourist spots - many of them concentrated around the Sultan Ahmet square.

Istanbul itself has so much to offer visitors that obviously three days is completely insufficient. Well, we met visitors who were spending upto a week or 10 days in Istanbul alone - calling it their "Turkey trip". Obviously there is a lot to do there.

The best way to enjoy Istanbul is to take to the streets...speaking of which, for all the media coverage of public protests in Taksim Square preceding our trip, Istanbul was generally devoid of protests, other than ofcourse some of our reunion group protesting we weren't visiting enough nightclubs, especially as a few of them had arrived in Istanbul 2 or 3 days earlier and had yet to experience the nocturnal side of the city :)

Istanbul is surely noct urnal. Atleast that's what I call a place that has traffic jams at 2 and 3...we had these while getting to and from Raina - a nice, classy, mostly open-air club we went to just off the Bosphorous bridge)...again witnessed the entire streets off Taksim Sqaure packed with pedestrians at 3 am (I didn't however dig the 360 deg club there...or maybe it was my tired not-used-to-clubbing-bones protesting the partying two nights in a row!)

Nothing can beat the pleasure of walking through the city and its many cobbled streets (make sure you wear comfortable footwear)...soaking in the city's multi-hued sights amidst the wafting smells of Doner (the Turkish equivalent of Shawarma), kebap (kababs), carts selling roasted chestnut, and peeking into sweet shops stuffed with Baklawa of many varieties and Turkish Delight.

I could not manage to do too much..The Topkapi Museum, itself requires atleast half a day to do justice! I knew I would have one more day in Istanbul at the end of the trip...so was hoping I could get to experience some more of this ancient city.

Here are some of my memories through pictures...There's more to come...as the "road" part of the roadtrip began on the night of Day 3...

Hagia Sophia (Aya Sofya) - built as a church (ca 537 -1453), converted to a mosque (ca 1453 - 1931), now a museum since 1935

The Sultan Ahmed Mosque (aka Blue Mosque) - built ca 1609 to 1616. I particularly loved the multi-coloured stained glass hues streaming through the many windows

The underground Basilica Cistern - built in 6th century during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian

The mostly residential and lush Asia part of Istanbul - at the Bosphorous cruise.