“The first thing I should tell you,” said my guide, an amiable young man named Uzay, “is, you’re on another planet.”
Below me and beside me in this desert land were landforms of a kind I’d never seen on my planet–tall cones the color of sand, clusters of them, some topped with a flat, dark rock but most just conical, like a village of very large, sometimes lumpy dunce caps.
Volcanoes put them here, but as a plateau, not like this; wind and ice and water made them what they are.
“Still, the erosion goes on,” said my guide, in fluent guidespeak. “Most of the erosion takes place in the winter . . . “
Some visitors moved in among the cones, along rough trails, to get a better feel; on the road below, disgorged busloads of tourists gazed up and snapped photos and gazed up again, trying to make sense of it all.
I was 19 photos into my own roll of 36 exposures when I walked over to Uzay, who had let me wander on my own.
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“Should I be saving film for later?”
He smiled.
“This,” replied Uzay, “is nothing.”
Then I smiled.
Because this, my introduction to Cappadocia, was not “nothing.”
And four days later, after exploring much of it by van, foot and hot-air balloon–leaving the horses and bikes for the heartier among us–here’s what I know:
Cappadocia, folks, is really something. Bring lots of film.
This place, at 1,500 square miles about the size of Rhode Island, is natural formations that simultaneously defy and invite description, some of that description inevitably and unapologetically ribald.
It is cave homes that date to the Old Testament. It is cave churches that date to early Christianity and entire underground cities that hid those Christians from Roman and other legions.
There are still full-color frescoes in those churches, from the time William the Conqueror was conquering in another world far, far away.
It is living history: potters working with the same red clay and in the same style as Hittites did millennia ago; women baking delicious bread in crude ovens cut into the sides of canyon walls; weavers re-creating kilims and carpets that were currency on the old Silk Road that cuts through Cappadocia; shepherds with flocks and gatherers with berries and, of course, dealers in postcards and silly trinkets.
Part museum and part today, man and nature in wondrous collusion, all set in a landscape that’s beyond lunar–this is the region of Cappadocia. The wonder starts with the land. If these cones and spires and other weird formations had been in Utah instead of in the heart of Turkish Anatolia, it would’ve been one of our first national parks. This is amazing stuff, like the pinnacles at Bryce Canyon–but somehow more curious.
The balloon ride–if you do get here, try not to miss the balloon ride–literally gave the overview. Kaili Kidner, an expatriate Brit who is one of two pilot-owners of Kapadokya Balloons, provided the narration and inspiration (and the steering) as we silently floated a couple of hundred feet above the village of Goreme.
“That valley,” she said, pointing, “is known locally as `Love Valley,’ for obvious reasons.”
The formations were nothing if not graphically, with just a little imagination, um, obviously . . .
“But there’s another valley over there,” she said, “and we call that `Penisville,’ in case there’s any confusion.”
The more vegetably oriented among you might describe these particular hoodoos as mushroomlike. Other forms in these and in neighboring groupings, from the proper angle, may look like Snoopy, a camel or Michelangelo’s “Pieta”–or wherever the creative mind leads.
In general, these formations are called “fairy chimneys.” They are found in the Devrent Valley and at Goreme Open Air Museum and Zelve Open Air Museum and at Uchisar and Pasabagi and in places without names. All were created of essentially the same stuff and from the same process.
Volcanoes (there is some disagreement about which did what and when, but that’s someone else’s problem) spewed spewage called tufa. Some of this material, for reasons volcanologists understand, is softer than the other.
The result, a couple of million years later: The erosion wasn’t uniform. So today, we have sloped conical, columnar and other standing formations of relatively soft rock (mainly pumice) sometimes topped by caps of harder rock (primarily basalt).
We also have whole canyons, valleys and gorges (which are which doesn’t seem to matter to mapmakers and sign-painters), explorable on foot or, some of them, on horseback.
To name three: The Red Valley is a wow, especially when the light is right (late afternoon is really good). The Ihlara is cut by a stream jumping with trout. The Pigeon’s walls are pocked pigeon holes first created by 4th Century monks to collect guano for fertilizer, an enterprise that continued long after the monasteries were pretty well abandoned by the 14th Century.
Which introduces the human element.
Carved into the soft-rock walls of those valleys, canyons and even some broader-based fairy chimneys, along with pigeon holes, are caves. Thousands of them.
People did this using their hands and whatever tools were around, possibly as far back as the Old Testament Hittites; only two of today’s existing caves, according to my guide, are fully natural–though it’s likely some of the man-made ones began as natural dents and were enlarged. Eventually, entire cave-settlements were established (some in use into the 1940s–and some, significantly upgraded in most cases, converted into hotels you will love), as well as underground storage facilities and, in some cases, underground shelters for protection against invaders.
When early Christians (we’re talking early Christians here, like 1st Century), fled from Jerusalem and environs to Asia Minor to escape Roman persecution, many of them found refuge in those caves and underground shelters–some of which were expanded.
They also, being Christians, designated some of the caves as churches. Over subsequent centuries, monastic and other Christians added pillars, alcoves and domes to these primitive chapels, and decorated them with frescoes.
Those original frescoes were covered over during 8th Century, lost to the iconoclasm of Byzantine Emperor Leo III, which banned depiction of biblical personages and scenes (and got him excommunicated by Rome). The movement didn’t last much longer than Leo; by the 10th Century, the Cappadocian fresco-painters were back doing their thing–and today, it’s those frescoes, most done in the 10th and 11th Centuries, that survive in Cappadocia’s cave-churches. Some are rather primitive, even for their time. To compare the best of them, in workmanship and in condition, to the vivid, striking works that survive in, say, the tombs of ancient Egypt would be silly. This is mainly folk art, and scarred folk art at that–victimized by latter-day iconoclasts (primarily Muslims) and thoughtless graffitists (which, judging from their work and initials, cross national, ethnic and religious lines).
Imperfect, to be sure. And yet . . .
To walk into what is a cave, carved out and sculpted by skilled hands more than a thousand years ago, and look up into a dome, again carved out by hand, and see a still-clear image of Jesus surrounded by disciples is, certainly in the context of history, visually and emotionally stunning.
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Then there are the underground cities. The largest known city, Derinkuyu, is open for tours but still full of mystery; estimates of how many people could live there at any given time range from 6,000 to three times that. Archeologists have found eight levels, and some believe there may be another 12 below those.
Those of you who had ant farms as kids can imagine the network of compartments of Derinkuyu and the other buried cities. Dead-end corridors, narrow passageways and rolling blockades kept the inhabitants (human and livestock) safe from soldiers and other enemies; sophisticated (for the time) systems of ventilation, water distribution and storage kept them breathing, quenched and fed.
“No armies were brave enough to come here,” said Uzay. “It was suicide.”
(It’s still no picnic. Derinkuyu translates as “deep well”; for tourists, Derinkuyu means “watch your heads.” Exploring these mazes requires a certain amount of bending and stooping, and the seriously claustrophobic might consider staying in the balloon.)
Early Christians didn’t create these cities–guesses suggest the labyrinths go back in one form or another to the Hittites (19th Century B.C.)–but during the first centuries after Christ and into the time of later Arab invasions they certainly used them to escape persecution. Once again, they built churches.
And it’s all here. Plus 14th Century mosques and tombs dating to the Seljuks, considered the first ethnic Turks to conquer Anatolia; ornate caravansaries that housed and protected traders who traveled the Silk Road; so much more to contemplate and absorb.
But what stays with you, more than the churches and frescoes, is the nature of the place.
One afternoon, Uzay and I hiked a couple of miles of the Ihlara Valley. Willows lined the trail along the stream, the Melendiz River, that runs through it. Wild berries were there for the tasting–which we did. Above us were pink canyon walls with their abandoned cave homes and yet more churches–350 churches in that valley alone–some of which we checked out, most of which we didn’t.
At one point, a girl on a donkey rode toward us on the narrow path. Behind her, goats were being urged along by another girl. The goats didn’t say much, but the girls smiled as they passed. Soon after, the bank widened into a bright-green space, the rippling offering a promise of fresh trout. The far side of the canyon was aglow in the morning light.
Here, said Uzay, is where, when he is not guiding, he spends time with his books and his thoughts and his dreams.
“Here,” he said, “it’s possible for anyone to find himself. A different world from the city.”
A different world than just about any place you have ever seen.
It is here, in Turkey, in Cappadocia.
E-mail Alan Solomon: [email protected]