UPDATED: Turkey: Popular Cappadocia

Cappadocia, famous for its distinctive landscape of "eroded rock formations, many of which were hollowed out in the Middle Ages to create houses, churches and underground cities"[Wikipedia]. It is the second (to Istanbul) most popular tourist destination in Turkey. We were not disappointed, though some of the "touristic" developments are quite disconcerting. There are hundreds of ATVs around, thankfully all parked during our visit, except a dozen or so in action. We also saw a few motorcycles zipping around, including on walking paths! How can UNESCO allow them?!

UPDATE: Reader KV asked "Can you rent one of these dwellings"? Yes! There are many "cave dwellings" for rent. However, from the reviews we read, those rooms are prone to weak wi-fi signals, and high humidity, so we stayed in a more or less regular hotel.







A more popular and quieter activity is sunrise hot air ballooning, though the first morning I woke up to the woosh sound of the balloon firing its burner right over our building. The balloons made the place even more fantastical. Second below is a video (or click here).



We opted for a low carbon approach to get to know the landscape.

• Rose valley and Red valley: we mostly followed this track. There was a section of ropes in order to get to the top of the ridge (1st below).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Love valley and Pigeon valley: we mostly followed this track. The viewpoints had many visitors, but no so many people walking the trails.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Goreme Open Air Museum (a collection of churches), then we made our own program: after the museum, we went to the entrance of Meskendir valley, but decided we didn't really want to go down into it. We then returned to Goreme via Zemi valley.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

It is now obvious why Cappadocia is so popular, and deservedly so.