29: Cappadocia
This was one of the most look forward places to on this trip because it is where we see posters of hot air balloons in the air in typical "Go Turkey" advertisements all over the world. We had to wake up really early to catch a morning flight from Istanbul to Kayseri.
The name Cappadocia seems to have been derived from the name of the river, Cappadose but Persians gave it a different name: Katpatuka, which means Land of the Horses and is very close in pronunciation to its current name. Maybe that was how the name came about. Cappadocia is not a city, but a historic name that spans 4 or 5 different cities, Kayseri being one. We went to the border of Neyshever City.
Cappadocia lies along the famous Silk Road that connects the East to the West and hundreds of years ago, it is a bustling town with people from all over the world. Nevertheless, it is mainly a tourist destination these days and there are no public transport or whatsoever in the region.
Our first stop was the Parsavah Fairy Chimneys, so called because if you look at them from above, they look like chimneys. They are really beautiful and you don't get to see such rock formations elsewhere in the world. The tour guide was a really young lady who had a very strong Turkish accent and I was trying so hard to make out what she was explaining throughout the entire trip. It is easy to be a tour guide, bringing people to places and then getting them to come back on time and so on and so forth but it is extremely challenging to be a GOOD tour guide to know about history and explain them in an entertaining way so that people do not fall asleep while you talk. LOL. Sounds very much like teaching to me. Without doubt, the fairy chimneys were formed due to a volcanic eruption many thousands of years ago whereby the lava flowed to the ground and hardened to form rocks. Over time, rain, snow, and sun caused erosion and gave it its different shapes and sizes. Most of the rock formations there have a round-shaped rock right on its top that is bigger in circumference than its supporting long structure at the bottom. This is because the rock at the top was much harder and landed on the top at a much later time so it has not eroded much, in other words, they are newer rocks that were piled onto the old ones. The tour guide repeated this tens over times so that left a deep impression on me.
In an area called Uchisar, which is also highest point in the city fortress, there is a traders' hotel which used to be a castle. Like mentioned previously, Cappadocia used to be along the Silk Road so there were loads of traders passing through the region and needed a place to stay.
The stop after lunch was the Gorome open air museum. Turkiye, which means Land of the Turks, was known as Asia Minor previously then eventually as Anatolia before the Turks gained independence and gave them the name Turkey in modern times. The people were called Hittites. Its strategic location in the intersection of East and West also resulted in a mixture of religions being practised in the area. In the open air museum, you could see traces of a 5th century Byzantine religious school and then the fresco' (Christians) influences in 10th and 11th century. What they did was to cover the wall with white plasters then repaint them. In olden times, there were no paint so they made dye using plants - Green from walnut, Yellow from daisy, red from rose and pigeon eggs as glue/ plaster. The paintings on the wall were subjected to destruction by human beings and also wear and tear over time. As certain religions had to be practised in secret while another religion dominated, some paintings had implicit meanings. For e.g. they represented Jesus Chris as a cross with a circle around it whereby the circle represented Jesus's halo. Normal monks or nuns or human beings were represented with a cross.
We lived in a cave hotel in Cappadocia and it was a really fascinating experience. We were supposed to go for our hot air balloon ride at 5 am the next morning but unfortunately, it was cancelled due to strong winds. On day 2, we headed to Kaymakli underground city, which was where the locals hid whenever there were wars or to escape from danger. Along the silk road, there were people passing by all the time and you are never sure whether they are traders or have ill intentions thus you had to hide. You could imagine how the people in the olden times live, how they dug underground storages for food, have the animals chained or kept near the entrance of their caves and also dug holes for corpses and used volcano ashes to remove the stench from the rotting bodies. Our society has definitely evolved. People in the past used whatever that they could gather from their surroundings to live but today, we have technology to overcome all these limitations. It is postulated that they sleep on sheepskin or other types of animal skin to stay warm. They also used rolling stones to block the entrance.
