Kitchen Pulse: Cappadocia ie Kapadokya

We spent our last 2 and a half days in the Cappadocia region in Anatolia. Our guide book describes Cappadocia as a giant outdoor sculpture garden, and everywhere you look is strange and beautiful. Long story short, the combination of 3 volcanoes erupting over time, being covered in water, and earthquakes worked together to create the valleys and strange rock formations. The rock is soft enough to carve out with sticks and chisels, and groups of cone like rocks became the homes of people in the region and also Christians fleeing persecution in the 7th and 8th centuries. Eventually some churches expanded into monasteries and large religious communities. As the Christian faith became less threatened, the cave churches became more elaborate and many contain detailed frescoes biblical scenes.

Jess and I arrived in Istanbul after being awake 24 hours. I booked a 6am flight from Istanbul, forgetting that this means catching a 4am shuttle to the airport. The easiest thing to do in these circumstances is to stay up all night...so I stayed out in Istanbul and saw how the Turks party at 3:30am on a Saturday. Crazy is how.

Resting by the pool, before my 4 hour nap

About to pass out on the divan

We arrived to Nevsehir and were shuttled through this amazing landscape to our very nice cave hotel; I felt drugged. My mind was floating somewhere out of my tired brain, but I was visually stimulated by the surrounding rock formations. My mother offered to book us a fancy hotel in Turkey for our stay in Goereme. It will be our one break from hostel dorm rooms. Our hotel kindly let Jess and I eat the delicious hotel breskfast and then pass out on their divans until our room was ready.

Kelebek (special cave) Hotel breakfast

Once we woke up from our very long nap in the public seating area, we freshened up and headed to the Goreme Open Air Museum.

The open air museum is a group of cave churches, mostly built between the 10th and 12th centuries AD, some as early as the 6th century.

Frescoes from a church in the Rose Valley

Many, the later ones, are painted with brilliant frescoes, some have simple religious symbols painted in red ochre to consecrate the space.

On Monday we booked a tour to see the surrounding sights of Cappadocia. The itinerary included a tour of Derinkuyu, an 8 level underground city reaching a depth of 300ft. There are 35 of these underground city in the area. The one we visited housed between 3000 to 4000 inhabitants for up to 6 months out of the year. Early Christians hid in the cities during the summer months to escape from Arab invaders. It was an amazing construction, but very claustrophobic with so many tourists. We then hiked 4km in the Ilhara Valley, another place filled with cave churches and caves for Christian hermits. After our hike we saw the Selime Monastery, a very impressive complex of a huge monastery and a cathedral plus other chapels. It was a long day of walking mostly uphill.

Jess in Love Valley

Today, we decided to explore the area on our own. Our hotel overlooks the Rose Valley and Love Valley and the entire area is well connected with foot paths. The weather was perfect in the morning, 80 degrees with a generous breeze. The valleys are naturally lovely and it seems like the majority of the rocks have been carved into dwellings or churches. We walked for 4 hours, through the multicolored valleys. For a while we were the only hikers and once it hit 10am we began to see families and tour groups.

Jacqueline in Love Valley

My writing finese struggles to describe the appearance of this area. Much of the formations are strangely beautiful; everywhere I look, my eye is intrigued. This is one of those landscapes that you never knew you were missing, but my imagination and concept of the earth and environment feels expanded having spent time here. My mother mentioned that for her Cappadocia was a religious, mystical experience with its cave churches and the history of Christians hiding here, and then choosing to stay in this area and meditate on their beliefs. The churches and monasteries built into caves are a type of devotion I have never seen. Imagine the work and imagination required to build a monument to God from these formidable rocks. Most cathedrals are impessive, but they are so obviously man-made. When I walked into the first cave church, a very primitive structure, it was easy to believe that the cave existed and then the Christians decided to make it a house of God with some red painted crosses and heart. As we continued to enter large chapels with columns and apses and detailed, colorful frescoes, the concept of worship began to set in. The early Christians hollowed out these rocks by hand to make a place to live and worship. Cappadocia is amazing: to see nature and human design interact from such an early time period expanded my concept of beauty and art.