I don’t usually like re-visiting places I have been to before – there are too many new places to see before rehashing old ones.

However, Turkey is the exception.

Turkey had made a real impression on me 20 odd years ago when, with a group of friends, we had spent some weeks island hopping through Greece before landing in Kusadasi on the Aegean Coast, visiting the ancient ruins of Ephesus, making some scary overnight bus trips to the white mineral terraces of Pumakkale and the Gallipoli peninsula and onward to Istanbul before continuing our European jaunt.  I think I would have barely spent two weeks here and had wished I could have spent longer but at the time Oktoberfest in Munich was beckoning so we were moving through quite quickly….

Two areas I regret not seeing at that time were Cappadocia and the southern Mediterranean Coast, so they were both firmly on our itinerary this time and to be enjoyed at a much more leisurely pace. We had set aside five weeks for Turkey and I was really looking forward to it – so … did it live up to my expectations?

It sure did… and surpassed them!

I had only booked our onward flights from India to Turkey with Air Arabia three weeks before, having kept an eye on their fares and getting a pretty good deal for flights New Delhi via Sharjar in the UAE, to Istanbul for $325pp.  An eight-hour layover at Istanbul airport was followed by a domestic flight with Pegasus airlines, a Turkish domestic low cost carrier, to Kayseri for Goreme, Cappadocia for a further $50pp. A total distance of 6592km for $375 pp – not bad!

Our journey began with a prayer over the aircraft PA system in a deep echoing Arabic voice, just as all good flights should. Watching the in-flight GPS, we made a fairly unusual approach into Sharjar. The aircraft stayed at cruising altitude until we were abeam the airport before making a steep 180° decending turn and landing. An indication of the dodgy countries in this area perhaps?!

After a four hour stopover at Sharjah airport, we boarded our onward flight and arrived in Istanbul at about midnight local time. In true backpacker style, we had decided an arrival at midnight and departure at 9am did not warrant the time, trouble and expense of booking a local hotel. So instead we opted for a sleepover at the airport. Istanbul has a new, modern airport with some shops open 24 hours and it was all a bit of an adventure for the girls. We found a row of hard seats and spread ourselves out head to toe, reminiscent of many a night spent roughing it in my former travelling life!

After the domestic flight to Kayseri, the 80km taxi ride (costing 150 lira/$80 – ouch!)  to Goreme got us to our hotel by lunchtime. Phew – we had been on the go for nearly 30 hours!  We settled in at the Rock Valley Pension, a small hotel of about 14 rooms and dormitories nestled in a valley to the east of the Goreme town centre amongst the fairy houses. Included in the nightly rate of $55  (yes slightly up on India, but still not too bad), were the wonderfully delicious Turkish breakfasts of egg, cucumber, tomato, feta cheese and olives. Unlimited tea and coffee was also on tap. Mmmm …I was in heaven!

While we had no specific plans for our time in Goreme, we had committed to stay for 5 nights in order to recuperate from our Indian odyssey and take in the local sights. Immediately obvious was the dramatic drop in temperature, and out came every piece of warm clothing we owned.  Winters icy tentacles were gradually making their presence felt, and while daytime temperatures were in the high teens, once the sun set at 4:30 in the afternoon the temperature quickly fell and most nights there was frost on the ground with temperatures hovering around zero. After the constant high decibels of India, I couldn’t get over how peaceful and quiet it was here! The saying ‘the silence was deafening’ has never rung more true.

The landscape of Cappadocia consists of soft volcanic tuff sculptured by water and wind erosion over millennia into fantastic shapes, with huge stone mushroom and fairy chimneys, soft ridges and deep valleys, all riddled with numerous ancient cave dwellings and subterranean honeycomb cities. It must surely be one of the most unique landscapes found anywhere in the world, and is really a fascinating place and one I had been looking forward to seeing for myself for a long time.

The ‘Fairy chimneys’ are formed when lava covering the tuff (consolidated volcanic ash) gave way along pre-existing cracks of sloping areas and became isolated pinnacles. They can attain a height of up to forty meters, have conical shapes and consist of caps of harder rock resting on pillars of softer rock. The fairy chimneys also have a great colour variety. There are light and dark colours from white to yellow, pink, grey and black. The early inhabitants of this area figured out it was easy to hollow a house out of the soft stone and this practice continues even today!

We soon discovered a local coffee shop where the girls enjoyed hot chocolates and cake and the wonderful Turkish baklava.  Watching where the locals went to eat, we found a small kebab shop which made very affordable durums (chicken donar kebabs at 4tl/$2 each) and returned there several times during our stay. We spent a morning walking around the quaint village of Goreme and in the afternoon visited the Open Air Museum, exploring the cave churches and some of the earliest Christian settlements in this area.

Goreme markets itself as a bit of an adventure tourist destination with organised day tours and quad biking on hand. It is also considered the ballooning capital of Turkey, with in excess of 25 balloon companies. Having never ridden in a hot-air balloon I couldn’t imagine a more amazing place to experience it.

After careful consideration we contacted a few companies by email and received a quick response from the Tripadvisor top rated company, ‘Butterfly Balloons’.  They replied to our message with a good offer of 390€ (about $500) to take the four of us on a one hour plus balloon ride. While this was more expensive than the prices offered by some of the other balloon companies, Butterfly Balloons have an exemplary safety record and very positive reviews which is very important in our book and worth paying extra for.

We rose just after 5am the next morning to a really heavy fog and we were picked up from the hotel and taken to the Butterfly Balloons office in town for a light breakfast. It soon became evident that the morning fog wasn’t going anywhere and after sunrise it still hadn’t budged, perhaps even getting thicker. After an hour, the pilots had been to check all the usual launch sites around town and no improvement in conditions meant that flying was cancelled for the morning. We returned to our hotel after booking again for the next morning. The fog did eventually lift at about lunchtime, and there was a flurry of activity as some balloon companies raced to take passengers on afternoon and sunset flights. We climbed to the top of a hill behind the town with some chicken durums, fresh bread, cheese and a beer to enjoy the spectacular sights as the balloons rose into the afternoon sky. It was a magical sight!

The next morning we were collected again at 5:30am and although the town was once again shrouded in fog, we could see the stars directly above us which was a good indication it wasn’t too thick. After a quick breakfast with the other passengers, we were whisked to the launch area past other balloon companies by the side of the road and various launch areas, all frantically preparing for flight. The sparse vegetation in the area means that pretty much anywhere that is flat and accessible to a four wheel drive and trailer can be used as an impromptu launch site for a balloon. Four wheel drives towing trailers loaded with wicker gondolas and equipment cruise the roads looking for the best launch areas while minivans loaded with passengers tear up the roads ferrying the paying passengers to and from their hotels. Early mornings in Goreme are a hive of activity!

On the morning of our flight, the temperature was a brisk zero degrees and there was plenty of frost on the ground. Our balloon was in the final stages of inflation when we arrived at the launch site, and we met our pilot Mike who is also the company chief pilot and a British expat.

We climbed into the basket – four to each compartment (total 16 people) with Mike in the middle at the ‘controls’  and in just a few minutes we were ascending just as the sun was breaking over the nearby mountains.

Surprisingly, as we got higher the air temperature got a little warmer and the balloon seemed to settle into this layer of warm air. The sky cleared around and above us while the fog remained in the valleys and low areas creating interesting visual effects and fantastic photo opportunities. Even Mike got his camera out saying it was most unusual.

We did not get an accurate count of the number of balloons flying at any one time that morning, but there would have been in excess of 100!! The views over the valleys looking down on the fantastic rock formations were incredible, at times we descended so low the basket  almost scraped the ‘fairy houses’.

We had a fantastic flight of more than an hour over Pink and Love Valleys before descending into the fog shrouded White valley to be met by the ground crew. The girls helped deflate the balloon and everyone enjoyed the obligatory champagne (juice thoughtfully brought for the kids) and cake before being returned to our pension in plenty of time for our regular scrumptious breakfast.

What a magnificent way to start the day! How lucky are we?!