Cappadocia

I have been to Cappadocia before and until now it is still one of my most favourite places on earth i visited (Maybe together with Mt. Bromo, the still active Vulcanoe in Indonesia). The tourist crowds in Göreme (the town at the center of it all, where every cave and house was turned into a hotel) are overwhelming, but the good thing is: Most of these people just go with some tour and or a rental car and go to the most accesible view points. But the true beauty of this area lies in discovering all the hidden valleys, caves, tunnels and churches spread all over the place. The landscape, which is already so special that it seems from another planet, is full of holes. Almost every rock has at least one and invites you to have a peek inside. While some caves are merely a bigger hole, it can happen that you enter one of these holes and you step into a whole cave appartment, with fireplace, shelfs, a toilet in the back (often even some drainage system), sometimes including a well. Some of these „appartments“ have stairs, or tunnels leading to other rooms, and so it can happen that you enter some innocent hole and after climbing up some stairs, you are suddenly in a cave at the top, overlooking the whole valley. It is easy to imagine how the inhabitants of these caves used them to hide from their enemies, having a good overview, whereas the enemies never knew what hole leads to where, and what is waiting behind them. This time we were also staying in a cave and i shot a lot of pictures.

The “Love Valley”, named after the manyphallus shaped rocks in there…

In Cappadocia we also met a record number of other cyclists. Among them one Taiwanese cyclist, who is on the road for four years. After crossing all of the Americas and Europe he is now on his way to Africa. He was with a taiwanese journalist, who was actually supposed to come to our concert in Ankara. He invited us to one of the many chinese restaurants in Capadoccia. It was super authentic chinese food experience including ordering the food per WeChat on a tablet. After taking the order the waitress scanned the QR-Codes on our table. All this in a restaurant with 4 tables. Odd experience, but delicious food!

Our bicycles parked in front of this historical appartment complex, where we stayed over night. Most of the upper floors where not accesible, but through the erosion through the centuries become exposed.

Many of the murals are still in quite good shape. What i really find surprising, how there are all these historical artifacts and they are just left there to dissolve slowly. But it’s probably because of their abundance and difficulties of preservation.

So many holes and you never know where you come out or if they just end up to be a dead end.

This tunnel had some light after a while, luckily 🙂

It is also interesting how the layers of the sediments draw these straight lines right through the otherwise organically shaped landscape

This cave church had one of the best preserved murals we saw

Besides the caves and the crazy landscape, Cappadocia is also the worldwide center of hot air balloons, with every morning around 100 ballons starting, all around the year. This time we camped in a cave just next to one of the places where the balloons take off. And after a short night sleep…