In Cappadocia, the Balloons Go Up Before the Sun

This episode is one morning on the ridge above Göreme, in Cappadocia, before the sun: the valley still dark, the first burners flaring, and then dozens of balloons coming up over the fairy chimneys to fill the sky.

Cappadocia is a region of central Anatolia, in Turkey, on a plateau more than 1,000 metres high. Its rock is soft volcanic tuff — ash from the eruptions of Erciyes Dağ, Hasan Dağ and Göllü Dağ, laid down in layers hundreds of metres thick and later capped by a thin, harder layer of basalt. Wind and water cut that soft stone into the cones and pillars the region is known for. 12

Each cone lasts only as long as the hard cap on top of it does. When the cap is undercut and falls off, the soft rock underneath erodes away quickly. 3

People have been cutting rooms into this rock since at least the 4th century — houses, churches, and whole underground towns such as Kaymaklı and Derinkuyu. The rock-cut churches of the Göreme valley hold some of the best-preserved painting of the post-Iconoclastic Byzantine period, and the valley has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985. 4

Visual credits: the balloon field before sunrise, the balloons over the rock valley, the burner in flight, the tuff cones and the closing wide are all Pexels footage 5678910, and so is the cover photograph 11.