Cappadocia, once the balloons have landed

Most visits to Cappadocia are arranged around a single hour at sunrise, and the rest of the day follows the coaches from sight to sight. The place works better the other way round: the churches before the groups arrive, the middle of the day taken slowly, and the valleys walked as the light goes.

One dawn, and a spare

The balloons go up at first light, when the air is at its stillest, and on a good morning the sky over Göreme fills with them. The decision to fly is taken each dawn by the civil aviation authority’s office in Nevşehir, and it turns mostly on the wind. When the answer is no, every basket stays on the ground, and a windy spell can keep them there for several mornings in a row.

So a good plan puts the flight on the first full morning and keeps a spare dawn behind it. A balloon to yourselves works that way: a basket for your party alone, breakfast where you land and, if the wind says no, the next morning instead. One flight is enough. The light is the reason to come, and it reaches the valleys with or without you in the air; on the other mornings, watch the balloons from a terrace over a long breakfast, or sleep through them.

The churches at opening

Everything here starts with the rock. Millions of years ago, eruptions of Erciyes, Hasan and smaller volcanoes buried the plateau in ash, which set into tuff: firm enough to stand in cliffs, soft enough to cut with hand tools. Wind and water have been wearing it down ever since, and wherever a harder layer lay on top, it sheltered the softer column beneath; that is why so many of the fairy chimneys wear a cap. People have cut houses, stables, dovecotes and churches into this rock for millennia.

In the valley that is now the Göreme Open-Air Museum, monks carved churches, chapels and refectories into the cliffs, and painted them. Most of the painting is about a thousand years old, from the centuries after Byzantium’s long quarrel over religious images had ended. Go at opening. By mid-morning the tour groups are in, and these are small rooms: a painted chapel is a different place with almost no one else in it.

The Dark Church is worth its separate ticket. Its only daylight comes through a small window in the entrance hall, and the darkness is why its paintings are the most intact in the valley. On the way out, a few steps down the road towards Göreme and outside the main enclosure, is the Buckle Church, the Tokalı Kilise: on the main ticket, and easy to miss. Its older church dates from the early 10th century; the newer one, entered through it, is known for its deep blue.

The underground cities are the same rock, dug downwards: refuges with air shafts, wells and round stone doors rolled across from the inside. Kaymaklı has eight levels, four of them lit and open; Derinkuyu goes down about 85 m, though only part of it can be visited. One of the two is enough, and an hour inside it. Ceilings are low and some passages take one person at a time, so anyone who minds tight spaces should leave them out.

Long middays

In summer the hours either side of noon are hot and the light is flat, so spend them indoors, which here usually means inside the rock. A winemaker’s table in the rock is a tasting with the person who makes the wine, in a cellar cut into the tuff and cool in every season. The grapes are the region’s own, among them Emir, a white grape native to Cappadocia. Lunch follows among the vines when the season allows, and in the village when it does not.

For a quieter afternoon, or a quieter base, Mustafapaşa lies about 5 km south of Ürgüp. It was once Sinasos, home to Greek Orthodox families who left in 1924, in the exchange of populations between Greece and Türkiye. The stone houses they built still line its streets, and the village keeps a slower pace than Göreme.

Clay, then the late light

Avanos stands on the Kızılırmak, the Red River, and its potters work the river’s red clay. At the wheel with an Avanos potter is an afternoon in a family workshop rather than a showroom on the main road, at a kick wheel turned by foot, and children are welcome at it.

Then the valleys, in the last two hours of light, when the low sun brings out the colour of the rock. Red Valley and Rose Valley, just outside Göreme, are the pair for this hour, and Rose Valley has rock-cut churches of its own along the path, among them the Church of the Cross. Pigeon Valley runs for about 4 km between Uçhisar and Göreme, past dovecotes cut into its walls: the birds were kept for their droppings, which fed the vineyards. These paths have little shade, which is the other reason to walk them late, after the others have left.

Ihlara needs a day of its own. About an hour and a half by road to the south-west, in Aksaray province, the Melendiz stream has cut a canyon about 14 km long, with churches in its walls and a path beside the water. If the balloons flew on the first morning, give it the spare day.

If you go

When

April to June, and September to November; balloons fly all year when the wind allows. More in When to go, place by place.

From Istanbul

About an hour and a quarter by air, to Kayseri or Nevşehir. Göreme is about 40 minutes by road from Nevşehir’s airport, a little over an hour from Kayseri’s.

How long

Three nights, so that a spare dawn is in the plan. Sleep in Uçhisar, Göreme or Ürgüp, or in Mustafapaşa for quiet.