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Cappadocia: The chimneys where the fairies live

Cappadocia in the heart of Turkey surprises with bizarre rock formations, underground cities and the importance of pigeon dung.

Cabir shakes his head. No, he had no idea. why. As a boy it was simply the most beautiful playground in the world. One with caves and passages, with pits and loopholes, one where apricot and almond trees bloomed every spring and a sea of tulips sprout.

He knew about the two churches hidden in the rock because of the frescoes. But what exactly his grandfather had bought with this piece of land in the 1930s, Cabir had no idea for decades, and with him the whole family. Until 16 years ago. "We were amazed," says Cabir, smilingly placing tiny, bulbous cups of apple tea on the table for the guests.

amazement. A feeling that constantly accompanies you when traveling through Cappadocia. About the beauty of this unusual landscape, about the fairytale nature of the rock formations, the fairy chimneys. About the drive of the people to carve their habitats in this stone, about the history of this now Muslim country, sometimes an important center of early Christianity.

The amazement at the hospitality of the people, at their craft, at the cows grazing freely in the middle of the village, at the potatoes and lemons that are stored here in huge caves, at reading coffee grounds and at pigeon dirt, which decided between happiness and misery in love stories. And the mystery of clawed eyes.

Protection sought from pursuers. Cabir is retired today. He doesn't want to say his age, but he'll guess, he says, and quickly runs a comb through his gray hair in front of the photo. All his working life he worked in hotels, since retirement he has been a caretaker in the Keşlik Valley, like his grandfather and father. He was there when the archaeologists and art historians came in 2002 and explained that this complex was a monastery from the 6th and 7th centuries. Experts dated the frescoes in the churches to the 13th and 14th centuries.

In one fell swoop, the pits became tombs and baptismal fonts, and the caves became bedrooms, refectories and kitchens. What were still loopholes for the playing children became escape routes that could be closed off with huge stone wheels – similar to millstones. Habitats that people dug into the rock back then to protect themselves from attackers, from pursuers, from the heat.

Good to know

The "Keşlik Monastery" complex on Cabirs Land is now one of Cappadocia's insider tips. While other destinations can hardly swallow the many visitors, so few come to the Keşlik Valley that Cabir still brews tea for each guest and shows the guest book.

There are probably a good 2,000 visitors a year, he says. The tourist magnets, just a few kilometers away, count three million visitors. Even today, after the failed coup attempt and the state of emergency in Turkey, Özkan claims. But what has shifted is the origin of the tourists. What has been missing in terms of European tourists since then has been made up for by guests from Indonesia, Malaysia and China.

A maze underground

One of these magnets is the underground city in Derinkuyu. A fascinating labyrinth of corridors, stairs, ventilation shafts and living spaces, spread over seven floors, more than 50 meters deep in the ground. The aisles are so narrow that you can only get through by bending down. A refuge that no attacker, no looter could take just like that.

Another attraction is the Goreme National Park, the Cave Church Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Monasteries carved into tuff where Christians hid from the Romans until their faith was tolerated from the year 313. There are up to 60 churches around the town of Göreme, all richly painted with biblical scenes. Most date between the 11th and 13th centuries; earlier frescoes have been destroyed because of the image war.

Anyone who, like guide Özkan, knows where the most exciting frescoes are in the dark vault will discover some very unusual depictions in the cone of the flashlight. For example, in the Church of the Serpent, the figure of Onophiros; with a beard and breasts, half man, half woman. Özkan can also explain why most of the figures lack eyes; many have been deeply scratched out, some have flaked off. On the one hand, it was pilgrims who took the scraped sand home as a remedy in return for a donation. "And on the other hand," Özkan shrugs his shoulders apologetically, "there were boys like me who aimed stones at the eyes because we believed that evil resided in the eyes."

Özkan knows them all, every fresco, every story. Having grown up in the valley, he knows every stone. His ridiculed announcement at the beginning of the trip that he could easily talk for ten hours at a time was not just said. Just like his reaction to our excitement at the sight of the first tufa cone: "You'll see, they're everywhere here."

He wasn't exaggerating: they grow out of the ground, sometimes as a cone, sometimes like a pencil, sometimes with a cap like a morel. Hollowed out by humans and used as houses, columns of smoke rise from them in winter, which upset a French researcher so much that he dubbed the formations "fairy chimneys".

Today, locals rarely live in the caves. All the more frequently they are either prepared as cave hotels for tourists - or used as stables, workshops or storage rooms. Cappadocia is Turkey's food warehouse. Potatoes, tangerines, pomegranates and oranges are stored here, and the lemons, a speciality. They lie in the cool dark for five to six months until they are particularly juicy. They are called "sleeping lemons".

When you drive through the countryside, through villages, where the carpets are hanging out to dry in the sun and tangles of cables are dragging along the streets, where the men are sitting in the village square and stray dogs are trotting along the roadside, if you drive like that, you fall many small holes in the rock faces, bordered with white lime paint. They are dovecotes.

"Pigeon manure was more valuable than gold," says Özkan and laughs at the astonished faces. "Until 30 years ago, anyone who wanted to get married was asked by the bride's father how many dovecotes he owned." Because only the ammonia in the pigeon droppings made the volcanic soil fertile.