Monthly Archives: June 2014

Konya

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Konya is a medium sized city between the Cappadocia area and Antalya; it makes a good stopover if you want to split up a long bus trip to the Mediteranean coast.

It’s really famous for just one thing, the mausoleum of Rumi.
Konya has the largest Islamic population of anywhere in Turkey.  It’s said that 99 percent of people living in Konya are Islamic.
Rumi was a poet and you can read his works here, but they are mostly written in Hebrew.  He focused his work on people being accepting of other cultures and ideas.  It is said that this can be see among Muslims in Turkey.  Although all Muslims worship together, you often see some women fully covered so you can see just their eyes sitting next to other Muslim women casually wearing jeans.  This idea of accepting others even though you do not necessarily agree with what they are doing or how they dress is supposed to have begun with Rumi.
Also the practice of Turkish dervish whirling started here.  It’s a sort of active meditation technique or a worship dance.  It sounds like it was a long process to train, apparently just over 1000 days of training.

A lot of hot air

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Well, it was quite dark this morning at 4am in Göreme when I woke up.  I was picked up at 4:15 for a sunrise hot air balloon flight.  It’s quite a popular activity in Cappadocia so a lot of the town was awake at that time as well.

They provided a small breakfast before we were driven to the launching area.  They were still inflating the balloons when we arrived.
These balloons are huge, much bigger than I was expecting.  You can somewhat compare to the size of the jeep in the foreground of the picture.
Once the balloon was inflated, we all boarded the basket.  They can fit 20 in each basket, but we had about 18 people.  They are large baskets so everyone gets a good view.  We then waited a short while for takeoff clearance and then we were off.

As the sun rose, all you could see were balloons over the hillside.  Once you are up in the air, it’s quite quiet and peaceful.  You can see the balloon at the bottom right firing the engine to gain height.
Apparently they have very little control of the balloon.  They can go up or down and they can rotate the balloon, but they can’t really turn to go in a different direction, you just go where the wind takes you.
Landing was interesting.  We landed on a bit of a hill, so we touched down and then took off again, before finally coming to a rest.  The ground crew were quick to secure the balloon and provide us with sparkling fruit juice which they called “champagne”.
A lot of people question if it is worth the cost, as it is one of the more expensive things to do in Turkey. I think if you are going to do it, here is a good place since the views are spectacular.  If you get a good pilot, he can get very close to some of the sandstone towers so you can get a great view of them.
Another place for ballooning is Bagan in Myanmar.  It’s much more expensive than here though, and they don’t fly in the wet season.

Cappadocia

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I arrived in Cappadocia on Turkish Airways from Istanbul.  I wanted to take the train, but all rail services have been suspended from Istanbul due to them upgrading to high speed lines.  Even if you book a flight last minute in high season (which is what I did), you are unlikely to pay more than 130 Lira.

I arranged a shuttle from the airport to the hotel, but it was dark by the time I got there.  Apparently this made for a cool picture of Göreme town.
It’s a fairly small place, but it’s in the centre of everything and all the hiking routes radiate from here. The open air museum, which showcases several churches built into the sandstone rock, is nearby.

Before I hiked love valley, I hiked up to see Üçisar castle, about a 3km hike from here.
You can see the word castle does not really do it justice.  It is a natural structure with rooms carved out inside it.  You can climb to the top for 6 lira (as of Summer 2014).  The view at the top is great.  You can see as far as Mount Erciyes, which is 3950 metres and still has snow at the top right now at the end of June.
The hiking around this area is really good.  With a decent map the trails are relatively easy to follow with a few of them cut through the rock.