06 May 2015

Cappadocia, part III - Hiking and climbing

Brace for a storm of landscape shots!

The valley

The next day, Marc and I met Michal (from Poland) over breakfast. The three of us decided to go for a casual morning hike in one of the valleys (Kiliclar vadisi). The weather was gorgeous and the three of us picked a route which followed almost none of the suggested paths.

We started out by walking past (and through) some of the deserted rock houses. Having inspected them in detail, we then walked up to one of the large ridges lining the valley:

From the ridge, we climbed down into one of the smaller valleys, and for once followed a path for a while. Next, we tried to scale one of the opposite ridges, which took us over an hour. The white rock you see in the pictures is tufa, which is soft and porous at the best of times. Often enough, the rock itself was covered by layers of sand and dust, which looked just like the rockface itself. As we found out, it was utterly unsuited for even light climbing. So many times when we though we had finally found a decent route out of the valley, we had to track back after feeling our hands slip in the layers of white dust. On the plus-side, we ran into this magnificent little dinosaur!

Foreground: Turtle, Background: Marc and Michal

After several failed attempts, we finally found a way up on the rock, where we looked magnificent against the backdrop of the valley.

We crossed over on the other side of the ridge and were suddenly looking down into the main valley. The fairy chimneys visible in the second picture are the same ones, Marc, Mohamed and I saw during our first day.

On the way down into the valley the three of us almost fell into a 6-8m deep chasm. No big deal though. Also, it turned out that there was a perfectly safe crossing just a few meters to the side. We just hadn’t seen it.

As you can see, the fairy chimneys have a very characteristic shape. I will leave it to you to figure out what exactly the two gentlemen were doing here:

Just something to dispell those rumors that I'm making up these stories while playing video games in my mother's basement

The castle

Having seen the valley, we headed back to town in time for lunch. Marc and I were both scheduled to leave Göreme in the evening, but that would leave us the afternoon to do some more exploring. We decided on taking a minibus up to the castle which loomed over Pidgeon Valley.

The castle itself turned out to be a bit of a let-down: From outside, it looked like a bee-hive and I was excited to see what remnamts of its occupation could be found inside. The answer: None. There was nothing there but a path up to the top. The view from up there compensated us though:

After walking back down, we decided that we wanted to see the valley we had been looking down on. That was clearly one of the best decisions of my trip so far:

One entire side of the valley was lined with rocky peaks, one giant line of them which started with the castle hill itself. All along the steep rockface was a maze of houses, windows, half-eroded stairwells and scary-looking ledges. It. Was. Awesome.

The three of us set out to explore, climbing higher and higher into the rocks. We even managed to climb into several of the empty rock-houses and have a look around inside. It is difficult to convey in writing, but the whole thing felt like a giant playground and I’m not ashamed to admit I felt like a kid. Including the confident risk affinity of somebody who has no understanding of even basic mechanics but very elastic bones…

We had a whale of a time in those ruins. Nothing was off-limits, nothing was roped off. We were free to climb everywhere.

Eventually, we found a way out of the valley. As we couldn’t find a bus back, we hitchhiked the short distance.

Back in Göreme, I said my goodbyes to Marc and Michal and got on my coach to Samsun. Yes, the one I had complained about previously, that one.

Sidenote: If you go to Turkey, try to make time for Cappadocia. Just like Pammukale, it’s a unique landscape and certainly worth seeing. Next time I go there, I will definitely do one of those balloon tours which are largely accident free, but were booked out for the days we were there. I would also bring a proper camera to take some nicer pictures.

Until next time,
Arne