Still a bit shaky on our feet, we set off in mid-November to drive through the incredible plain of Konya. We drive the 150 kilometers on a main road with a wide breakdown lane. Apart from the noise, the bigger roads are comfortable and we are both quite happy to plug in headphones for once and sink into our respective audio books or podcasts. The last twelve days of driving have been spectacular and we are grateful for the monotonous section. The ride is interrupted by the impressive caravanserai in Sultanhani and another cold overnight stay somewhere in a field next to a lonely tree. In Konya we added a thin felt blanket and a belly band to our gear. We cut this in half lengthwise and now it serves as a connector for our sleeping mats. These two purchases greatly increase our sleeping comfort in the cold. As of now, it is much easier to snuggle and thus generate more warmth. Still in Switzerland I sewed an additional layer for the inner tent out of a parachute hammock and cold while sleeping is no issue for us for the time being. That night we are awakened by rifle shots fired quite close to our tent. Drowsy, we can’t think of any reason why someone would shoot at us, hear a car driving away somewhere and sink back into our dreams.
The next big city Aksaray we drive through once lengthwise and fight ourselves in the meanwhile early dusk up a hill in the outer quarter. We are allowed to spend one night with the well-read Esra. An exquisite selection of novels is piled up on a wall in the living room and besides her taste in books, Esra impresses us with her fantastic Bialetti coffee, a delicious dinner and her curiosity about the world and life. It is a pity that we stay only for one night, but the longer forced break in Konya and the view of the Ihlara Valley make us move on.
From our room window at Esra, the impressive silhouette of the 3200 meter high volcano Hasan is visible in the first daylight. More than 8000 years ago this giant volcano erupted and deposited the tuff layers of today in the Ihlara Valley and Cappadocia.
Two more days of driving separate us from the national park, but the typical eroded rock formations can be spotted more and more often.
For the last few weeks we have been riding across the Anatolien Plateau. We have biked over mountains and through endless plains. Now the path takes us down into the earth. We bike over a slight elevation before we enter the start of the canyon. The canyon looks like a deep crack in the pavement. As the road takes us down towards Selime and the Ilhara Valley, we start to see odd rock formations. Clusters of large similarly shaped rocks and rock walls with deep cracks start to shape the canyon around us. Trees, coloured by autumn, grow here; a nice change to the dry, treeless region of the past few days. We cross the Melendiz river close to Selime and can see a large cliff in the background behind the trees. The run down town is built at its base and into its face.
Our excitement grows as we get closer to our first real Cappadocia experience.
The cliff extends a hundred meters above the town and is extensively eroded. The erosion in this region shapes the landscape into cones, mushrooms and pyramids. There are two distinct formations. There are cones that grow out of the cliff face, forming different layers like a group of mushrooms. The others, further away from the cliff faces, extend from the ground and stand alone or in loose groups more like road cones or rounded pyramids.
Here in this special place we find the campsite of the century: view over the valley entrance, under a large rocky outcrop, everywhere caves and churches from times gone by and far and wide no people.
We spend the whole next day in the Ihlahara valley and enjoy not being on the road with the bikes for once.
After two nights in the valley we move on towards Göreme National Park. Another (for once touristic) highlight is the visit of the underground city in Derinkuyu. There are said to be over 200 of these “sanctuary cities” in the area. The underground city in Derinkuyu is said to have provided space for up to 20000 people to go underground during times of looting. For a long time it was possible to live in the annex self-sufficiently from the outside world. There was space for the farm animals, wine presses, storage rooms, recreation chambers, communication, ventilation and water shafts and millstone-like security doors that could be closed from the inside.
In Göreme we spend two days walking around and doing a lot of research for our further route planning.
Cappadocia is an insanely photogenic place and so we let the pictures speak for themselves.