Turkey 2026 - Day 7 Cappadocia

When we wake up this morning, we can see why our balloon ride was cancelled. There is a dense ground fog across all of the nearby valleys. Here in Uçhisar, we are above the fog layer, but down in the valley where the balloons launch, visibility is very low.

No matter! We have a busy day planned with a 7 hr tour of Cappadocia followed by seeing a whirling dervishes ceremony in the evening. Our first stop is the Göreme Open‑Air Museum. On our way, our guide, Benjamin, starts by explaining the geology of Cappadocia. He says that 65 million years ago, Türkiye was at the bottom of a shallow sea. During that time, there was a volcanic eruption in the area from one or more super volcanoes that dumped huge amounts of volcanic ash called Ignimbrite into the sea forming a perhaps 1,000-foot layer of the stuff. Ignimbrite looks like this:

Ignimbrite is pretty soft, but over time much harder layers of basaltic lava and tuff were added. Over time, the sea dried out and the area was uplifted. Any small cracks in the top layers would lead to rapid erosion of the much softer Ignimbrite underneath. Eventually there were only small areas of cap layer left protecting the Ignimbrite. This results in the weird geology of the region:

In some of these pictures, you can see the much darker and tougher top layers. This whole process is similar to what you would see in the canyonlands of Utah, except that the hoodoos there are not made out of Ignimbrite.

Now we get to human history. Cappadocia sits at almost the center of Türkiye along what was later called the Silk Road. There were clearly Neolithic and Bronze Age sites in this area, but the first real civilization was the Hittites from 2000-1200 BCE. These were primarily local peoples, but those locals, likely the first Turkish people, probably originated in the areas of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. For large periods of time, the Hittites were the dominant powers in the Near East with their empire extending into northern Syria and Mesopotamia. There is talk that it was the Hittites who discovered the process of making iron tools and weapons, but this has not been confirmed.

As a crossroads of the world, a lot of foreigners came through Cappadocia, including the Persian and Roman Empires. With the Romans came Christianity. But in the first 3 or 4 centuries of the Common Era, Christians were hunted down and killed by the Roman soldiers. This led to the construction of places like these:

There were no natural caves in this area, but since the Ignimbrite is pretty soft, once iron tools existed, it was possible to carve caves out of the rock. Here, the Christians made temporary living quarters and churches that they used to escape the soldiers. They just rolled big rocks in front of the doors and waited for the soldiers to leave - the Roman Empire was really big, so these "visits" by soldiers did not happen too often. It was not allowed to take photos of inside the churches, but here are a couple of pictures of what the insides look like:

The picture on the left is a picture of the last supper from the later Byzantine period. Some of the artwork in the churches was much more elaborate - I strongly recommend looking here: Göreme Open‑Air Museum to see some of the pictures. The picture on the right is of a communal dining hall with a space for your feet around the table and a bench to sit on.

Next to this museum is the Valley of Hermits. Here, there are only a few cave dwellings where religious men sought to get away from civilization:

I should mention that while we are visiting the museum, the Cappadocia trail-running festival is going on. This is three days of racing at distances from 14 km to 119 km. The winner in the 119 km race was a Russian guy in a record time of 10 hr, 38 min, 35 sec. As you can see, there is no flat ground out here and almost no soft ground. And it is fairly high altitude here - these guys are nuts!!

We are still looking for artwork from this trip so our next stop is at Kapadokya Seramik. This is a 5th generation family-owned business making ceramics. Our host sits us down in a round room with a potter's wheel in the middle:

He explains that in his family, if you are a talented male, you become a master potter. If you are a talented woman, you specialize in dyes and designs. If you are untalented, you study languages and business management. So far, this has worked great, but he explains that the younger generation has no interest in traditional arts and would rather find something that will make more money with less effort.

The master, using a kick wheel pottery wheel starts with the local clay which they call red clay. The master will have gathered this red clay from the local streams, sieved it to get rid of the pebbles and filtered out the other minerals. Our host also explains that they also work with white kaolin which they call white clay. If there are using red clay, it is pottery. If they use white clay, it is ceramics. In about 10 minutes, he makes an elaborate Hittite style wine vase. Here, he is working on the base of the vase:

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In the next room, we see artists adding decorations to the items after they have been fired in the kiln. This master has learned over his career to make elaborate and very fine Hittite-era designs:

We are so impressed with his artwork and the fact that he can still make such elaborate drawings at his age without his hands shaking or his eyes wearing out that both Chris & Mark and we buy items with his artwork.

The Turkish government has deals with companies like this to protect them from tariffs. Essentially, the company quotes us a price for the item and then shipping to us and insurance is free. The company then applies to the government for reimbursement for the amount of tariff they have to pay.

We stop at a couple more sites in the area to look at more of the fairy chimneys and then head back to the hotel for a short rest before going out again.

Our last trip of the day is to Saruhan Caravanserai. This is a sort of inn that was built along the Silk Road:

The caravanserai was built in 1249 and included dining, medical care, religious services and security to travelers free of charge for the first three days. Today, we are going to experience a Sema ceremony - a part dance/part meditation performed by members of the Mevlevi order of Sufi, a branch of Islam. The actual ceremony is performed first by five members led by their master. After the actual ceremony, three of the members and the master return so that the audience can take pictures. The dancers are accompanied by three musical instruments - a reed flute called a ney, a string zither known as a qanun and kettle drums. The dancers slowly revolve with one palm upright to connect with God and one palm pointed down to let loose of worldly possessions. Here are a couple of pictures:

During the day, we had received notice that our rescheduled balloon ride for tomorrow morning had again been cancelled, so contacted our travel agent to see if there was something else we can do tomorrow. More when we know more!