Cappadocia is a surreal land. The bizarre natural formations appear to be a part of an elaborate setup.
Apparently, a few million years ago the whole area was covered with volcanic ash (which compacted to make a soft stone called tuff) and this was topped by a thin lava layer which cooled to formed the hard basalt. When the basalt cracked, the softer tuff was eroded by water and air resulting in these odd look mushroom stalk/ hoodoo / fairy chimneys.
We loved this beautiful landscape creation of the eccentricity of nature which people had embraced as a part of their daily life. We were staying in Uchisar which is famous for a whole castle (Uchisar castle) dug out of tuff.
Tourists can opt for horse back or quad riding, get photographed in a love seat, flowing clothes or camel back. A balloon ride with areal view of the fairy chimneys should be worth getting up at 3a.m. Sadly, we missed the balloon ride due to bad weather.
Here is a photographs of the flying balloons the next day while we were on our way to the airport 😒.
One of the most wondrous sites is Kaymakli underground city. This was humankind taking full advantage of their natural resources to get an out-of-the-box solution for their housing problem. The caves were dug into the soft stone tuff. One may wonder the reasons for digging up a whole multi-level city. It could be claustrophobic for many ---- the walls were looking frail and not very confidence inspiring. A visit to the city makes it clear that the residents of this place were very keen to keep there whereabouts hidden ( from whom?). The entrance is small and could be locked by rolling a hard rock in front of it.
For air-circulation, horizontal shafts open in vertical shafts which go down to the water level (ensuring water supply to the cave dwellers) and from the top one just sees the well!
The kitchen (has an atta-chakki like the one I still have) and forges are in the innermost part of the caves to hide their presence. The larder, animal caves indicate that these were not very long term measures, but not just a few days either. There are multiple such caves cities in this region with an indication that some of these might be connected to each other. Why would the top of the food chain humans decide to go subterranean? Was the climate outside these caves too harsh to survive? Did they do it to escape the invaders?
Some fairy chimneys near Goreme were dug out to make churches and are about as old as Hagia Sofia of Istanbul. They still have very colourful frescoes.
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