It was dark and frigid when I woke up, a winning combination that would send most rational people scurrying back to bed. However, the promise of surreal adventure drove me out of my warm room and out into the night. The sky was just beginning to brighten from gray to pale lilac when our van crested the top of the dirt hill and screeched to a halt, and our group of 16 poured out like so many ants from an anthill. A great golden balloon lay on its side on the dark earth, growing slowly in size, like an enormous lung taking its first great inhale as humans with huge fans blew life into its gaping mouth. Within ten minutes flat it had grown into a small mountain, and the pilot fired up the propane engine with a loud WHUMPF. Laboriously the giant pushed itself off the ground. Its very top was tethered by rope to a tiny human, who tried to keep the balloon from ricocheting too quickly in the opposite direction by playing tug-of-war with the behemoth. The balloon won, of course, dragging the man bodily 50 meters across the dirt.
We piled into the basket and learned the “landing position” – basically a glorified squat – which was the only training we received before being cleared for our trip into space. Then, without so much as a jolt, the balloon divorced itself from the Earth, floating smoothly upwards as though someone had turned down the gravity. The morning was still grey as we drifted lazily over the nearest tuff ridge. The terrain below us was littered with balloons, some already hovering while others were still coming to life. The sun had found only the highest balloon, which had launched first and already reached 400 meters.
Our pilot expertly navigated through the labyrinth of rock, repeatedly dropping our basket almost to the ground before bumping the propane just enough to squeak us over a stone turret riddled with hand-carved pigeon caves. Then he really opened up the engine and we ascended into the heavens, finally greeting the newborn sun. I made the mistake of looking straight down a few times from that lofty height, my head spinning from vertigo as I fully grasped the concept that hot air, nylon, rope, and a wicker basket were the only things standing between me and certain death. After the third time, I stopped looking down at all, instead just blindly pointing my camera at the land far below and hoping for some good photographs.
The gentle breeze nudged us towards the west and we arced high over the thin strip of lonely highway that connects the Cappadocian towns. Near-total silence engulfed us up there, all the normal background sounds of human existence too far below to reach us and the view powerful enough to stun all of us passengers into speechlessness. The sporadic roaring of the engine was jarring, but typically lasted for less than a second before silence fell again.
Gravity gently latched onto us again as we drifted into Love Valley, a jagged canyon carved into the Earth by the ferocities of time and water. Pointed natural columns of tuff, fancifully called “fairy chimneys,” jutted from the canyon’s floor in sporadic patterns. Balloons of every color and pattern danced between them. I had to try pretty hard not to giggle like a four-year-old when I caught sight of a few rather phallic-shaped fairy chimneys.
When we finally came to the end of our dream-like flight, we dropped into a wide plain of barren fields already studded with deflating balloons. Our pilot yelled out “Landing position!” and we all braced ourselves, sinking low into the basket and watching apprehensively over the lip. My heart started racing as I wondered how hard the impact would be, but it ended up being just a gentle kiss against the ground before we bounced lightly back into the air. A truck and trailer tore serpentine tracks into the rich chocolate earth below us as five crew members worked with our pilot to perfectly align the basket with the trailer. I refused to believe that such a feat was possible, but sure enough, after three attempts, we alighted directly in the center of the trailer and the crew members lashed us down.
After a champagne toast to celebrate our safe return from the atmosphere and a delicious second breakfast in full Turkish style at our hotel, we set out to rent a scooter and cruise the countryside. Since Julie owns a motorcycle back in the States I decided to let her drive, which turned out to be a positive decision because the cute red scooter we picked out turned out to feel like a finicky little death trap, wobbling roughly over the smallest bump in the road.
Our first stop was the Göreme Open Air Museum, a collection of a dozen 1000-year-old chapels hewn into the cliffs. The ceilings and walls of these rooms are imperfect; none of the angles are right, the floors wave like the sea and the domes are anything but symmetrical, but these details only made the rooms seem more prehistoric. And the rooms were anything but utilitarian; these enterprising people had embellished their spaces and turned them into real homes, carving out shelves, tables, livestock hitching posts, and even grape-stomping vats into the walls and floors for wine-making. Bright frescoes decorate the cave chapels, which were originally painted using a mixture of natural dyes and pigeon egg whites (yes, really). Visitors aren’t usually allowed to take photographs of the frescoes, but a friendly “Merhaba” to the older security guard in the Sandal Church sparked a conversation, and he waited for the tiny space to empty before quietly telling us in broken English that we could sneak a few! Simple friendliness can sometimes go a long way while traveling in distant lands.
We then drove our hog up the hill to the town of Uchisar, famed for its rocky peak that looks like a castle – and so the natives turned it into one, carving rooms and windows into the fortification. We achieved a staggering 40 kmh on our scooter with the throttle opened up all the way, and parked next to a resting camel on the side of the road. We walked the convoluted and uneven streets up to the rock castle itself, eyeing the stray dogs wandering in small packs through the alleyways and dodging noisy construction crews who labored to finish their work before the start of the high tourist season. The haunting call to prayer playing from a sand-colored minaret accompanied us as we walked, a sound that never failed to spice the moment with a renewed sense of foreignness.
At the top of Uchisar Castle, we had to step carefully to avoid falling into a series of emptied tombs; most were five feet long and very narrow, but a few were no more than a foot, reserved for highborn children who died in infancy. A lunar landscape stretched out in all directions, with just a few earth-colored towns tucked into valleys here and there. We found a bowl-like valley to hike down, with a literal goat trail leading the way back to the village. It was rocky and steep and littered with animal footprints, making it seem like we were alone with the ghosts up in that lofty place. The bowl was ringed by old cave-houses, but closer inspection revealed that some of the gaping black windows had glass in them and crisp crimson Turkish flags hanging from the rock – these cave houses were still inhabited!
Our last stop was to Pasabag, famous for its mushroom-shaped fairy chimneys. We paused just long enough to explore a few short dead-end canyons, breathing in deeply the air perfumed by apple blossoms. I found a 30-foot tall frozen waterfall of tuff inside a sheltered cave, an impromptu winding staircase of sorts worn into the incline by hundreds of other adventurous feet. Obviously I had to climb it too. The rock almost felt like plaster underneath my fingers, so chalky it was almost slippery as I scurried up the face. Going back down was a disorienting affair; facing the rock on all fours, it looked like I was moving horizontally but I could feel the pull of gravity, a combination that gave me vertigo for the second time that day.
Our nonstop day continued when we met our hotelier Ali, a very friendly Kurdish man around my age who gave us free apple tea and talked with us every time we saw him. He had offered to take us on a free three-hour sunset hike into the nearby Rose Valley. We were a little late for our meeting and he hurried us along, nearly running down the path and then waiting for us at the top of the next hill, grabbing my hand each time at the last minute and pulling me up to his waiting spot before scurrying off ahead of us again.
We made it to the viewing point with more than enough time to spare for sunset, although it was a muted affair due to the clouds. The sun turned the valley just the palest of pinks before it sank behind the mountains, finally putting an end to what felt like the longest and exhaustingest and most adventurous day I’ve probably ever lived.
Our second Cappadocian day was much calmer and slower-paced, but no less incredible. We took a 200-kilometer guided minibus tour, a nice relaxing way to see everything without having to worry about the when and how and why. We visited a claustrophobic 55-meter deep underground city first, hiking down a staircase that got smaller and smaller with each step, until you literally had to bend 90 degrees at the waist in order to fit through it.
The most interesting stop was the second, at Selime monastery, where we followed a narrow path through the tuff that had been worn down by a combination of monks’ feet and rainwater. The wind absolutely howled while we were there, throwing vortexes of sand through windows and into eyes, turning my hair into a rats’ nest and burying dirt in my ears that it would take me two days to clean out. At one point I took shelter from the wind behind a rock for a moment accidentally discovered a narrow staircase to a high room whose roof had partially caved in, creating a natural pipe organ of sorts. The wind moaned deeply through the gaping hole, reverberating in my bones as I watched darkening clouds race across the sky.
Cappadocia was possibly my favorite overall destination within Turkey, although really it’s almost an impossible call. The fusion of insane landscape, wonderful people, nearly incomprehensively ancient history, and delicious nightly pottery kebaps (meat and vegetables cooked inside terra cotta pots, then cracked open by yourself or the waiter) made for a pretty unforgettable experience.
Window Seat Odyssey 