Uçhisar and the valleys
The highest point in Cappadocia, and the place to watch the balloons from the ground.
- Builta natural fortress, occupied since antiquity
- DistrictNevşehir
Uçhisar is an outcrop riddled from the inside: chambers, stairs and dovecotes stacked over centuries. From the top you see the whole region, and Mount Erciyes when the air is clear.
Around it are the valleys — Devrent with its animal shapes, Paşabağ with the double-capped chimneys, Ihlara with a river at the bottom and churches in its walls.
The balloons lift at sunrise and only when the wind allows. Whoever does not fly gets the better view: from the ground you see all of them at once.
What to look for
- The top of the castle: the whole region at once, and Mount Erciyes behind it when the air is clear.
- The Pigeon Valley directly below, with the walk to Göreme — about an hour, nearly all downhill.
- Paşabağ, with the double-capped chimneys, the most photographed and the strangest of them.
- Devrent, with not one church or house in it: only shapes, and the one everybody calls the camel.
Before you go
- The balloons lift at sunrise and only in the right wind. Whoever does not fly gets the better view: from the ground you see all of them at once.
- The climb up the castle is on uneven, narrow steps with no handrail in several stretches.
- It is cold at dawn even in September. A jacket, however warm the afternoon turns out.
- Half an hour on the castle; half a day with the valleys around it.
