The Lost Christians of Cappadocia

It's my first day out of Istanbul. I took the overnight bus from Istanbul to Goreme in Cappadocia. It's a 10hr ride that went by pretty easily. The guy beside me was a 45 year old going to Goreme for a mountain biking race so I talked to him for a while using his broken English. He was very nice and quite a character. After that, it was blissful sleep.

When I woke up, I was in Naveshir. Actually, no bus goes directly to Goreme. They all just go to Naveshir and then you pick up a shuttle bus to Goreme. The shuttle bus that was set up for me was actually a tour group so on the way, the guy was trying to convince me to go on his tour for the day. He said I could throw my bags in the back and then I'd just check into the hotel when we were done. It actually sounded like a good plan because Cappadocia is so spread out that you really need to take tours and then you get some context too. So, that's what I did.

We went and picked up the other 14 people for the tour and headed out on a 250km loop. First stop was the monestary. So the thing about this region is that there's a lot of really soft sandstone everywhere topped off with some hard volcanic rock. This happened because three big volcanoes blew their tops at roughly the same time (geologically) and deposited 200m of rock on the area very quickly. Since the sandstone is so soft, it's really easy to cave into so over the millenia, people have been digging their own caves here and living in them. They think it started with the Hitites, but realistically, there's been half a dozen civilizations living in these holes and some of them get really intricate. The christians made a really big impression on the area before the Bysantinzes showed up. Since the romans presecuted the christians, they took their workship underground. Litterally. The monestary is a perfect example complete with cathedral and burnt frescoes depicting biblical scenes. And all the passages just weave around and under each other.

The next stop was the valley where we did a 3km walk along the floor. This valley is a gigantic crack hundreds of meters deep with a river running through the center. It was created as the lava cooled and the surface cracked up. The sides of the valley are littered with churches and homes of people that used to live there. Now, there's people still living in the valley, but they stay on the valley floor and do some agriculture and cater to the tourists. We had lunch at one of these places (and I was hungry considering I didn't get breakfast) where I ate a clay pot of beef and vegetables. A local specialty that really wasn't excuted well at all. The meat was too gristly and fairly tasteless. It was an idylic setting though where some of the tables were even suspended directly over the water on stilts.

After lunch, it was a 40 min drive to the underground city. And they don't call it a city for nothing. It's ginormous. It goes 20 levels down and they think could hold over 10,000 people if needed. There's even a church, a stable, a winery and a school underground. We could only go to the first 8 floors but it was still ridiculously impressive. They figure that it was mostly built by the Christians who weren't warriors so that when an invading army came through, they'd just dissapear into their holes and wait it out. If the invader did come through, then they had choke points with very narroy passageways and heavy stones that could be rolled over then to close the passage. Of course, an attacker could try to flush them out by plugging the air holes, but they made many to try and prevent this.

Once we got out of the underground city, we went to the carpet co-op where they showed us how the carpets are made and explained about the different types. Then they tried to sell us some carpets. I ended up buying one for beside my bed. It was more expensive than the Kilm, but I trust these guys more that it was actually handmade and that they paid the women.

Finally, it was back to Goreme where I checked into my hotel. Goreme is built into the cliffs and fairy chimneys strewn throughout a valley. People still live in many of the caves but at this point, most have been converted into hotel rooms. I had booked a single cave room but I think that they had it listed funny on the booking website. Once I finally showed the guy my registration receipt on my computer, he pointed up to a little hole on the side of the cliff that I would barely be able to squeeze through. That's my room. Oh and there's a ladder to get up there. Ok. So he comes with me and helps me get my stuff into the room and low and behold it opens up into this huge place with a double bed, a single bed, a fireplace, a bunch of lounging chairs and a gigantic bathroom. They also put in wood floors to make it more comfortable and finished marble in the bathroom. Not bad for $20 a night :-)