Kapadokya - First Snow

From the Southeastern region of Turkey, Nico and I took an overnight bus to basically right in the middle of the country - to the Kapadokya region.  Now we've gotten used to some long 10 hour bus rides, but it is a totally different story here in Turkey as it was in Nepal.  Theses are some nice buses.  Way nicer than any Greyhound you can find in the US.  And after you get going, there is even an attendant who comes by offering drinks and little snacks!  It still is a bus though, and I am terrible at sleeping sitting up.  We were both exhausted by the time we got to Göreme (the main town from where to go hiking) and so we spent much of the rest of our first day sleeping.

Our cave dorm!

Fairy Chimneys, and snow!

Kapadokya is a really interesting region.  Most of the rock there is some sort of soft deposit left over from volcanic activity.  Then over the years, the elements have carved all sorts of interesting formations - big gorges, tunnels, and these "fairy chimneys".  The fairy chimneys are these cone shaped freestanding formations up to about 50ft high, in which people carved houses and lived inside.  Not many people live in there now, but at least in Göreme all the hostels have cave dorms that are actually cut into the rock.

It is pretty obvious that now we are back in a touristy region, although at least it is not tourist season.  There are tons of hostels in Göreme and you don't get invited in for tea by everyone.  We were there to do some daywalks and less for the culture so it was all good.  I'm quite glad that we were there in the off season though.  With all the accommodation, I can imagine that it would get quite busy and there'd be tons of tourists all over.  As it was though, it was almost like a ghost town.  We were the only 2 people in our hostel for 2 out of 3 nights, and we barely saw anyone on our walks.  And of course there was snow... which just makes everything much better.

Göreme in snow

Like I mentioned in the title - first snow.  Our first full day there, it was sleeting/snowing/raining for much of the morning, so it was looking like it might have been an indoor day.  But then it got just a little bit colder.  The perfect temperature to turn it all to snow and stick to everything and be really pretty.  Suddenly we had a lot more energy and were really excited about the prospect of going for a walk.  We wandered out and planned on hiking Pigeon Valley.  We followed a small road in a little ways, but then the road stopped, the valley split, and the trail was covered in snow.... so we had no idea where to go.  We found one set of footprints heading up the right side valley and ended up going that way.  Went in a ways, but turned out that was not the right one... but we still got to climb up some cool stuff and see some neat formations.

The next day we decided to come back and take the left valley this time which goes to a nearby town.  All over in the sides of the canyon walls were these small holes carved into the rock (you can see them in the picture above).  Apparently they were for the pigeons, cause they used to collect the pigeon doody for fertilizer.  I've got no idea how they possibly got up there to make the holes and collect stuff, cause they were sometimes about 3/4 the way up a 100 ft cliff!

Luckily it remained cold enough that this day everything was still covered in about 4-5" of snow and the sun came out making everything super beautiful.  Still the trail was covered, so it took a few wrong turns to eventually find our way out of the valley, but at each wrong turn was just more really beautiful scenery.  You really should check out the pictures, cause they are sweet:  http://picasaweb.google.com/dave.dayan/Cappadocia#

caves and tunnels

Alrightty, from there it was another rough night on a bus to Istanbul!  I'll probably write more about this place later.