Tours in Cappadocia

Cappadocia is a plateau in the middle of Anatolia where three volcanoes dropped ash over several million years, the ash set into soft tuff, and wind and water then cut it into valleys, cones and the towers everyone calls fairy chimneys. People have been carving into it since the Bronze Age — first houses, then churches, then whole cities underground. Goreme is the main base, a village of cave hotels in the middle of the rock; Nevsehir is the working town and the transport hub; Urgup and Uchisar sit on the other side of the valleys, Uchisar under a castle hollowed straight out of a single crag. The Goreme Open Air Museum, a monastery complex of rock-cut churches with Byzantine frescoes, carries a UNESCO listing, and the underground cities at Derinkuyu and Kaymakli go down eight levels.

The balloons come first and organise everything else. They lift at first light, a hundred or more at once when conditions allow, and they are the reason the region books out months ahead in spring and autumn. On the ground the same valleys are covered differently: on horseback at sunset, by quad bike or buggy through the Red and Rose valleys, on foot through Pigeon Valley and Love Valley, or on the standard minibus circuits that the local operators call the red and green routes — the red one staying close to Goreme, the green one running out to the Ihlara gorge and Derinkuyu. Add the pottery workshops of Avanos on the Kizilirmak river, the wine made from grapes grown in volcanic ash, and the evening shows with the whirling dervishes.

Practical. Balloons fly at dawn and stand down in wind, and roughly one morning in five is cancelled — book two mornings rather than one, and take the first of them, since a cancelled flight is refunded but a missed sunrise is not. The plateau sits at around 1,000 metres, so nights are cold even in summer and winter drops well below freezing with snow that transforms the place. Summer afternoons pass 35C with no shade in the valleys. Closed shoes matter more than anything else you pack; the tuff is abrasive and the trails are loose. A minibus day tour costs about what a good dinner does, a private car with a guide several times that, and a balloon seat is the single most expensive hour of most people's trip. Cash in lira works better in Avanos workshops than cards.