Love Valley

Everyone calls it Love Valley, and one look at the fairy chimneys clustered along its ridge tells you exactly why — tall, slender, unmistakably phallic columns of tufa rising thirty metres or more out of vineyard rows, some of them capped and some worn down to bare points. Its actual name is Bağlıdere, “valley of vineyards,” and I mention that mostly because the vineyards are the part visitors tend to walk straight past. Local grapes have been grown on these slopes for centuries, low bush vines that somehow thrive in volcanic soil that looks, from a distance, like it couldn’t grow anything at all.

I hiked in from the Göreme side in the late afternoon, when the balloon crowds had long since packed up and the trail — a wide dirt path that undulates gently between the chimneys — was down to a handful of other walkers and a lot of birdsong. The formations get more dramatic as the valley opens up, clusters of them standing together like a strange stone congregation, and the low sun turned the whole ridge a deep orange-pink that made every photograph look faintly unreal without any filter at all. I sat on a boulder near one of the taller chimneys and just watched the light change for almost twenty minutes, which is not something I do often on a hike.

The trail eventually connects toward Uçhisar, and the full walk takes a comfortable two to three hours if you’re not rushing, though I’d budget more time than that if, like me, you keep stopping to look back at formations you’ve already passed. There’s a small tea garden near the trailhead on the Göreme end where I ended the walk with a glass of çay and watched the valley’s silhouettes darken into black cutouts against a sky gone the color of a struck match.

When to go: Late afternoon, an hour or two before sunset, is unbeatable for the light and thinning crowds. Spring brings wildflowers along the trail edges; avoid the midday heat of July and August, when there’s almost no shade.