Walking to Göreme

Or not, as it turns out, because I'd completely failed to factor into my workings how lovely the walk down from the junction would be, especially the part of it that runs from the Göreme Open Air Museum to the village.

It started innocently enough. “Wow, doesn't the Kılıçlar Vadisi (Swords Valley) look lovely,” I remember thinking. If I just pause to take one picture... And so it was that I finally arrived at the restaurant, hot, worn-out and a whole hour later than planned.

There were, you see, some cows peacefully chewing cud in the shadow of the rocks. So picturesque, how could I fail to stop and snap a photo of them? Then, as I skirted the edge of one of the nasty patches of ground scraped clean for use as a hot-air balloon takeoff point, I spotted a huddle of geese and goslings sheltering from the sun beneath a small hedge. Had they flown in from Avanos, I wondered, there being many, many geese on the Kızılırmak River these days.

Then, what's this I see but a couple of guinea fowl bustling towards me, whistling what I take to be a “Go away, why don't you!” protest at my invasion of their territory. Guinea fowl! Now there's a first for Göreme, I think, just as I hear, echoing across the valley, the unworldly screech of one of the peacocks, introduced by a hotelier some years back, that I always forget are around.

Here's a donkey standing in the fields, a solitary reminder of the hundreds that used to be an essential feature of life here. Here is one of the horse ranches that have sprouted up in an area whose name (Cappadocia) may or may not be derived from the Persian term for “Land of Beautiful Horses.” Here is a clump of irises in full purple glory, here a cascade of wisteria. And, here, just as I finally reach the village, are the two thickset fairy chimneys cut with pigeon-houses whose painted doorways always remind me of kilim patterns.

By now, of course, my friend has given up waiting for me and set off on a stroll round the village. She's a fan of oya, the delicate needlework with which village women traditionally trim their headscarves and which must by now be almost as much of a threatened handicraft as home kilim-making. As I fall in beside her, she trawls through a pile of folded scarves in one of a string of shops run by local women who sell oya imaginatively redesigned as jewelry for tourists.

“The thinner the material, the older it tends to be,” she says, picking out a gossamer piece; its blurry, block-printed design suggests considerable age. It's trimmed with the elaborate sort of oya no one has the time to make today. I snap it up for her by way of an apology for my tardy arrival.

Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.