Goreme Travel Forum

Hi everybody,

Me and a friend of mine thought to go to Turkey the last 10 days of August and wanted to ask you some advices:

First of all, our main destination will be Cappadoccia. I heard Goreme it's the best place where one could set his "base camp" in Cappadoccia, so we will probably end up there.

Our plane will arrive in Istambul, so any idea what's the best ( cheapest? :) way to travel from Istambul to Goreme? I read on this forums that buses are quite comfortable and they also travel at night so one could actually sleep in them. Is that true? Any other advice here?

My second question is: how are the temperatures late August (20 - 30) in Goreme? Will we find 40 °C there? I hope not :)

What about transportation? We want to do a lot of trekking and i was wandering if we need some kind of transportation from Goreme to other places of interest nearby, or we can just get there by foot? Is there a place where we can get a map with all the trekking routes? Whats places are a "must see" (in your opinion)?

Anyways guys, i have too many questions in my mind right now and i don't want to turn this post into a novel :)

I will appreciate any info you can spare about Goreme, your experiences there, where can we sleep, where can we eat, etc.

Thanks a lot for everything,

Iulian

Hi,
Cappa is the common name given to the province Nevsehir. Goreme, Urgup, Uchisar, Avanos and city of Nevsehir are the main towns in that region.
From Istanbul there are day and night busses to Nevsehir. As I told above nevsheir is the capital city of the province. Urgup, Goreme, Uchisar and Avanos are the towns of Nevsehir. Fot that reason the inter city bus will take you till Nevsehir. From Nevsehir the bus service shuttle will take you to the town which you decided to stay. You must tell the bus host the name of the town for the shuttle.
The distance between ıstanbul via Ankara to Nevsehir is 10-12 hours.
I am sure you will spent a few days in Istanbul before you depart for Cappa. Ask the hotel clerk nearest bust office to Cappa.
There are 2 main companies to Nevsehir.
Metro and Nevsehir Seyahat

sleep in them. Is that true?
The busses are not like train sleeping wagon. The passanger hardly sleeps on the pullman seat. It is not comfortable. You try to sleep for a few hours. At the end of the journey your bones need a rest. I usualy travel by night bus to gain a day for may vocation.
Temp?
It is like Italy. But the caves are cooler. This year evry land is warm due to green house effect.
you can trek. Ypou can track between fairy chimney shaped formation. You can have a air baloon flight over the moon like landscape. You can drink very good wine.
Visit nevsehir, Urgup, Goreme, Avanos, Uchisar pages in this forum about hotels.
visit www.turkeytravelplanner.com
have a nice time. Dont get lost in the caves or in the seven-store- underground cities.
Dont ask to musch. You will fullfill every desire in Cappa.

Hello ,

First, it is a great idea to visit Cappadocia as it is an amazing place. If you land at Istanbul airport you have 3 posibilities to get to Cappadocia.

1st posibility - the longest one - You take the night train from Istanbul's east (anatolian ) train station to Ankara and from there you can take a bus for a 5 hours ride to Goreme. There are a few bus every day. This is the longest possibility and the cheapest one and you get to spend a few hours in Ankara which us enough to see the 2 major attraction of the Turkish capital :

1. Ataturk Mausoleum
2. The history museum of Anatolia in which you can see beautiful hitites art effects.

If you can stay one night in Ankara, you can see the Mausolem and the museum in the morning and spend the afternoon visitinh Hatoussa , the hitite capital not far from Ankara.


2nd possiblity - Take a plan from Istanbul to Ankara - visit the 2 major attractions and continue by bus to Goreme

3rd possibility - the most expensive and the shortset one - You fly from Istanbul directly to Kayseri which is less than one hour drive from Goreme. This way you do not drive that many hours but you miss Ankara which is a pitty. This might be a good idea for the way back since the only other way to get from Goreme to Istanbul is by a direct bus and it takes 14-15 hours to do it.

Should you have any other question about what to visit and where to sleep , please feel free to ask me

Yours,

Dan

I did this trip back in August 1999 and flew from Istanbul to Kayseri, then got a pickup from our guide to drive us to Goreme. We stayed in the Esbelli Evi B&B, which was really wonderful--but I am sure there are plenty of other great options these days.

I think you should also be able to rent a car at the Kayseri airport and drive yourself around the region. A car is essential, because all the sights in the area are quite far apart, and public transportation won't get you where you want to go. My friend and I went with a private guide and driver, which was fantastic. If you don't feel like spending that money, you could do the whole trip yourself, but having the guide was great because he showed us a lot of things that we would have never found on our own.

In August it was hot, but not awful. We did a lot of hiking and didn't have problems with the weather making this unbearable.

Hello, It's me again,

VERU IMPORTANT - When you choose a place to sleep , do choose a cave hotel, by that I mean an hotel with rooms inside caves carved inside the stone.

You have also regular built hotel but choosing them would mean missing one of the interesting parts of a trip to the area. Feel and live like the natives of the area.

Yours,

Dan

Just got back last night
Easiest and cheapest, night bus from istanbul to nevsehir, and transfer to goreme. Book early and try to avoid seats in last 2-3 rows.
You can sleep on tbe buses, but take a neck pillow and eyemask.
also we sayed in goreme at elifstar caves, very good and reasonable.
Food is not a problem anywhere
GO for the red tour, green tour and balloon tour if you can. That pretty much covers everything