MAY 2024 · ESCAPE
Cappadocia - Uçhisar & Göreme
Göreme and Uçhisar, Cappadocia
In the village square at Göreme: a wooden cart with weathered orange panels standing beneath a spreading tree. Close up, the cart's side panels are painted with red and turquoise geometric patterns, folk motifs in a repeating border — the kind of decorative work that takes time and isn't meant to be seen daily, just maintained when it fades. The paint is peeling in places. The cart itself isn't going anywhere.
The carved stone is ancient, but the activity around it is continuous. A motorcycle is parked in a rocky courtyard beside steps cut directly into the tuff. A red tractor passes through a narrow street, the driver threading it between stone walls with millimetres on either side. Colourful clay pots are stacked against a courtyard wall, next to plastic water containers. Hanging from a cave dwelling's exterior: clay pottery vessels and carved gourds, decorative rather than functional now, but hung in the way things are hung when you live somewhere permanently.
The geology is the backdrop. The growing season is the foreground.
Göreme and Uçhisar — May 2024
In one frame, a cave entrance shows the interior passage clearly — dark, arched, descending into the rock. In another, a honeycomb of dwellings covers an entire fairy chimney face, the openings regular and deliberate, windows and doors cut into volcanic stone centuries ago and still, some of them, in daily use.
On a weathered doorway: power lines. The cables run from modern poles along streets that follow alignments established when horses, not electrical engineers, set the routes.
A Turkish hazard sign stands beside a partially collapsed cave entrance, wooden cart in the rubble behind it. The sign is new. The rubble is ongoing.
From a higher vantage: ploughed vegetable gardens at the base of the fairy chimneys, the furrows running parallel across the valley floor. The geology is the backdrop. The growing season is the foreground.
Cappadocia village with stacked stone dwellings, umbrellas, and fairy chimney rock formations
Wooden cart with weathered orange panels beneath spreading green tree in village square
Detailed view of painted wooden cart with ornate red and turquoise decorative patterns
Close-up of wooden cart side panel with carved geometric designs and traditional folk motifs
Stone village building nestled between olive trees and rocky hillside vegetation
Carved stone dwelling with arched entrance, columns, and multiple window openings in cliff
Weathered wooden caravan under shade of mature trees in open Cappadocia landscape
Colorful stacked fishing boats in stone courtyard against weathered wall buildings
Cave-carved interior passage with dark shadowed openings into ancient stone dwelling
Rocky courtyard with weathered stone buildings, parked motorcycle, and carved stairs
Stone settlement built against fairy chimney formations with window openings and green plants
Landscape view of Cappadocia with fairy chimneys, buildings, and plowed vegetable gardens
Carved stone building facade with arched doorway weathered by centuries in canyon landscape
Steep stairway and arched entryway in densely built cave village courtyard with ruin fragments
Carved pipe and brick outflow running down eroded stone embankment in village alley
Honeycomb pattern of cave dwellings carved into massive fairy chimney rock formation
Weathered village street with peeling doorways, power lines, and whitewashed stone walls
Colorful clay pots and water containers stacked against stone wall in courtyard
Narrow stone stairway with red flowering vines climbing weathered white cliff wall
Dangerous cave entrance partially collapsed with wooden cart in rubble, Turkish hazard sign
Red tractor with driver passing stone village buildings in narrow Cappadocia street
Hanging clay pottery vessels and carved gourds on stone cave dwelling wall