Goreme Travel Forum

hey everybody,

ill be coming to the cappadocia area next spring sometime to write about the underground cities. I'm wondering if someone can give me some tips. How long would it take for me to see all (or at least most) of the cities in the cappadocia area? Would it make sense to have a home base in the goreme and travel around to each village? or would it be economical to move from village to village? i would be traveling on the absolute lowest budget, so im wondering how much a city tour would cost, how much a hot air balloon ride would cost, what would be the cheapest housing, how much is transportation? apologies for peppering you with these questions... i have to submit a budget for all of this stuff.
I'd love to hear anyone's favorite underground cities or spaces or any tips at all. Thank you so much!

kc

Obviously a local would be able to give you better specifics. But you can see from my pages, that I visited a good amount of Cappadokia/Goreme.

Honestly, buses in Turkey are quite cheap. If you can manage to learn the bus system, I suggest you get accommodation in/near Goreme and venture from there as a base camp.

If you are full time tourist to the area, I would say that no less than 5 days would be needed to see the best parts.

I was in Cappadocia region last June for 5 days. It was a dense schedule but we visited Goreme Open Air Museum, Zelve, Ihlara (for a short time), two underground cities, Soganli, Erdemli, Ortahisar... There were many places to visit that we missed but we've seen the main places.
I cannot help you about public transportation, we went there with our car. But I can tell you the price of hot air baloon ride. It is around 150-250 euros for 45 minutes or 1 hour.

You can read my tips in my Urgup page.

There are many underground cities in Cappadocia and they are far apart from each other. Not all are open to the public, because they are in various stages of excavation, and do not yet have safety measures for visitors. I will write again to give a better list of the cities. But here are a few that are commonly on the tourist tours: Derinkuyu, Kaymakli, Tatlarin, Mazi near Urgup, and many more.