Going deeper underground...

We were awoke early by the strange sound of a giant bunson burner. It took a few minutes to gather my brain cells together to realise it was the sound of a hot air ballon. We peeped outside and the sky was FULL of them- a dozen at least. We had heard it was a good way to see the area but at £250 per person had decided to give it a miss. With about ten people in every basket it looked popular despite the price! We took advantage of the early start and had an enjoyable and visually extraordinary walk through the valley we had parked in. We then spent an hour or so driving around the whole area and everywhere that there were open spaces like where we had camped, had ballons landing on them. Later the roads were filled with them, packed down onto trailers.Our exploration of the area was in pursuit of one particularly MUST SEE valley but the books directions and map were actually wrong. We found it in the end and it was impressive, (see photo) but we were glad to have had a look around at all the other extraordinairy lamdforms too. Having lost so much time we dithered as to whether we still wanted to look around the extensive monistairy site we had been aiming for. We decided we should make the most of being here so went in anyway and I'm so glad we did. The dwellings, church, and mosque in these three small valleys were much more complete than the ones we had seen on our walk this morning and you got much more sense of what it was like to live here. There were fire pits, raised bed shelves and networks of rooms. You could even enter a few different levels in some dwellings although the soft rock is prone to falling away in big chunks. This exposes upper rooms but removes stair cases. There was a long tunnel through from one valley to another. I had lost Alex so went in by myself, torch clutched in hand. I got through a fair few rooms and twisting tunnels (though probably only 50m or so, it felt like miles in the unlit, enclosed spaces), and, heart racing, got as far as a ladder carved into the rock leading down. There did seem to be some daylight coming through from the bottom but I couldn't face going down a steep, uncertain 'ladder' while trying to hold a torch so retreated out the way I had come. I was suprised at how much adrenalin the experince had generated. When I went in from the other side I found that the ladder was only two rooms in and wished I'd pushed on but didn't mind too much. My other favorite bit was a church, carved right into the cliff- a fairly large room witha high arching roof. I noticed how my footsteps echoed and tried a few notes. The accoustics were captivating. There was a wonderful echo that gave my single voice the resonance of a whole choir in a cathedral. I spent quite some time in there enjoying the vibrations of my voice bouncing around me. The monistory areas themselves had collapsed quite a bit so you were no longer able to scrabble around them, (this was the only area fenced off, you were welcome to be as adventurous as you wanted with all the other dwellings), but this had exposed the HUGE high central domed rooms that probably acted as a communal areas for the complex. It showed them off well as impressive constructions indeed. We headed next to one of the excavated underground cities. I should have paid more attention to my response in the tunnel because I was really suprised at how strongly the experience of this ancient Hittite city complex affected me. Alex didn't have to drag me out or anything but I had to keep a really really firm control of myself and would only surrrender my grip on the torch in really large, well lit rooms. Just writing about it now makes my heart race again. There was less excaved than we expected which I'm half disappointed and half glad about! The first bit was the most intense with norrow, steep steps down from the first level taking us four floors down. The corridor they were in got lower and lower until you were bent right over to avoid bashing your head and the steps were punctuated by small rooms off to the side at every level. These were to enable a heavy mill-wheel type stone to be pushed accross the stair way when the settlement was under attack. The thought of that possibility made the claustrauphobia even worse despite regular access to the ancient ventaltion shafts that went right up to the sky. I had jelly legs before we even looked at the second section but I persisted and I'm glad to have seen it but I had to have a sugary drink after to recover. The rooms were a lot more basic than those we had seen in morning but considering they were excavated in 1900-1200 BC and the cliff ones have been inhabited until a lot more recently, (and in some cases still are) it wasn't suprising. From here we headed back south to an off road track Alex had details of in the mountains north west of Adana , on the coast. The fog closed in on the way down. Once we left the tarmac it was extremely muddy and we discovered the truth of mud being the worst type of off road surface there is- we slipped around accending that hill far more than on any other surface we've ever been on but it leveled off just where the fog began to clear. It felt strangely not too different from home as I reheated last nights curry and sipped a beer, looking out over snowy mountains on one side and the glowing lights and call to prayer of a town in a valley on the other side.