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Day 3 I simply rested and checked out Uchisar Castle. The next day I did a 20km walk around Capadocia.
What an amazing place. There is a lot of natural beauty in Turkey. Yes, Capadocia's overrun with tourists but sometimes it's fine to go to a place like that especially when it's nature. Basically there are lots of conical sandstone rock formations. Usually they're clustered together in ridges, although occasionally there'll be one standing on its own. You'll see it in the photos. In some places the indigenous have cut holes in them to live in, a poor man's version of Petra. There are some old Christian churches as well, although to be honest I had a lot of walking to do that day so didn't stick around when you can see something really impressive of this nature in Jordan.
It's hard to describe in words without feeling like I'm doing the place a disservice. When you arrive in Uchisar you'll find yourself overlooking a valley stretching past Goreme in the bottom across to Akdag mountain range on the opposite side. What you see is a vista of white conical rock shapes. Quite high some of them, perhaps a short office tower like 10 stories high. Plenty are shorter though, perhaps half that. Then there is Uchisar Castle, which is a particularly large one of these formations which you can walk up inside to the top, with many rooms and passages dug into it that you can explore. The rock has quite a loose sandy surface though so you have to be careful so as not to slip down the side. I found quite a few interesting nooks and crannies, you'll have a lot of fun exploring if you go there.
Anyway, throughout the valley are a number of clusters of these cone rocks which basically divide the valley up. Two more famous ones for walks are the Red and Rose Valleys. It was kind of funny trying to follow the signs though because all signs had both names on them so I can only say I have seen some sort of combination of the two. When I started out walking from Uchisar I only had in mind that I wanted to do at least 20km as I was doing a solidarity walk for the Lebanon Mountain Trail Through Walk that was happening at the time. They do one of these each year and walk the whole trail from the bottom to the top (in this case) of Lebanon. I did a 6 day walk with the association along the trail last year.
When I started the walk I had a vague ambition of reaching the top of Akdag mountain range on the other side of Goreme, but the cliff face looked fairly imposing from Uchisar so I would have been happy if I just walked along the bottom of it. When I made it over there through a part of the Rose/Red Valley walk though I found a couple of trails - one that went along the bottom of the cliff face and one that went along the ridge. So I scrambled across some sandstone ridges, including making up a bit of the trail myself here which was fun before finally making it onto the lower trail. This was exhausting enough just to do that climb as it was already quite high up, offering an excellent view across all of the rock formations in the bottom of the valley all the way back over the Uchisar Castle looming in the distance. There was nowhere here to get up the cliff face so I meandered along enjoying the view before seeing a steep but doable climb up to the top of the ridge just before it rounded the bend and went to Akdag peak proper.
I'm really glad I went up there because now I had the best view for the area, and it had a pleasing sense of remoteness without any trees or shrubs growing on top and no one else about. As soon as I got up there and flopped down to get my breath the heavens even opened up for a nice sprinkle of rain to help me cool down! I felt that someone knew I'd made it :-) Then I wandered along the top a bit enjoying the feeling of commandment before finding a Turkish flag held down by some rocks at the foot of a flag pole with a loop on top. Presumably this can be turned into a windsock.
On the way back to Uchisar I have one more adventure to relate. Given it was a 20km walk I was keen to look for shortcuts, especially because the route looping southeast from Goreme to Uchisar was taking me along some boring dusty tracks used by cars. I walked across a field to the edge of another valley, and before long came across about 30 steps cut into the rock face. It wasn't a trail on OpenStreetMap - which had otherwise shown an immense level of detail making me never feel like I'd get lost as a walker at this site. Nevertheless I was feeling adventurous and thought I might be able to bushbash my way through the trees and undergrowth and up the other side of the valley to eventually get across the Uchisar. Bad idea. I had come across a valley used for farming, but it seemed to have been abandoned or at least not worked for a few seasons. No signs. No obvious paths going the direction I wanted to go. I thought I'd at least give it a go though, and started scrambling through the thorny bushes. It turned into one of those sunk cost fallacy situations. I found a potential way up the other side of the valley but because of the sandy, slippery, steep slopes I didn't want to risk making it partway up only to lose my footing and graze myself whilst sliding all the way back down again. Also no one was in this valley and I didn't like my chances of being found quickly if something broke. So I went back down to the valley floor again and pushed through some more undergrowth, sinking some more costs and therefore making it even harder to turn back. Eventually though it just turned into a jungle and I wasn't going to get anywhere without a machete. So I did the sensible thing and turned back.
Only to find, on the same side of the valley that I'd made the descent, a possible way out! I was very pleased, but it was still a risky climb of about 4 or 5 metres on a surface that felt like it could give way with any sudden moves and leave me a sorry lump of pain at the bottom. Somehow my scrabbling got me to the top, what a relief! As I surveyed the scene of my frustration I suddenly saw quite a passable section opposite which would lead me up out of the valley! I was stupid enough to think seriously about going back down again just so I could climb up it and hopefully get the shortcut I'd spent the past hour panting and cursing the thickets for. It's an indication of how thick the bush was that I couldn't see this ascent when I was down there - it would have only been a few metres away. Anyhow, so I actually seriously was about to go back down into the valley and caught myself just as I was about to transfer my weight for the first shaky step down. Only thing is, this slope that I'd struggled up somehow looked a lot more risky, suddenly, from the top down. I couldn't see how I'd be able to position myself and my weight so that I wouldn't just break traction and cartwheel down to the bottom. Four or five metres is actually quite high when you're in that sort of position. Anyway, so I decided to back out but this was not so easily achieved. I'd got both my feet on this slope already in a squat and they had begun to slip a bit. I had my right hand in some loose dirt and weeds and my left hand gripping the rock face. Neither hand seemed to offer much hope. I felt myself slowly sliding, sickenly, forward. Then I found a weed that had some roots, and re-positioned my left hand a bit which suddenly offered a lot more purchase. I still had my weight off centre though and didn't want to make a sudden move which would mean my feet came out from under me and down the slope I'd go. All I can say is I very carefully inched myself backward until I could plant my ass and then with that extra traction crawl back up to where I'd been. Grimacing at my stupidity I got back to the field at the top and walked the 5km back to Uchisar.
Overall a great day's walk and I was very happy with all the photos I got. I think there are some really nice panoramas (yes, I found Turkle Snr!) and photospheres so check em out.
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