Cappadocia

Normally if one arrives early after a long journey one counts oneself lucky. But not so if your overnight coach arrives 2 1/2 hours earlier than the expected 9am. And you have been turfed out into a wet and cold Goreme with all your luggage but before your hotel has opened. Indeed before the town has opened. So there we were doing an impromptu "orientation" walk at 6:30am in persistent drizzle after for most of us a fairly sleepless night. I think we were quite a grumpy lot.

However, we cheered up a bit after breakfast and getting into the mini-bus hired for the day to allow us to explore Cappadocia.

This area is basically all about geology. So here is the boring bit. The region is built on compressed volcanic ash which has had about 10 million years to erode. In places there is a pretty solid bit of capping stone at the top, which acts as an umbrella for the softish volcanic rock below it. With the result that while all around the stone might be eroded to a depth of 20-30 metres or more, everything under the capstone stands proud. So the landscape is scattered with these weird, tall rock formations. The really bulbous ones are called fairy chimneys and have mostly been hollowed out into multi-storey houses (and frequently now converted into hotels). Some are more mushroom shaped. Then there is Imagination Valley where the capstones are supposed to resemble various animals on the top of their stacks, with a bit (well a lot) of imagination.

But the most fun, in a schoolboy sniggering way, are the formations in the two so-called "Love Valleys." Now lets be frank here, we are talking erotic love, not romantic love. These are simply huge phalluses. Monster Erection Valley would be a better description. George, our oldest (at 71) but still sprightly, tour member, whispered to me (out of earshot of his even more sprightly wife) that "the girls should be happy with that one, its ribbed", pointing to a particularly penis-shaped rock with with distinct banding all the way up the shaft. I observed that they would surely be more impressed by it being 50 feet and rock hard, literally. Sorry, its really hard not to revert to giggling schoolboy (with apologies to any schoolboy readers).

In addition to burrowing into the fairy chimneys and going up to make multi-storey housing, there is also a down option. In times of strife, where in most of the world you hide in a rocky fortress at the top of a mountain, here they dug down, and so you can venture down 5 storeys underground - they don't let you venture the further 3 to the very bottom. Everything is down there - kitchens, dining rooms, living rooms, water storage. (No sanitation, you just went in clay pots and took the output up when the coast was clear. Ok, you wouldn't want to live down there for long, but it really is an underground city. And there are many of them.) Two of our party decided against the trip on grounds of claustrophobia, though as I explained, I survive much more cramped conditions every morning on the Tube. But it was rather satisfying to find that Andrew, Pauline and I, all under 5 foot six, found the going rather easy, while some of the bigger members were really out of breath at all the crouching through tunnels and duck-walking. Revenge of the Shorties. Always said tall people are a waste of space.

Oh, and if you can go up or down, of course you can also burrow in sideways to the hillsides. So today I pottered around Goreme Open Air Museum, which are a series of Byzantine churches carved up the hillside about a kilometre out town. Some still have frescoes in decent shape (although the eyes and sometimes faces of the lower painted saints have been gouged out). But, once more, one faced the onslaught of mass tourism. Much less out here than in say Ephesus, but then again the churches are small and there are narrow entrances, so even a dozen coach-loads will swamp them. So we few independent travellers had to try and squeeze in between a load of Koreans scrambling to get out and a horde of Germans trying to replace them in a space the size of your living room. The problem isn't just sheer weight of numbers; its the guides. They of course bring people in as a group, and then hold them there until they have done their full speech. Left to their own devices most people would get in, have a quick look around and out they would pop. But a guide has to earn his keep, and so blather on to a group too polite to move (or by now suffering from total inertia so as to have lost even the tiniest bit of personal initiative). So you get the sort of traffic blockages normally reserved for the M25 (which, for non-UK followers, is the London orbital ring-road, or if you hit it after 6am weekdays, a very big car-park).

Oh, and an observation on Byzantine Art while I am at it. Just where did it all go wrong? Given their direct descendancy from Greek and Roman Classical Art traditions, how did they totally lose the knack of drawing? Was it a clothing thing? The Greeks and Romans probably did a lot of wandering around in the nude so after converting to Christianity did prudery take over to the extent that no one saw the human form any more, even their own? Efforts at clothed saints aren't too bad, but Christ crucified shows a total lack of anatomical knowledge. Or they maybe they just picked whoever was bottom of art class at school to have a go. And maybe do it blindfold.

Anyway, from ridiculous to sublime. I leave the best to last. The best way to see all these massive rock formations is from the air. So this morning I went on 90 minute hot-air balloon ride. Well worth the expense. Cappadocia is supposed to be one of the best places in the world for ballooning, so if I was ever going to do it I thought today was the day. Its such a great place because the winds are low and you can go right down low between the columns, or way up over them, and indeed over all the other balloons. Fortunately this is one place where mass tourism adds to the experience. The other balloons are a feature in themselves and its just so stunning to see them all (and there are a lot) floating across the various valleys. And it was well worth doing the de lux version - only 10 of us in a balloon - many carry 24 or 30 - followed by champagne when we hit the ground.

And for anyone contemplating a new career, how about balloon pilot? Our pilot (from Oxfordshire) had more than 25 years experience and seemed pretty happy with the job. As he pointed out, you only do it in some of the most scenic places in the world - here, Kenya, Tanzania, Valley of the Kings in Egypt, etc. He lived in Colorado, and just comes out to various parts of the world on contracts of a few months. The other pilot I met lives in Japan. So, you see the world, and very little of a desk. Ok, early mornings but you are done by lunch. And champagne for breakfast. If only I had spent more time gazing at the sky out of my class room window than wasting it staring at the blackboard....)

A quiet evening for me tonight. Most of the rest of the group are off to a Turkish night of belly-dancing and whirling dervishes. Personally can't think of anything more ghastly. Having sniggered as much as one can at phallic rock formations (oh and to add to the puerile mirth, our hotel is called Ufuk) and not really fancying a Turkish Bath (hanging around with a lot of naked men in a bath is not really my thing) I reckon it will be a quiet night at a decent restaurant.

Syria soon.