Cappadocia
Cappadocia is a country of fairies and inconceivable, as if unearthly, statues and figures, worthy of the pen of the best poets and connoisseurs of beauty. When I first looked at her, I completely lost my words, so only after some time, after returning home, I was able to begin my story. The beauty of Cappadocia overwhelmed me, I drowned in it, losing my breath for a while. I have traveled a lot around the world, but my heart is now forever with the spirit of this land, because there is nothing in our world more amazing and captivating than the miracle created by nature here. Cappadocia is a natural phenomenon, a unique place that has been considered one of the main wonders of the world for some time.
Surprisingly, not much is known about him yet in Russia. Ten years ago, even the very name of this place was perplexing for most travel agencies, and even now almost no one undertakes to organize a trip there. Even more surprising is that this place is located in a country extremely beloved by Russian tourists - Turkey. Getting to Cappadocia is easy: just make a three-hour flight to Istanbul, and then transfer to local airlines and in an hour you will be in Kayseri. Upon arrival in Kayseri, we took a taxi and an hour later we were in the heart of Cappadocia - the town of Goreme.
The road in Goreme leads through fields and plains, already yellowed steppes, a lifeless abandoned mountainous area - the usual landscape of Turkish land, but suddenly everything changes, Goreme rises before your eyes like a mirage, like something completely incredible for the local landscapes. More than three million years ago, there were many active volcanoes that forever changed the face of land, created mountains and deep faults. Lava flowed to the surface and solidified in unthinkable forms, and then for many centuries water, wind and temperature changes created something truly bizarre and beautiful. Every now and then all sorts of formations rise up before your eyes - long white cones topped with black hats, multi-meter stone mushrooms, pyramids and much more.
Stunned by the unprecedented beauty until now, I did not notice how we ended up in a hotel - a small building hung everywhere with carpets, beautiful multi-colored lamps, and old household items. We had the opportunity to stay at one of the cave hotels, but, according to travelers who had once been in these places, it could be quite cool there, so we decided not to risk it.
In the evening we went for a walk around Goreme, and I saw with my own eyes why this place is called the land of fairies. For many millennia, people lived in Cappadocia, they hollowed out numerous rooms and labyrinths, houses, dovecotes, churches in the soft rocks of tufa. Many of these houses look like oblong pipes with large dark-colored stones on top. At night, when a light is turned on inside such a house, all its walls begin to glow from the inside. From ancient times, when the local population was not yet aware of the Christian settlements in these places, people believed that fairies lived in such houses, which is why to this day these stone statues are called “fairy fireplaces”. At night, when the lights are on in all the houses, an absolutely fantastic picture opens up before your eyes. For several days while we were in Cappadocia, my heart ached and seemed to stop every time I saw such a miracle. Here one can easily experience bursts of tears from the beauty that strikes the heart. Almost every step can bring such a discovery, and it is absolutely impossible to prepare or get used to it. Probably, you need to be born in this place in order to be able to perceive it as a reality. The sense of reality in this place completely left me, and I still can hardly find words to convey my own feelings. Even more amazing is that such a place is, in fact, only a 4-hour flight from my house. This is where you realize how small and unusually beautiful our world is. All our imagination is not enough to come up with something more amazing than has already been created before us.
Similar stone cities are located on this earth everywhere. It is especially surprising that these cities are located not only above the surface of the earth, but also descend many floors underground. Extensive multi-storey underground cities stretch for tens of kilometers. Currently, an area of only 40 square kilometers has been studied. Many cities reach up to 15 floors in depth. To this day they have functioning systems of ventilation and water supply. It's hard to avoid the temptation to delve into these hidden labyrinths with a flashlight, but it's really life-threatening, because soft rocks often collapse, leaving you alone in narrow corridors and pitch darkness. Despite my irresistible enthusiasm and willingness to set out on a journey through any, even the darkest labyrinth, I restrained my impulses - otherwise, it is likely that I would not be able to bring back my story.
Excursions are carried out in one of these cities, which is called Derinkuy. We went there not the next day after arrival. There is an opportunity to go down 7 floors down. The corridors are so narrow that in many places only one person can pass through them. Most of the corridors are about 150 cm high, and in some places you have to not just bend over, but crawl on your knees for some time. In a word, it is quite difficult to go through such labyrinths and multi-storey stairs. On the lowest floor there is one special place where you can feel like a prisoner of these dungeons for a while - this is a small and very narrow corridor made in a semicircle. Perhaps he served as one of the moves that were supposed to confuse intruders. In this corridor, you feel perfectly trapped - cramped cold walls, low ceiling, pitch darkness and temporary loss of orientation. This experience is enough to save yourself from the temptation to wander through the underground labyrinths on your own. I had to visit different caves in my life, and even in those where you can see majestic stalactites and stalagmites, small waterfalls, but I have never experienced such a secret thrill as in this underground city. If you think about how countless people in health and disease passed through these corridors, touched the cold walls, how many joys and sorrows they carried with them. For some, this place was home, the most native place on earth, and these people could hardly imagine that in many centuries travelers from all over the world would come here and consider it one of the greatest miracles on the planet. No, they did not even imagine this, because the very name "Goreme" is translated as "invisible", invisible to anyone except those living in it.
For those who are not ready for underground tests, there is a national park in Goreme (Open Air Museum), where you can see amazing cave cities above the ground. People from all over the world come here to see rock churches with magnificent murals created at the very beginning of the birth of Christianity. Indeed, the beauty and antiquity of these churches are amazing. These painted temples seem especially amazing after squeezing through a narrow door, as it seems, in an ordinary rock. And passing through this nondescript entrance, you suddenly find yourself in a church with columns, frescoes, an altar. The game of contrasts makes the skin crawl. You can spend a lot of time looking at the unique frescoes. It seems miraculous that their colors have survived through many centuries and have not been destroyed by numerous earthquakes and foreign conquerors.
We were lucky to visit Cappadocia at the very beginning of June, when the hot sun had not yet dried up all the magnificence of the local mountain flowers. The rock churches were surrounded by poppies, cornflowers and many other wildflowers. Near the national park you can see a very beautiful flowering field where horses graze. Once upon a time, magnificent Persian horses were raised in this area, from which the name "Cappadocia" came from - from Persian - "the country of beautiful horses. "
However, underground cities and fairy fireplaces are not the only thing that makes Cappadocia a truly unforgettable place. Of particular pleasure are walks in the valleys, of which there are many in these places. We spent the first two days of our stay in the country of fairies traveling together with the local travel agency New Goreme Tour, whose office is located on the central square of the town of Goreme. It was the right choice. Although you can drive to the farthest places in Cappadocia, which are definitely worth seeing, in just 40 minutes, it will be very difficult to do it on your own. The fact is that most of the roads here are not paved, which means they are not marked in any way either on paper maps or on the navigator, which we also took with us. The trouble here is with pointers: they are simply absent. The only way to see all the wonders of this region is a trip along with an excursion or an individual guide. Near Goreme, some valleys can be visited on foot, as we did on our own on the last, third day of our stay.
There are several possible tours to choose from, the two main ones being the "Red Tour" and the "Green Tour", both of which are full-day tours. The “Red Tour”, which we went on the first day, allows you to see all the most wonderful places near Goreme itself, including the National Park (Open Air Museum), a rocky high-rise city, several unique valleys, rock monasteries and churches, a panorama of the Erciyes mountain range and fairy fireplaces.
"Green Tour" allows you to see the distant beauties of Cappadocia, such as the Derinkuy Underground City and its 15-storey underground labyrinths, the Ihlara Valley, the rock monastery castle, other wonderful valleys and panoramas. These are just the main beauties that can be seen during these two trips. Each piece of Cappadocia is unique and inimitable, so no tour can replace another. Each step on this land gives the eye a new miracle, a new mystery, amazing forms and mountain formations. During these two days, we saw so much unimaginable that it is even difficult for me to make an exact chronology of our journey and remember every stop and discovery. I gladly threw myself into that whirlpool, leaving behind maps and routes, and simply enjoying the fact that I can walk on this earth, breathe its air, touch its wonders.
The history of this land has many centuries and is truly limitless. You can spend a lifetime studying it, but conquering it with your mind in a few days is incomprehensible and unthinkable. While I stayed on this earth, I tried to feel and absorb its spirit as much as possible. People can tell you a lot, they can draw up a map, write names and dates on it, describe the composition of rocks and rocks, they can tell you any detailed information about Cappadocia if necessary, but they will never be able to put its spirit into their hearts if you yourself have not touched her. That is why, having already told a significant part of my impressions, I will not delve into history, numbers, dates, other similar information, I will not describe detailed routes and more. Believe me, you will find plenty of this information if you decide to visit or explore Cappadocia. I just want to convey the beauty of this place and my indescribable delight from contact with it.
The land of Cappadocia gave me its image, its soul, it remained with me with countless pictures and memories of its bizarre forms and wonders. It is not for nothing that I have spoken so many times about the “miracles” of Cappadocia, because it is difficult for me to find other words: I still stand in front of her with wide open eyes and repeat about “miracles”, devoid of any other words. This is what makes people real beauty - silent, stunned and infinitely happy.
In my recollections, pictures of valleys with huge porcini mushrooms and many-meter-long bulges rise up every now and then. Tufa, snow-white and warm in the sun, creates a feeling of lunar landscapes, and only a lot of unprecedented wild flowers at their foot makes you believe that you are still on Earth. I was struck by the "fairy fireplaces" crowned with black hats. Fireplaces grow in long columns against the backdrop of endless bizarre valleys, and on the horizon, through their snow-white pillars, you can see the snow-capped Erciyes mountain range. Can the human imagination come up with something more delightful?
I remained in love with the green valley of Ihlara. Finding it is not easy, despite the fact that its length is more than 15 km. We were driving along a completely flat steppe, only mountains were visible on the horizon, and nothing foreshadowed changes. And suddenly, in a completely incomprehensible and unexpected place, a fault appeared in front of us, going down many tens of meters. The sizzling sun and the dried up steppe above and the heavenly green valley below - the river, tall trees and flowers. No one knows why such a colossal valley suddenly appeared here, in the middle of a flat area. The pedestrian part of the valley is about 5 km; All this time the path leads along the river.
This journey through the valley was wonderful, the path winding along the river on one side and along the huge fault wall on the other. She glided between old and thick elms, avoided huge boulders, and sometimes dived under them. In this case, it was necessary, bowing to three deaths, to follow her or look for workarounds. In the rock on the other side, windows of ancient settlements appeared every now and then. To this day, I puzzle over how the ancient inhabitants climbed many meters high - did they use hidden passages inside the mountains, or simply climbed by suspended ladders? Perhaps in many cases this will remain a mystery. I enjoyed the road, that very childlike feeling of a real journey slipped through, when everything is presented in iridescent and fervent colors, and all I want to do is go on and on to the most invisible horizon. I looked at the thick branches of the trees that touched the water - droplets fell from their leaves every now and then - I admired the abundance of wild flowers and the general picture of the valley. Each such trip was a kind of journey within a journey, and in this huge gorge for moments I felt like a midget who ended up in the reserved garden of some giant.
However, the Ihlara Valley, in my opinion, although one of the most pleasant for walking, is not the most amazing. On the last day of our Cappadocia trip, we undertook a self-guided trek through the valleys, asking an agent from New Goreme Tour for transport support. In the morning we were taken to the beginning of one of the most beautiful valleys - the White Valley, which smoothly turned into the Valley of Love - the final and very intriguing point of our route. The White Valley is also a huge mountain fault that stretches for about 7-8 kilometers. We stood at the top of this rift, in the middle of a magnificent lush flowering spring field, wondering how we could get down. Not finding a single path leading to the bottom of the valley, we decided to walk along it along the very edge of the fault, examining its bizarre shapes and formations from above. However, it soon became clear that in order to pass the valley, it was simply necessary to go down.
At that moment, I noticed something resembling a path. This path, it seemed to me, led smoothly down into the valley, through flowers and tall grass, and we followed it. However, the further we went, the narrower and steeper this path became. In the end, we actually had to squeeze between rocks that were constantly narrowing on both sides. It became difficult and almost impossible to walk, which gave rise to doubts about whether a human foot had set foot on this path at least once. A little more time passed on the painful path through the rocks, and we realized that we were not following the path, but the trail from the stormy water streams that literally wash away the mountains in the rain. This trail led us to a steep cliff, where rainwater was noisily torn between steep cliffs. I looked down and finally concluded that my decision was wrong. It's been about an hour on the road, but we had no choice but to return to the beginning of the valley. The way back went up the hill, and therefore it turned out to be quite difficult, but after some time we still managed to return to the beginning of the valley again. And only now, already pretty exhausted, we saw a rather steep path leading to the bottom of the valley.
All the mountains in this area are made of tuff, which has two main features that are especially memorable for the traveler. The first feature is that the tuff itself is completely non-slippery, which allows, standing on it at a rather steep angle, not to be afraid that the boot will go down. Another feature is completely opposite - the tuff crumbles easily, which means that it is very easy to slip on these crumbs, like on dry sand, and lose all balance. So the descent into the valley is marked by a constant search for where to put your foot, so as not to simply slide down from a multi-meter height. In one place, I even preferred to just sit on the ground and slide down, as it turned out to be much faster and safer. But after some effort, we ended up at the foot of the mountains at the beginning of the path leading through the valley.
The White Valley turned out to be very shady and picturesque. Sometimes the path passed through flowering meadows, still wet with dew, past giant formations resembling mushrooms or long pipes, sometimes it literally made its way through densely growing shrubs, as if through a long green corridor, sometimes it adjoined the bed of a stream flowing through the entire valley, sometimes it simply passed under huge boulders, under which you had to crawl. The path either ascended the hills, allowing you to see the picturesque view of the valley from above, then dived into the densest green thickets, to amazing bright flowers and grasses. In one of these corners, to our surprise, we met a rather large tortoise, which was on its way from high white rocks, heated in the sun, to a refreshing stream of the valley. In a word, at every turn of the path we found something new for ourselves; but the most important thing was ahead of us.
It was already about three hours on the way, and the path began to go almost constantly along the valley, and more and more we began to come across unusual cone-shaped or pillar-like formations. We were approaching the Valley of Love. This valley seems to be a completely unearthly place, because it is a flat flowering area surrounded by mountains, along which multi-meter stone formations are located everywhere, resembling pillars with a thickening at the top. The valley got its name because these pillars are extremely similar to the symbols of love, so popular in Turkey. At first glance, it seems that this could not be created miraculously, but it is true, because nature is a great craftswoman! The pillars are arranged in even rows, groups and circles, and it seems that you are walking through an incredible forest. Feelings are born fantastic.
A many-hour walk through two valleys pretty exhausted us, so we undertook the next trip only in the evening. We were brought to the beginning of another amazing valley, which is called the Rose Valley. Its name is not accidental, because the huge rock formations here have a pink tint, which gives the valley a special charm. This time we decided not to go down to the valley, but to walk along a narrow hiking trail along the pink rocks. The path seemed to go along a small ledge, which created the local landscape, so that on our right there was a wall of multi-meter pink mountains, and on the left an abyss, far below which was the valley itself. In some places, the section of the ledge becomes so narrow that it was easy to roll into the abyss in case of careless movement, so we walked at some points very slowly and carefully. The path meandered along the mountains, so that it was impossible to see further than the distance of the next mountain ledge. The journey from one ledge to another took about half an hour. We walked and admired the sunset and the magnificent mountain panorama of the valley below. My heart rejoiced and sank, because it is so rare in life to see such beauty.
We walked for about two hours, and the edge of our path was still not visible, the path went around one mountain ledge after another and was in no hurry to change its route. Along the way, we did not meet a single person or even signs of the recent presence of people. The sun slowly but surely descended below the horizon, and thoughts began to come to mind that it would be unpleasant to stay in unfamiliar mountains after sunset without water, food, and even a lantern. We got a call from a representative from the New Goreme Tour to see if we were lost. Having outlined that we have been walking for more than an hour, and the end and edge of our path is not visible, we jointly concluded that we were lost. Going down into the valley or up the mountain without climbing equipment and skill would be suicidal, so there were only two possible paths - go ahead or return. The way back was known, and forward we were attracted only by the unknown and the certainty that the path would lead us somewhere. On the New Goreme Tour, we were sensibly invited to return, but the spirit of the traveler kept us moving forward into the unknown.
Step by step, and after another two hours the path began to smoothly descend. The water ran out, and I was very glad that the sun was about to set, and therefore it was no longer hot at all. It seemed to me that I was already walking on the last effort of will. An amazing panorama of some ancient rocky city opened up before our eyes. The sun touched the earth with its last rays, and for some reason dark clouds thickened over the city. The picture he saw was beyond even imagination. We went down to the city; the descent was steep, and in some places we even had to climb the flat roofs of houses built into the rocks. When we got on the road, tired and exhausted, we were picked up by representatives of the New Goreme Tour, who had already left to search for us and traveled through the streets of a deserted city. The lived day brought indescribable pleasure and the same incredible fatigue.
Perhaps, in addition to the amazing and quivering beauties of Cappadocia that we saw, its people deserve special attention. Few places in the world have I met such a kind and friendly local population as in the town of Goreme. Everywhere in the city there are many different shops selling carpets, lamps, old things, various trinkets and souvenirs, and where you are always welcome, but not because you are a buyer or a tourist, but because you are a guest. The same attitude was towards us in all local restaurants, and in general everywhere we went. Even if you do not buy or order anything, you are welcome, you will be offered to sit down and drink local traditional apple tea, they will ask you where and from where you are on your way. You will not find such a kind and human attitude anywhere else in modern cities, but here it is part of the local tradition and hospitality. Here, if you meet a stranger on the street, then he wishes you good health. Here comes an old woman in long black dresses to the floor and a scarf, she will smile at you when you meet and say many kind words. The old people in this area do not know foreign languages, but her words will be clear to you, because she speaks the world's known language - the language of kindness. But her husband is nearby selling fruit; he has been doing this business all his life, and in his hands it looks like art. Goreme people keep their traditions and appreciate their amazing corner of the world. It is possible that not all traditions and peculiarities will be understandable and known to a foreigner, and the people themselves will seem somewhat unusual and unusual - but when a good human attitude is behind all this, then this does not matter so much. One thing is important: are there many places on earth where you can meet such an attitude towards people? Small towns generally keep many wonderful and special traditions, which, alas, are forgotten in the modern world; but in the end it is this human attitude that makes us human.
Be sure to try the local cuisine: it is varied and unusual. Listen to advice and take the dish that is advised to you. For example, the Pottery Kebab brought us special pleasure. Meat, vegetables and traditional spices are placed in a pot, covered with a lid and covered with clay on top so that there is no additional air flow. Then all this is placed in a large oven and baked. The pot is brought to you on burning coals, the lid of the pot is broken in front of you and they offer you to taste the dish. This unusual way of cooking gives the meat a special taste.
But you never know what other miracles can be found in this region... Perhaps, before leaving, you will want to take to the sky in a balloon to see this region from a bird's eye view. Balloons rise at five in the morning, at the very dawn. They float over Goreme, over canyons and valleys somewhere towards the sun. . . And if at this moment you look at them from the ground, it seems that this is how people rise into the sky to their happiness, seeing such a beautiful and unimaginable world below.
Before parting with this land, I was visited by the same sensations that I encountered when we first met. The words left me, and my heart ached, because that's what makes people say goodbye to true beauty - silent, stunned and a little sad. I believe that one day we will meet again, Cappadocia, because I left you a piece of my heart. . .
