Untold story of Capadocia/Katpatukya/Kapadocia

Dear readers,

Namaste!

Introduction

I am writing my first blog from various travel experiences. As mentioned in my bio, I prefer to write about natural places that I visit and share my experience in detail, with all the readers. This will help you to have a virtual view of my experiences and may inspire you to plan a trip to Cappadocia, Turkey. I will ensure to include information about local cuisines, culture and heritage as well. One thing I would like to tell you about Turkey is, any place any time of the year you visit you cannot resist clicking pictures. May it be a sea side or a köy/village or beautiful houses around the city or cats and yes people greeting you, Merheba! Hoshgeldeniz! Your visit here will always be full of beautiful memories of soothing scenic views in your mind, cameras will be full of beautiful pictures that will cherish with you through your lifetime. Value to money, always worth it!

Activities that can be done here…

Cappadocia is one of the most famous tourist destinations not only in Turkey but also in the world. Depending on your interests you can visit this place. If you like to see beautiful valleys, yes it can be visited, if you like to visit archaeological sites yes Cappadocia is famous for its amazing huge underground cities which is also in the list of UNESCO world heritage sites, if you want to see extinct volcano and its amazing past geological activities, yes you can visit this place, if you are fond of seeing varied flora, fauna, collecting crude semi-precious gemstones you are in the perfect destination. This place is well known for its extraordinarily fascinating landscapes, hills mountains, river cutting valleys with of course association of rich history with it. This is the reason that the place is always in the wish list of geologists, archaeologists, historians, nature enthusiasts, photographers and travelers.

The name Cappadocia is derived from its ancient Persian origin as ‘Katpatukya’ meaning “Land of Beautiful Horses” as mentioned by our tour guide. The area has experienced various civilizations in different phase of time. I visited this place in the month of October, 2016. As you can see in pictures it had both the shades, green and yellow. If you research on internet about capadoccia what do you find?

Location

Geographically Cappadocia is falls in three different provinces in central Anatolian region. Largely spread in Nevşehir province, partly in Kayseri province and partly in Aksaray province.

Connectivity

The location is very well connected with different options of air transport, rail transport and road transport. For saving time of our journey we took Turkish Airlines flight from TAV Istanbul Ataturk Airport to Nevşehir Kapadokya Airport. We started at 06:15 hours and landed at 07:35 hours. Similarly, for return journey we took same airlines and airports we started at 19:35 hours and landed by 20:45 hours. There is an optional airport at Kayseri, connected to Cappadocia region. The one we took is nearest to the actual cave area. As we have hired a tour company for guidance, we were provided with pick and drop facility for airport transport. For adventure people also take a road trip from Istanbul and cover multiple locations.

Time / Climate

If you have doubt in mind about when to visit this place. This place can be visited anytime of the year as it has beautiful natural setup. If you consider activity wise, summer should be better option. Between May to October. Otherwise its quite chilled during winter. In our group of tours, few of the tourists who were actually having their transit flight via Turkey and they just decided to cover the Cappadocia visit. As you check on available online options, there are various activities that you can do in and around these areas. Few of the activities are aerial view of Cappadocia in hot air balloon, walk through beautiful, calm and quite river valleys, take a horse ride, quad biking and can visit well maintained underground cities and many more. Our visit was during start of autumn and end of summer. We could see greenery as well as autumn all the shades of brown. The temperature was quite chilled in mornings and evenings. You can always have your weather forecast helping you to guide in this aspect. For us it was the best weather to visit.

Geological setup of the area…

I feel as if I am writing my field trip report in Geology. Without this information it wont be geo-tourism site. It has a natural setup. Just going and clicking photos and spending time is not the only purpose. There are studies that reveal the story of natural forces acting here and creating an amazing natural marvels! A lay man who has never studied geology but visit these places would like to read this information. I am sure most of the blogs or any online sources will only give insight on stay, food, culture, its heritage and activity related information. I am sure you will find this place more interesting once you read here about how, this beautiful land-form is formed.

To understand the tectonic setup of the region we need to have a broader look on the movement of plates. As seen in the reference image (education purpose only) the country Turkey is located on active faults of colliding plates. Arabian plate, Eurasian plate and Anatolian plates have collided in the geologic past (millions of years ago). This collision of continental plates gave rise to a subduction zone (plate subsides down the other plate) and also uplifting mountains (plate slides over other plate) and deformed folds and fault structures, which can be widely observed while travelling across the Turkey via road journey. . Subduction along the plate margins is still active in the Mediterranean Sea region which can be very well noticed by the number seismic activities along the fault zones.