MikePadgett.com

Hoodoos and balloons

— An epic day hike through the hills and valleys of the Göreme Tarihi Milli Parkı, passing through some of the world's most beautiful and unusual rock scenery.”

• Walking route: Göreme – Rock Valley – Uçhisar – Pigeon Valley – Love Valley – Çavuşin - Paşabağı – Rose Valley – Red Valley - Kilçlar Valley – Göreme
• Distance: 25km (28km actual due to detours)

It’s about an hour before dawn. My host lets me know that but I’ve already been awake a few minutes. I slip out into the chilly morning air. As I turn on my GPS device, I find it’s still dark enough to require the backlight.

Having climbed to the top of the village, I’m soon heading downhill into the imaginatively named Rock Valley (Içeri Dere) and the moon isn’t fat enough to light my way. I wanted to save weight so I never packed a torch and now I’m faced with a couple of pitch black rock tunnels.

After a while I start to hear birdsong and a bit of rustling in the bone dry grasses, getting ever so steadily louder as if the whole landscape is controlled by a volume knob. Along with these sounds, colour now seeps into the valley, tinting the rockfaces above a pale straw yellow.

I’m climbing through a narrow section between rippled rocks that look like the meringue topping of a pavlova. And then I stop dead.

In this silence the howling and barking of a dog seems unsettlingly close. I can’t see it but it can see me. I scan the whole valley, my eyes racing over detailed surfaces. Then I see it. In fact, I see them. There are two. Wild or feral. They are on the opposite valley side and a sheer drop prevents them from doing any more than protecting their own domain. I make it to the top over on my side and check my map to make sure it won’t be taking me over that side.

For the next few moments, inside every shadow and behind every rock hides a ferocious wild dog. I’m sweating but I’m not sure if it’s fear or exertion. Round the next bluff and the fear slips away when I spy the crumbling keep of Uçhisar, lofty and untouchable like the Assassins’ Castle of Alamut. Uçhisar consists of a throng of ancient houses ringing the keep much like those found in Göreme, though apart from a thin belt of glassed-in verandas along the road, it’s obvious that less money has been made and spent here.

Larger map of this route

Uçhisar glows a splendid orange as the sun’s first glow bathes it and now  all the balloons are going up behind me. Still wary of dogs, I begin the steep climb to the village on a path that looks more like a landslip. I pass on a horse of indeterminate age, gilded by the sunlight. Finally I reach the village, at once half-ruined and half-built.

Up at the road, the outrageous gesture of luxury accommodations clashes uncomfortably with what lies just a couple of metres below. Up here there are proud lawns, manicured and freakishly green, with dusty looking men hosing them down at this hour. Up late are a few tourists already in sunglasses, watching the balloons glide over the glass, the concrete, the lawns and all of our heads.

Clouds of dust follow the minibuses as they drive too fast down narrow, white tracks toward the balloon landing sites. I pass nearby where ‘x’ marks the spot and I hear excited echoes but nobody sees me. I descend the erratic and winding trail into Pigeon Valley (Güvercinlik Vadisi). The rock here is beyond white and still in deep shadow, so I begin to feel cold again and decide to pick up the pace.

I might be halfway down when I hear voices. Clear enough to grasp that German is being spoken and that I have been spotted. Yet there’s nobody else around for as far as the distance I can see. Yet the voices are so clear they’re almost on top of me. And it turns out they are. With effortless silence, an enormous balloon has crossed the precipice and slid right over my head. I could almost touch the basket. People wave and I wave back.

Down in the valley bottom the first hoodoos, or “fairy chimneys” as they are rather picturesquely known here, make their appearance. Hoodoos are formed because the upper layers of a section of rock are harder than those below, so that weathering occurs quicker and to a greater extent on the lower part of the rock, eventually separating and isolating a column which remains partly protected by the upper layers. The hoodoos here come to resemble knitting needles, asparagus spears and of course penes.

This latter description may account for the next valley’s epithet: Love Valley. This valley contains many of the most complete hoodoos in the region and is preceded by a small garden of gourds and apricot trees which somebody presumably comes out here to maintain and harvest.

Beyond Love Valley, which I am unable to fully enjoy thanks to another canine encounter, I reach the road that connects Göreme with Nevşehir and Çavuşin. The latter being nearby, that’s where I am headed next. Çavuşin is a modern village in comparison with Göreme and Uçhisar: it has a grid system of streets and people live in ordinary houses. I pass through the village and out along a narrow path beginning at a rock church dedicated to St John the Baptist.

Pretty soon I am lost but uncaring. I was supposed to head direct for the Paşabağı and Zelve. Now I find myself overlooking them instead and the view from up here is fantastic.

Eventually I retrace my steps to Rose Valley (Güllü Dere) and pass beautiful, isolated rock cuttings before descending through the old, now ruined village that once answered to the name of Çavuşin. This ghost village, complete with a graveyard full of eroding headstones, is a bit of a tourist spot and I leave the road to head for the Red Valley (Kizil Çukur).

Locally published hikers’ map (Full size)

The path here is not straightforward. I get the distinct impression that it is not often followed from this side of Çavuşin and on more than one occasion, a fallen tree forces me to make a detour into open scrubland. Soon there are just too many paths bifurcating from mine and I become unsure as to which one I need to take. When the GPS tells me I need to make a turn, there appears to be no path there to take.

I continue on hoping to retrace back onto the route a little further on and I come within about fifty metres of doing so. The problem is that those fifty metres are vertical. The waypoint is high above me! I add about 2km of rough scrambling to my day’s total at this point, finally getting back to my original path after a lot of uncertainty and recalculation. When I eventually pass that point when I’m about fifty metres above where I was, I smile ruefully about the time and energy I’ve lost.

High above the valley floor, I can now see all the main rock valleys bar Zelve (which is behind the butte on which I currently find myself), from Çavuşin to my extreme right to as far as Uçhisar, now on the distant horizon.

The path runs steadily across the steep valley side and apart from the occasional shade from a rock formation, it’s incredibly hot. My water is now starting to run low and I look out for Aktepe, a tall hill on the left. When I draw level with Aktepe, I turn and descend back to the valley floor via the Kilçlar Valley Church where locals are drying huge bunches of greyish purple grapes.

After such a long, high and dry trail, I am rather unprepared for the humidity of the valley bottom. I pass through damp, insect-filled caves, scramble up steep little rises and push through thick undergrowth. I am just a little irritable by the time I have climbed steeply again, this time reaching the road between Göreme and Ürgüp.

Stocking up on cool water at the Göreme Open Air Museum, I find myself in much better spirits and decide to walk hard the last stretch beside the road that runs back to Göreme. It’s been a big day of adventure and I have seen some incredible scenery. When I reach my accommodation, I figure I deserve my short nap, followed by a Turkish hamam and reflexology session!