Cappadocia
AsiaFrom the road

Bicycle touring Turkey (Part 3) – Cappadocia and beautiful eastern Turkey

This blog post about part 3 of cycling in Turkey is characterized by “less words, more pictures”. Cappadocia, central so as eastern Turkey offer some breathtaking landscapes, and since I could never truly describe these beautiful places in words, my pictures will do a much better job.

Cappadocia

After our camp on Tuz Gölü, Caroline and I continued cycling towards Cappadocia, which was only a 1-2 day ride away. The further we got towards central Turkey, the hotter it got. My craving for sugar, which slowly started to increase in Turkey, has not decreased so far and the heat did not help to counteract this issue for sure. It turned out that Caroline had the same sweet tooth as I had, so our diet while cycling in Turkey started to look like this:

At almost every gas station (1-3 a day) we stopped for an ice-cream, a bottle of ice-cold coke or cookies (or all of them). That was mostly the only thing there was. Ice-creams and Coca Cola became the motivation during these hot and long days, mostly cycling with a headwind. In Turkey I thought about the Idea of counting the ice-creams consumed on this tour, now I know it was probably a good decision I never did.

After an overnight stay in Aksaray, we slowly approached the center of Cappadocia and Göreme National Park. We cycled past more and more rock formations and next to antique cave-houses. It felt a bit like cycling in Grand Canyon, the scenery was fascinating and surreal at the same time. As we made a short coca-cola / ice-cream stop near the national park, the thermometer showed 46° celsius. Although we almost melted away, we couldn’t wait to cycle the last few km’s to Uçhisar and arriving in “our Cappadocia”. The Cappadocia which was the much-awaited highlight in Turkey, about which we have heard and read so much good from other cyclists and blogs.

In Uçhisar we made a last stop at a small shop to buy food and some cold beers and as we made it to the top of the village and looked down on the other side, we were both standing there open-mouthed, followed by a huge smile. Seeing this incredible, almost fairytale-like moonscape valley with our own eyes, was even more impressive than all the pictures and videos I’ve seen about it before.

We went a bit further down from Uçhisar to find a grassy, flat part for our tents and enjoyed the most special sunset view we probably both had on our journeys so far. In the early morning, around 4.30 am, we woke up to marvel the hundreds of hot air balloons that are flying over the valley every day. We then spent one day cycling through the Göreme national park or hiking through different parts of the valley, to see all these “fairy chimneys”, clefts, pinnacles and caves erosion has formed in the soft volcanic rock.[/penci_text_block][/vc_column][/vc_row]

2 comments

Bryan Keith 27. September 2021 at 20:03

Fabian,

Fantastic photos. It’s nicely written up as well. Thank you from someone who has bicycle toured way too much in Turkey. 🙂

Bryan

Reply
Fabian 2. December 2021 at 12:39

Hey Bryan!
Appreciate you taking the time to comment and reading the blog.
Happy to hear you’ve been touring in Turkey as well. It’s such a great and versatile country, would love to go back sometime and explore a bit more of the south % eastern part of the country.
Wish you some more great adventures with the bike!

regards
Fabian

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