Turkey 2/3: Cappadocia in 48hours + 2 overnight buses

With a one way ticket to Istanbul and no real plans beyond that week, I had a vague idea that I wanted to do some much needed time on the coast while in Turkey. However, with dad and Sue having Turkeyed about a week ahead of me, and several pictures of hot air ballooning appearing on Facebook over the Summer, I decided to mission it to Cappadocia en route to the coast to avoid the FOMO of not going ballooning while there.

After a rather hair raising night bus right from Istanbul, where the front door to the bus flung open numerous times, I arrived in Goreme and checked in to a typical cave hotel, as part of the deal. Although not usually a major fan of organised tours, it was a really practical way to discover the area especially in such limited time. The company I that had been recommended to me for the gulet tour were super helpful (Alaturka) and arranged this detour for me as well. I did 2 different day tours (North, South) and hot air ballooning on the second morning. It was a pretty intense couple of days but well worth it to get a taste of such a different region to anything I have ever seen before, and definitely the way to go since I was solo by this stage.

Day one:


Tourist trapping outside the underground city

Rural town lunch stop

Really old frescoes in a cathedral inside a cliff

Tea stop IN a river

Dwellings and pigeon holes carved out of a cliff

Day two:

Ballooning for an hour cost more than a 4 day boat trip, and was worth every centime.

Early morning over Cappadocia

 

 

 

 

Putting away the balloon

Toasting the morning with Tip Box and sparkling grape juice.
Our pilot (in red) had just had a baby and had been piloting for 20 years.

 

Valley dogs

 

Horseback would be an amazing way to explore this region too