So after a free breakfast on 23 September 1990 I set off for Cappadocia. I got a bus from the Otogar to Urgup via Nevsehir. On arrival I booked into the Born Hotel (pictured) at 14,000 TL inc. breakfast. Hotels were getting even cheaper still. A postcard I sent home calculates this as £2.60 per night. This makes the exchange rate 5,400 TL = £1.
Once again my notes are poor. I have no recollection of the room I was in except that it was in the front of the Hotel on an upper floor and the postcard I sent home says it commanded an impressive view. I do remember getting up before dawn one morning specifically to record the Meuzzin's call to prayer echoing in the silence. It wasn't a bad recording except for the fact that about a minute or so in the sound of a noisy truck coming up hill towards the hotel can heard getting louder and louder. I remember the man in charge was called Rejep and he was a chess player. I can't play chess. I know which way all the pieces can move and the objective, of course. I just don't seem to be able to think a number of moves ahead which is the skill you need to win. Rejep beat me very easily. It was embarrassing.
When I arrived in Konya I kew at least that I was in the East but when I arrived in Cappadocia I wasn't sure I hadn't arrived on another planet.
Pictured above are some fairy-chimneys in Urgup itself. Urgup is about 7km from Goreme. Just as in Selcuk and Konya, I bought a book in case none of my slides came out. This book is not as useful as the other two because the English translation is not brilliant. It's called "Cappadocia Cradle of History" by Omer Demir. At least it jogs my memory a bit.
The landscape of Cappodocia is amazing. It is the result of the erosion by wind and weather of the volcanic lava called Tuff or Tufa that covered an area of 4000 square kilometres when Mount Erciyes erupted. The massive stratovolcano is the highest mountain in central Anatolia (3,916 metres). Wikipedia says that the Greek historian Strabo (born in what is today Amasaya in Turkey in 63/64 BC) said that from the summit you can see both the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. These days it is one of Turkey's most important mountaineering and winter sports centres. I was there in September and I am not a fan of skiing.
The last time the volcano may have erupted covering the area in Tufa or Tuff was 253 BC. Tough is not what Tuff is. Easily eroded and easily tunnelled or dug is what it is.
The first places I visited were Kayamakli and Derinkuyu. Both of these places are famous for their underground cities. I apologise to Omer Demir for making fun of the book but I am trying to include some useful information that might be gleaned from it to help any reader of this blog. He tells us there are 36 such underground cities and I quote directly from the book: "I wonder if people of another world, or the underground people that do not know the world's surface, made Cappadocia in a form of an ant's nest by digging these underground cities, which I believe will increase with further investigations, to their forms of today." I'm sorry but I don't really follow this. What is clear from the book is that Omer has done a lot of research and he is not entirely clear what drove the people who constructed these cities underground. The constructions are not just caves. They are quite sophisticated. They go down several storeys.
I really did go there. I honestly did. The book makes it sound very interesting. It is really interesting. I mean it is amazing. Then again. I can't remember much about my visit. I vaguely remember going into a tunnel and being led down into chambers but honestly don't recall much else.
What I think about it now is that when one hears about terrorists hiding out in caves it begins to make sense. I mean it is in fact quite possible that these places that exist in Anatolia could exist in Afghanistan or places like that and they are quite habitable with sophisticated air supplies. They provide excellent shelter from the excesses of the weather.
What remains with me much more lastingly is the general landscape of this amazing part of the world. "Landscape" may not be the right term. Often it was more like "moonscape".
My tourism of the area took me next to Goreme and Uchisar. Omer Demir tells me that I was following the route of the Byzantine population of Derinkuyu ahead of the advance of the Arab armies.
Goreme was considered by St Paul to be the most suitable place to train missionaries and was was one of the greatest centres of Christianity from the seventh to ninth centuries. There are about 400 churches in the area. Omer Demir lists half a dozen churches in Goreme alone. These churches are hewn out of the rock over a thousand years ago. The frescoes are spectacular. Postcards I sent home show some of the frescoes in the eleventh century Karinlik Kilise (the Dark Church) they are particularly well preserved because very little sunlight penetrates into the caves.
Above: Three postcards of frescoes from the Karanlik Kilise. Below: a postcard of a fresco from the church of Ysuf Koc. In the postcard I sent home I complain that the main problem with these places is the massive number of tour buses bearing mainly Germans and Americans which make virtually impossible to stay very long.
As I said before it was the landscape which what I found most fascinating. The postcards I wrote home relate how my careful planning came in useful. In addition to the trainers I had bought on Oxford Street I had also bought some trekking trainers from Blacks (in Argyll Street?) where I bought my rucksack. These had proper soles with enough grip for clambering up the rock formations. I discovered that the trainers were completely useless for this when I followed a French couple up through a hole in the rock and out into the open through the top of one of the "cones". The Nikes had virtually no grip and once or twice I nearly slipped and fell. It wasn't until later that I noticed that Pascal (the chief dare-devil) was covered in cuts and bruises.
The following day I donned the trekking trainers and walked from Urgup through the Zelve Valley to Avanos.
Despite the better footwear there was more than one occasion when I found myself on a the edge of a precipice completely alone with heart pounding and jelly knees wondering how I was going to get down without falling. The tops were covered in a fine gravel so that keeping a sure footing was not at all easy. Another of the essential pieces of kit it is suggested that one packs is a whistle to attract attention in an emergency. I had it with me but it did occur to me that in order to be able to blow a whistle you would need at least to be conscious. I was completely alone in this landscape and had I fallen I can see no reason why I would ever have been discovered. Even if I had been conscious the likelihood of breaking bones would have been very high and getting a whistle out might have been impossible. I mentioned this in my postcard home and my mother worried about it.
My postcard says that if the slides came out the scares I was giving myself would have been worth it and the picture above does I think do justice to the wierd and wonderful landscape I was in. You can see that it was hardly a gentle ramble.
Below (sadly in shadow because I arrived there late in the day) is what I think is a cave monastery. Omer Demir's book has a better picture (taken years previously, I'm sure) which shows there are steps either side within the gaping Cavern entrance.
This trek was an exhilarating experience. I would recommend Cappadocia to anyone. It is rather like being on the set of an episode of Star Trek (the original series with William Shatner). The geography seems almost as artificial as some of the planets that Capt. James Tiberius Kirk. Mr Spock and Dr Bones McCoy would be beamed down to along with a pneumatic female crew member and a couple of technical support crew at least one of whom would be killed. I remember seeing the comedian Craig Ferguson at the Hackney Empire doing a routine about this. Basically his point was that if there was ever a need to beam down to a planet there was no way he'd have volunteered - the chances of returning were only 50/50.
I only bought one souvenir from Cappadocia. It was a large floral patterned ceramic plate. Knocked down from 120,000 TL to just 30,000 TL by virtue of "the Saddam effect" namely the fact that the Gulf War was putting tourists off.
In addition to the underground cities, the cave churches, the Zelve Valley pigeon houses and fairy chimneys there were also two "castles". One in Uchisar and one in Othisar.
I think I packed plenty into a week in Cappadocia and took the Saturday off. I slept in and spent the day relaxing in a Cay Bacesi drinking that black tea and writing postcards home.
The next day I took a bus, a Mercedes 303, to Ankara where I used the second of my internal flight tickets to fly to Trabzon on the Black Sea coast.
