Nearly Neutral Travel

Cappadocia is a region in central Turkey that is famous for its arid landschape packed full of incredible rock formations, cave churches and underground dwellings. It’s also the subject of 2.7 million tagged photos on Instagram, many of them featuring the hot air balloons that fly almost every day of the year.

I was a little worried that we wouldn’t be able to move for Instagrammers posing for OTT photoshoots, but thankfully it wasn’t like that at all (despite the fact that we really did see a shop in Göreme that had dresses for hire to use in photoshoots – it is obviously big business). But anyway, back to the other big business of the area: taking a flight in a hot air balloon. I had always assumed that it was such a popular activity here just because it gave a great view of the rock formations from the air, but apparently it is much more to do with the fact that the region has near-perfect weather conditions for ballooning.

It’s not a cheap activity but we’ve been underspending on our daily budget in Turkey and, putting this together with some birthday money, decided that this was not an opportunity to be missed. Mum also joined us, but Dad, perhaps sensibly, decided to keep his feet firmly on the ground and thus avoided the 4.45am alarm.

In darkness, we were taken to a rough field just outside Göreme that was to be the take-off zone for the day (it changes each day dependent on weather conditions). We watched as the balloons were prepared, and I had a surprise when three small hills right next to where we were standing suddenly started to grow and I realised that they were, in fact, more hot air balloons (to be fair, I was quite sleep-deprived). Each balloon is inflated on the ground while the basket lies on its side, and then the burners are used to bring the balloon above the basket and lift the basket upright.

At this point, we hopped in and were given a demonstration of the braced ‘landing position’, which thankfully we didn’t have to use. Then it was time for take-off! We dipped down again briefly without landing as the pilot decided he fancied some coffee so the ground crew reached up and passed him a cup – this was probably showboating, but I could sympathise with his need for caffeine!

We climbed up to a maximum height of 800m, but at other points we were only metres from the ground as we flew around the valleys, over view points and watched as the sun peeped over the horizon, all the while surrounded by countless other colourful balloons. It was pretty stunning, although I did get wobbly knees when I realised quite how high we were at times.

All too soon, it was time to land. We grazed several trees on the way down, but the pilot didn’t seem overly concerned! We landed directly on the basket trailer, which was very impressive, but then had a slightly surreal few minutes where we were towed along on the trailer with all the passengers still in the basket and the balloon still above our heads. I assume this is because the area where we landed didn’t have sufficient space to pack up the balloon (there were the aforementioned trees, after all).

Finally, it was time for the landing ceremony, where the crew opened (and sprayed much of) two bottles of bubbly and then shared the remainder between glasses of fruit juice for each of the 20 passengers on the flight. Mum, in particular, was not impressed with her measly helping of bubbly!

Overall, though, it was a great experience. It was certainly more money than we would have normally spent, but it was a brilliant belated birthday celebration and something we’ll remember for a long time to come.

Later that day, we climbed up to Göreme’s sunset viewpoint to (you guessed it) watch the sunset. This was a nice spot but I think we were probably less impressed because we’d already seen the spectacular sunrise from the balloon that morning. Instead, what really impressed Oli was the opportunity to finally get a close-up view of a solar water heater (sigh).

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There are a lot of balloon companies operating in Cappadocia, and with obvious safety (and value for money) considerations, it’s worth putting some thought into which company and which flight type to choose. We did quite a lot of reading beforehand to help us decide, but some things weren’t obvious to us until after our flight, so we thought it would be worth making some notes of what we learnt. We won’t bore you with the details here, but if you’re thinking of visiting, you might find our ramblings helpful.

This title might be a little misleading! The Lycian Way is a long-distance walking trail snaking 540km along the Mediterranean coast in south-western Turkey, and it’s been on our bucket list of experiences for about ten years. However, we had so much ground to cover on this leg of our trip to Tashkent that we kept scaling back the time available to walk it. In the end, we had a single day to walk one very small section as a taster. Hopefully, we’ll be back one day to complete the rest!

The base for our walk was an Airbnb up in the mountains, and a 10 minute drive along dirt tracks from the nearest stretch of tarmac. The tranquility was absolute, apart from the chorus of frogs and cicadas that welcomed us to the wilderness.

That evening, just as the sky turned dark, Sara alerted us to an orange glow in the v-shaped gap between two mountains, growing brighter by the minute. We’d read a lot about forest fires in the area and for a worrying few seconds we all thought that one had taken hold across the valley. It took a surprising amount of time for us to identify it as a moonrise, which I think was a first for us all. Only afterwards did we realise how lucky we were to be sat in the right spot to see the combination of a full moon, rising in the evening, on a clear night, perfectly framed by the mountains. We couldn’t have planned it any better if we’d tried.

We managed to tear ourselves away from our beautiful (if slightly bizarre) villa for a day’s walking. Our 9.6 km route involved scaling Mount Chimaera, passing a handful of eternally burning fires, and ending on a beach in the village of Çıralı.

Our hike started in the village of Ulupınar, where we followed a dirt track down the mountain through forest and crossed a dry riverbed.

Following the trail was straightforward at this point, and we quickly picked up the Lycian Way’s distinct red and white way-markers.

The path then got a lot wilder as it climbed steeply towards the summit of Mount Chimaera, with the terrain growing rockier and the distance between way-markers increasing. Serious kudos to anyone who can spot the way-marker the following photo.

When we reached the top of the mountain and the first set of flames, I mentioned to Sara that I’d had Eternal Flame stuck in my head all morning. It turns out that you can’t make a comment like that without infecting everyone around you (you’re welcome!), and understandably Sara was not best pleased. In retaliation, she made up a song about venomous vipers (about whom we’d been warned) and sang it all afternoon. Well, she sang it until we actually saw a snake slithering extremely quickly across the mountainside, at which point it didn’t seem very funny anymore.

So far, we’d met a grand total of 3 human beings on the trail. The first two were a couple of hikers, and the third was a man herding his goats across the mountain. It felt pretty remote at times, but at least we had the wildlife to keep us company.

The second set of flames were even more impressive. We learned that the fires are fuelled by methane and other gasses which are being emitted from the rock, and apparently have been burning for over 2,500 years!

The descent from the lower flames was much more straightforward, with clearly marked steps leading us to the base of the mountain. The path then met a near-deserted paved road, which lead us back into Çıralı village.

We reunited with Helen & Mick for a victory drink, before swimming in the gorgeously warm sea surrounded by dramatic mountains in almost every direction.

Even the walk back to the car was spectacular. After a short plod along the beach, we joined a boardwalk that followed the Göksu river through the ruins of Olympos just as the sun was setting, casting a stunning golden glow over the meandering river and the ancient city.

The following day it was once again time to move on. This time, our destination was Cappadocia – home to around 100 daily hot air balloon flights and an endless sea of fairy chimneys.

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Special thanks to George & Erin for restaurant and cat recommendations, and to Helen & Mick for driving the support vehicle!

After a peaceful few days in Selçuk, we hopped in Mum and Dad’s hire car again to travel the 384km to Pamukkale. This small town hosts what is surely one of the weirdest sights in the whole of Turkey, and I couldn’t wait! On the way, we passed through some really pretty villages filled with flowers and pomegranite-laden trees.

We first visited the ancient spa city of Hierapolis, which sits above the travertines that were the primary reason for our visit. Having spent several weeks in Greece and then having recently explored Ephesus, we were feeling a bit ruined for ruins, but Mum had developed a taste for seeing Roman theatres and this was supposed to be a great example. It was pretty spectacular – smaller but much steeper than at Ephesus, which added to an already dramatic setting with far-reaching views across the valley.

Next up was the main event – walking (and wallowing) down through the thermal terraced pools of Pamukkale, which translates as cotton castle.

As the mineral-filled water flows down the hill, it leaves deposits that build up to form terraces of travertine rock, which then hold shallow pools of the thermal waters. From some angles, the whole area looked like a slightly surreal, slushy ski slope.

But from others, it was absolutely stunning and other-worldly.

The pools weren’t deep enough to swim in properly, but I did a good amount of wallowing.

When out of the water, the rock underfoot alternated between feeling very scratchy and dry or slippery and clay-like, but under the water it felt like the softest, silkiest silt. It’s supposed to be quite good for your skin, and given I’d dredged up a good amount during my wallowing, I painted some on my face. There’s no photographic evidence because Mum, Dad and Oli were horrified by my appearance and refused to take a photo!

We watched the sunset from the terraces, and from these photos I still have a hard time convincing myself that this isn’t snow.

We then walked back through the ruins of Hieropolis after sunset, and it was quite a sight.

That evening, I arrived at dinner a bit late because I’d been resting (I’d been unwell for a few days at this point) and Oli recounted a dramatic story of how he’d wrestled with a huge white cat who had leapt on the dinner table. Apparently he very nearly did a table cloth trick with my parents’ dinner because the cat dug his claws in when he was being unceremoniously removed. The cat didn’t manage to get any seabass, but he did get his whiskers in a dish of Cacık (turkish tzatziki) and dispersed a full bread basket all over the floor. I arrived soon after and was a bit doubtful about Oli’s tale of heroism, but my parents assured me it was true. Then again, Mum subsequently identified the wrong cat in the feline police line-up presented by the waiter, so it’s hard to know who to believe.