Travelogue : Turkey : Cappadocia

So, continuing the adventures of PB and Moo in lands far, far away, on our magic carpet(SunExpress airlines), we flew off to Kayseri Airport to get to Cappadocia/Kappadokya/Goreme, and any other name you want to call it. At this point, I want to mention the itinerary I prepared and how beautiful it was. I had taken printouts of flight tickets, hotel bookings, places to see, food, timings and arranged it neatly, had put color coded sticky notes and arranged it acc to the days. After my itinerary was complete, I felt like a certified nerd, or a professional holiday planner. I prefer the latter and I see myself dressed as Sonam Kapoor for some reason with a bright orange planner. I digress.

So when we were planning the itinerary, we were planning to go to Pamukkale for a day from Antalya . But Moo, made one single request and I had to honor it. She really, really wanted to do a hot air balloon ride. I had wanted to do it too but was in a double mind about it. Thanks to her request, I decided to fit in a night in Cappadocia instead of Pamukkale and check one item off my bucket list as well. So we landed in Goreme after our plane ride to Kayseri and a shuttle to Goreme. Goreme is gorgeous! It is such an unexpected landscape! If you remember my Bryce canyon pictures, it has similar structures but not orange, and rising from around you, and not in a valley. Like, we were pretty much in between those structures. The hotels are also called cave hotels and if you have a higher budget, you can live in one of those. But we had constricted ourselves to a per night limit and the idea that a cavey structure may house lizards, put us off the real cave rooms. After checking in, we had lunch, and went off to check out the Goreme Open Air Museum. It is a Unesco heritage site which was a Byzantine monastery. There are clusters of churches, chapels, housings inside of the caves and rock cut outs. They are extremely interesting with respect to the history.

Boy, was it hot that day! We felt like we were walking in a microwave with the sun baking us. I felt like a drained out battery and we kept hiding in the caves from the sun. At one point, Moo and I got into some cave room which looked like it was a kitchen and plopped down for about 20 minutes with some tourists flitting in and out, but we refused to budge. It was the best escape from the sun. And that day, I had for some reason decided to carry my zoom lens as well, which was adding to the bulk of the scarf/hat/backpack. We couldn’t even take too many pictures of us because for every pic, we had to take out 3 things atleast from our heads or necks at which point I gave up. 😀

Finally when it had cooled a tiny bit, we left the museum to walk back to the hotel. On our way back, we came across this adorable pottery shop where there were 2 trees covered in blue glassy evil eyes, and old earthen pots. The tree covered in blue was so beautiful, aah, I loved it! Finally, we had some energy back into us and we spent that in taking our pictures. Moo was drawn to alien looking zoozoos which I was kinda terrified of. Eeks. We had dinner after and called it a night since we had a rather early start the next day. It was still so hot, that I slept with a thin towel on me instead of a bedsheet. Haha

The hot air balloon ride called for a insanely early morning alarm, but you know what? Right from clambering into the wicker basket, the lift off, the soaring across the skies watching the sunrise, the intentionally bumpy landing, to popping the champagne after the ride, it was all so magical, so dreamy. I had never thought that watching the sun rise from 850 m high up in the sky could be this intense. The view was nothing short of spectacular and I will let the pictures do the talking here.

The cave hotels.

Beauty!

Inside the monastry.

Goreme Open Air Museum: Monastry

No evil eyes here!

Readying for take off!

My balloon!

Raise your glass!

PS : There will be a part 3.