Going Under

My legs were pretty wobbly on the way down, and when we got back to the Hidden Cave my reading break quickly turned into a nap.  One that didn't end til midnight, sleeptalking and leg cramps notwithstanding (and leg cramps in your thigh are a whole new level of hell that I never realized I didn't want to experience).  When I finally came to at midnight-thirty I realized I'd missed dinner, which was okay since I'd probably eaten two meals' worth of food at lunch, and since Engrish was dead to the world, read for probably another five minutes before sleep claimed me again.

We were supposed to go hot air ballooning the next morning, but before I zonked out for the night, the company informed Engrish that it had been cancelled because of the weather, and that we'd been bumped onto Wednesday morning's flight.  Normal people would see this as a good excuse to sleep in, but I'd already been sleeping for twelve hours, and Engrish was jetlagged, so around six we decided it was a nice time to go for a walk around the hotel.

Just a short one.  Not too strenuous...just something to kill the time before King's Coffee opened up, in case the hotel breakfast only had Nescafe.  And if you believe that's how things actually turned out, you've clearly never been on vacation with Engrish.

As we were hoofing it up the closest 60° slope (because what's life without a little challenge?) the sky was spitting on us.  We had agreed that a little rain wasn't a problem, but before long I realized something was wrong with this rain, and told Engrish to look at my shirt.  At first she couldn't understand why I was sharing my dandruff problem, so I had to explain that it was snowing.  Now, apparently seven years ago people kept apologizing to us for the unseasonably cold weather.  Well, nobody did that this time, although based on the looks of horror on every fellow hotel guest's face as they came out for breakfast, an apology wouldn't have gone amiss.  Needless to say, coming from Mongolia, we weren't put out by a little snow in the slightest - just surprised.

That said, as breakfast progressed and the snow only got thicker, it DID beg the question of how to spend a snowy day in central Turkey.  Actually, one of the things we were hoping to do was to visit at least one of the underground cities.  There are a shit ton of them scattered across Anatolia, so we decided this was a perfect time to visit the two closest - Kaymakli and Derinkuyu.  The clerk at Hidden Cave suggested we just negotiate a price with a taxi driver, suggesting that it should cost us about 600 lira roundtrip.  We wandered down to a taxi stand, negotiated the price, and were on our way in a taxi with wifi, which seemed pretty awesome.

The cliffnotes version of these cities' history is that back in ye olde days, Christians weren't popular and they had to hide out or risk being martyred.  Central Turkey is an absolute warren - it is riddled with caves, and the pale stone is soft and easy to carve.  Although early Turkish Christians were probably not the first people to inhabit these caves, they definitely served their purpose (and not just as protection from their neighbors - apparently they sheltered here from Mongolian invaders in the 14th century), up until the early 1900s.  

I feel like it is important to note at this point that I have never had a reason to think that small, underground spaces would pose a problem for me.  This is evidenced by the fact that every time I have ever heard about an underground city, I have thought, "That is SO cool - someday I have to check that out."  I can solemnly attest that I have never suffered from claustrophobia (my only phobia, for those of you wondering, is apeirophobia - the fear of infinities).  But after leaving Kaymakli I had a whole helluva lot more understanding for people who DO.  At first, it was mere annoyance.  I'm not excessively tall, but I'm tall enough that many of the rooms and most of the passageways required me to stoop over.  At one point I underestimated the ceiling clearance and brained myself on the none-too-smooth ceiling, feeling like I'd left a part of my scalp behind.  

However, that was nothing compared to the last tunnel we passed through before leaving Kaymakli.  The top of it was so low that with my backpack, I couldn't walk through bent over - I had to duck walk.  It just kept going on and on.  The group ahead of us kept stopping to take photos.  And - worst of all - it was narrow!  Two years of pandemic have not been kind to my ass, and while I may not be bothered by enclosed spaces, the idea of getting my ass stuck in a tunnel approximately 65 feet underground is absolutely horrifying.

Luckily that didn't happen until very nearly the end.  Most of our time underground was very cool.  Engrish found me a very nice reading nook, and at first this seemed like a pretty cool way to live.  Unfortunately the guided tours that we happened to overhear provided some details that significantly altered the "coolness" of these habitats.  Basically, the inhabitants couldn't go outside.  Ever.  That means all the livestock lived in the caves with them, and you couldn't just empty the chamberpot out the window.  At the time I thought how isolating that must be, but I've just now read on Wikipedia that apparently some tunnels connected Kaymakli with its closest neighbor, Derinkuyu.  So.  You know.  I guess for a change of scenery you just had to walk 10 kilometers underground, which makes it MUCH more manageable.

That said, they did have places to worship, and a winery if you were into that sort of thing, and you never know when you might delve too deeply and discover a Balrog, so hey...I guess life could be worse.  Nevertheless, by the time we reemerged into the snowy afternoon, I had a new appreciation for fresh air and the light of day.  We were planning to go to Derinkuyu from there, but visited the stalls selling tourist kitsch first, picking up a local folk doll, a smaller backpack, and bottles of water.  By the time we got back in the taxi, I was over my panic attack (mostly).  However, as fate would have it, we didn't visit Derinkuyu.  As we left the parking lot, I thought the driver had turned the wrong direction, but figured he knew something I didn't.  We were most of the way back to Goreme when we started thinking things looked familiar, and upon checking Google Maps discovered there was a very good reason for that.  And, on the whole, we were okay with that.

The rest of the day went by in a blur of shopping and eating.  The skies ended up clearing around sunset, as we climbed up the same hill we started the the day with, to eat at Seten, a restaurant our Turkish colleague had recommended.  After enjoying the tones of the city at night, we turned in early - the next morning would involve the (butt)crack of dawn.