Cappadocia – Fairy Chimneys and Cave Churches

December 24, 2024|Rick Juliusson

Remember those drip sand castles we used to make at the beach? Let some very wet sand dribble through your little kid fingers to form little plop chimneys. Well, imagine valley after valley filled with those chimneys, and you’ve got Cappadocia Turkey.

Now remember that God uses a much bigger sand bucket, and was smart enough to coat the whole valley with 300 meters of lava then volcanic ash then let rain and wind do the carving over millennia. The result is days and days worth of hikes through deep canyons between towering phallic towers.

Normally 300 hot-air balloons rise up in that valley at sunrise. We hoofed it up to a perfect cliff-edge overlook for this wonder, but imagine is all we achieved - for 4 days straight the winds or currents or cold temps prevented famous balloon launches. But sunrise over the valley is pretty darn beautiful even without mankind’s cleverly engineered embellishment.

Cave Dwellings

If that isn’t enough, note that the canyon walls are made of that same soft volcanic rock, just perfect for carving houses and churches and soot-blackened kitchens dating back to the 9th century, when Byzantine Christians needed a place to stay safe from persecution (the large visible door openings you see in the photos came later.). All completely open for exploring - no tickets or safety warnings to be seen.

We took shelter from a rainstorm here

Those holes in the walls are for pigeons, so their poop could be used as fertilizer

Now for something different, I’m going to try sharing a video. This is just one of the hundreds of 9th-10th century churches that the Byzantine Christians carved into the cliffs. Others have much more elaborate paintings still visible, but this was our first, and most remote and unexpected and just us and "Sarah you gotta come see this!", and therefore most enchanted experience.

Underground Cities

The valley is also filled with complete underground cities, from when Christians had to hide for extended periods from their persecutors. We went down through an endless maze of low narrow tunnels with living spaces, kitchens, a morgue for mummifying remains, wine cellars and food storage… everything an entire population needs to live in hiding 4-8 stories below ground.

Dining room table

Stone door could be rolled to block passage.

Was it worth the bother?

And if that still isn’t enough, add in the Farmers Cave Hotel with rooms burrowed into the hillside. The family took us in and shared food, gave Sarah a cooking lesson when we gushed about how good the breakfast Borek tasted, and shared the chestnuts that were literally roasting on the woodstove fire as we visited each evening over hot tea and Google translate. Sweet old grandma, who it turns out is only 62, plied us with honey-sweetened apricots from their farm. It was the warmest welcome I’ve ever experienced at an AirBnB.

It had been a long tiring move back into travelling mode and I grumpily wondered the whole day going there if it was worth it. Cappadocia is just a $35 one-hour flight from Istanbul. But after a month of spreading out into our apartment, we had to start the night before packing back into our carry-on bags and kiss goodbye to the comfort of longer-term living. Find the right 2-hour bus-subway (my beauty cut didn’t work so well) at 7am. Sit in the airport, sit in a middle-seat Pegasus Airlines, figure out how to actually find the right bus in a bus station with no English, find a taxi at the other end. But fantasy chimneys, cave dwellings, underground cities, join-the-family hosts, and of course picturesque towns, markets and food, all combine to remind me that travel is worth the effort of travelling - even with no balloons this was the perfect 4-day Cappadocia experience.