November 2005
How To Spend It Magazine
SECRETS AND HIGHS
Cappadocia’s magical
landscape, underground
cities and forbidden
ceremonies are opening
up to luxury travellers at
last, says Julian Allason.
Not Many outside turkey have heard of it and fewer yet can
point to it on a map. Yet
Cappadocia looks set to repaginate
the atlas of luxury cultural
and adventure travel. High on the central
Anatolian plain, close to the country’s geographic
centre, is a landscape unlike any
other on earth. Mysterious pillars of rock
rise out of it – “fairy chimneys” capped
with basalt to resemble giant mushrooms.
Others formations have been carved by
wind, sand and rain into the shape of
mythological beasts. Nearby stand cones
hundreds of feet high. It has taken aeons to
fashion these structures and now something
stranger yet is occurring. “Nature, the greatest archaeologist of all,
is doing our work for us, laying bare
secrets kept for centuries,” says Sami
Yilmaz, a keen student of such phenomena
who was born into this alien terrain.
Before us, commanding the little town of
Göreme, a citadel of rock scrapes the
cobalt sky. But erosion has revealed it to
be hollow, its interior riddled
with passages and
chambers now starting
to give up their
secrets to Yilmaz
and the legion of
anthropologists
and
historians who have descended upon the region Mystery pervades this wild country, unvisited
even by most Turks.
At ancient caravanserais on the old
camel route from Persia, whirling
dervishes still perform the forbidden Sema
ceremony. The accidental discovery of an
underground city eight-storeys deep at
Kaymakli has led to the opening up of
seven more, complete with churches, wells
and kitchens. Archaeologists now posit the
existence of no fewer than 200 secret cities
as they puzzle over their history. It is now
possible to visit several of these, although,
as the Footprint guide drily observes, those
prone to claustrophobia should stay away.
The emergence of such curiosities in a
land of spare beauty has led to the opening
of the first luxury hotels and to Turkish
Airlines’ introduction of twice-daily
flights, via Istanbul, from London and
other European capitals. Hot-air balloons
and river rafts offer spectacular ways to
explore the Cappadocian topography, as
does the inauguration of an open-air
museum at Göreme following its declaration
by Unesco as a World Heritage
Site. For Turkey, the consequences
could hardly be more critical. “On average some calamity has
befallen our country every three
years since 1990,” reflects Aydin
Ayhan Güney of the tourist agency Argeus. "Each time visitor numbers have plummeted.” From political flare-ups
in the general region to the Istanbul earthquake
of 1999, Turkey’s tourism has had to
rebuild. It has done so on a narrow base,
unduly reliant on the appeal of Bodrum and
the beaches of the south, and the treasure
house of Istanbul to the north-west. With
the future looking brighter, Cappadocia’s
emergence as a third major centre
promises much. The government is investing
trillions of Turkish lira on new
highways through the province. Unspoken
is the hope that such thoughtful development
may assist Turkey’s candidature for
the European Union. It is certainly likely to
deliver visitors to an area approached until
recently only with difficulty.
In a cave high above Göreme an aged
man falls to his knees before an icon
believed to be unique: exquisitely executed
in rich colours, the fresco depicts Jesus as a
haloed teenager. We are in an almost perfectly
preserved Byzantine church of the
13th century, the walls, pillars, arches and
ceiling of which are decorated with scenes
from the life of Christ. It is one of thousands
that survive in Turkey. What is
unusual here is that the interior of Karanlik
Kilise, the Dark Church, has been carved
inside the soft tufa rock of the hillside.
The only natural light is that reflected
from a small window into the vestibule, thereby conserving the frescoes within.
Eight hundred years ago the chapel formed
the heart of an underground monastic
community whose size can be adduced
from the refectory below: around tables
sculpted out of the rock are seats for 80
monks. A large cone 100 yards away had
been hollowed out to construct a convent
for a smaller number of nuns.
On this site alone are the remains of
more such monasteries, their rock-hewn
churches still decorated with angels, evangelists
and saints, among them St George
vanquishing a dragon of unreliable aspect.
Today, they are the subject of astonishment
by archaeologist and casual visitor
alike, and of veneration by pilgrims from
the small Christian community remaining
in Anatolia since the Greek-Turkish population
exchanges of 1924.
Yunak Evleri, a handsome Ottoman
mansion at nearby Urgüp,
was once the residence of a
prosperous Turkish family.
Now it has become a small
luxury hotel of Oriental
charm. The majority of the
27 guestrooms occupy restored stone village
houses, each differing in architecture
and character. But several are in fifthseventh
century cave houses burrowed
deep into the cliff that embraces the small
market town. The experience of inhabiting
one is surprisingly serene – and dry –
although erosion and reconstruction have
supplied windows and doors where originally
there was a blank rock face with a
concealed underground entrance. Now
there are bathrooms with modern plumbing
and sanitation, and even room service,
(although it would be a pity to miss the
view – and local menu – at the hotel’s
rooftop restaurant). For enough of the surrounding
cliffside has eroded to reveal the
pattern of troglodyte houses, from stables
at the lowest level to living rooms above and at the highest level
kitchens, from which
smoke filtered up through
the porous rock to escape
invisibly from the hilltop.
Other cave hotels have opened, some with
accommodation entirely underground.
Meanwhile towns such as Göreme support
good restaurants such as Sömine. There
are even nightclubs in caverns that were
once the retreat of ancient peoples.
What, then, was the purpose of these
subterranean dwellings? The answer, as
Sámi Yilmaz suggests, lies in the soil.
Volcanic eruptions 30m years ago coated
the land with ash, which over millennia
compacted into the soft tufa rock. This the
Hittites, who occupied the country in the
third millennium BC, found easy to excavate
into caves for storage at a constant
cool temperature. As the Anatolian region
was fought over by successive empires, the
inhabitants found it politic to disappear,
digging out secret cities in which to survive for months at a time. By the first
century AD early Christians were using
them to hide from Roman persecution.
Some of the Cappadocian cave villages
remained in occupation until recent times.
Only in 1962, when a rock collapse
revealed the interior of their houses to
onlookers, did the inhabitants of Cavusin
abandon their subterranean existence –
and then on orders from government officials
fearful of further disintegration. At the
time of “the great exposure” one comely
villager is said to have been revealed in her
tin bath. Today, the settlement has a melancholy
air, intensified by electricity poles
and other signs of comparatively recent
occupation. It is best dispelled by the purchase
of a goat-hair pashmina or kelim
from one of the ramshackle stalls erected at
the approach by former inhabitants.
As dusk falls over the steppe, haunting
music steals across its emptiness. The
origin is the ancient caravanserai near
Avanos. Within its thick curtain walls, six
dervishes of the Mevlana order of Sufis
begin to whirl. As the tempo of drums, ud
(lute) and ney (flute) rises, the dervishes
enter an ecstatic trance as they reach for
the divine. Their right hands raised to
heaven, the left hands channel celestial
energy to earth. One of the observers
breaks the injunction and steals a secret
photograph. The image shows lightning
flashing downward from the lower hand.
To overcome the prohibition of Turkey’s
secular state, the ceremony has been billed
as a cultural event. Yet this is no reenactment,
but an authentic ritual by
dervishes following a secret mystical path
within Islam unbroken in 750 years.
Sheikh Murat Yaman is the dervish
master. He is a tall, fit man of about 40 who
smilingly gives his age as 20, adepts counting
only the years of spiritual advance. His
eldest son, Abdullah, is one of the 12
dervishes performing tonight’s ritual in the darkened Semahana ceremonial hall of the
caravanserai. It commences with a bow to
salute the soul, flows into the spinning
dance, ebbs to a slow circumambulation of
the floor, moving again into a rapid whirl.
Throughout, conical hats that represent “gravestones of the ego” remain in place,
while skirts fly out in a mesmerising blur.
Few major tour operators yet offer
Cappadocia. One that does is the sophisticated
adventure specialist Original Travel,
whose Alastair Poulain counsels: “Go soon.
“When the dervishes permit photography
it will be too late and mystery will have dissipated
with the arrival of the crowds.”
Istanbul is already preparing for more visitors.
The city has its first minimalist chic
boutique hotel, A’jia, a stylish jumping-off
point for expeditions into the interior. The
18th century yali, or wooden pasha villa,
dazzles inside and out with light refracting
from the Bosphorus. All 16
bedrooms overlook it, five
having sunny balconies from
which to watch the liners
and tankers, warships and
fishing vessels making passage just a few
cables distant. That the Mediterranean
restaurant on the quay should rapidly have
become one of Istanbul’s hippest rendezvous
is hardly surprising given A’jia’s provenance
as the first hotel venture of those switchedon
restaurateurs, the Doors brothers.
On return from Cappadocia, travellers
might choose the restrained luxury of the
Four Seasons Hotel Istanbul within the
walls of the former political prison, by the
Topkapi Palace at the heart of the old city.
Or perhaps the nostalgic charm of the
Hotel Pera Palas, unchanged since Agatha
Christie wrote Murder on the Orient Express
there (she stayed in room number 411).
But for a taste of imperial opulence there
is no substitute for the residence of the last
sultans. Kempinski’s modern five-star
Ciragan Palace Hotel stands in the tranquil grounds of the original
Ottoman palace. The latter
contains not only the
romantic Tugra dining
room but the great hamamor Turkish bath
that is considered one of the most beautiful
interiors of the Levant. The sultan’s
private quarters have been converted into
11 sumptuous suites, five of which overlook
the Bosphorus. The palatial Sultan
Suite, in which the Caliph laid his head
(and, legend has it, 1001 harem girls) is
reckoned the largest in Europe.
Outside, at the water’s edge, a tent has
been pitched and a masseur awaits, ready
to restore muscles sore from cave exploration.
Far to the east, eight hot-air
balloonists are bracing themselves for the
descent into a mystical landscape of fairy
chimneys and hidden cities. On the
ground, anticipating their bump down, is
a man in a tracksuit opening a magnum
of champagne. As Yilmaz remarks, “Venture deserves its reward.”
ONE FOOT IN THE CAVE
The best time to visit Cappadocia is mid-May
through June or September through October,
when the days are sunny and warm (23°C), but
nights cool. December and January are cold
(-2°C), but the area looks exceptionally beautiful
in the snow. Julian Allason travelled as a guest
of Original Travel (020-7978 7333; www.originaltravel.co.uk) which offers six-night
packages to Cappadocia and Istanbul, including
return economy flights on Turkish Airlines
from London, three nights B&B at Yunak Evleri,
Cappadocia, three nights B&B at A’jia, Istanbul,
and three days’ guided walking in Cappadocia,
from £1,210 per person based on two sharing a
double room midseason.
The following hotel rates are for a double room
B&B midseason. A’jia, Kanlica, Istanbul (0090216-413 9300; UK reservations, 020-7722 2288; www.ajiahotel.com), from about £225. Ciragan Palace
Kempinski, Besiktas, Istanbul (0090212-258 3377;
UK reservations, 00800-4263 1355; www.ciragan-palace.com), from about £350; suites from
about £1,175. Four Seasons Hotel Istanbul,
Sultanahmet-Eminönü (0090212-638 8200;
UK reservations, 00800-6488 6488; www.fourseasons.com), from about £255. Hotel Pera
Palas, Tepebasi, Istanbul (0090212-251 4560;www.perapalas.com), from about £115. Yunak
Evleri, Urgüp, Cappadocia (0090384-341 6920;
www.yunak.com), from about £80. Other tour operators offering Cappadocia include
Elixir Holidays, 020-7722 2288; www.elixirholidays.
com and The Ultimate Travel Company,
020-7386 4696; www.theultimatetravel
company.co.uk. Argeus Tourism & Travel
(0090384-341 4888; www.argeus.com.tr) provides
reliable guides and can arrange access to whirling
dervish ceremonies. Turkish Airlines (020-7766 9300; www.turkishairlines.com) flies twice-daily from London to
Kayseri via Istanbul from £200.
For more information on Cappadocia, Istanbul and
the rest of Turkey visit www.gototurkey.co.uk
