An eight night walking trip in Cappadocia and the Ihlara valley, reserved in your name

Look for the red ochre before you look for faces

An eight night walking trip in Cappadocia puts you in front of a great deal of painted rock, and the first thing to look for is the plainest. Many of the older chapels carry red ochre alone. Crosses, lattices, chevrons and bands go straight onto the cut tuff, with no plaster under them. The pigment is iron rich local earth. Where the rock stayed dry the lines are still sharp, and the width of the brush is easy to see.

Later chapels were plastered and painted with figures, and those are the ones carrying soot. Centuries of use as pigeon lofts and storerooms left a black film over the vaults. In several churches the faces have been scratched out. Some of that is iconoclast work and most of it is much later.

Two half days go on this, at Goreme and at three smaller sites off the road, where there is rarely anyone else. Bring a flashlight. The chapels have no lighting, and photography is restricted inside the painted ones.

Fourteen kilometers between two villages

The gorge walk starts at a stair cut into the cliff above Ihlara village. It is roughly three hundred and eighty steps down. There are handrails in places and none in others. At the bottom the Melendiz river runs year round. That is why there are poplars and willows here, and almost nothing green on the plateau above.

The path follows the water north. It crosses on plank bridges four or five times, and after rain the planks are slick. Belisirma sits at about the halfway point, a working village of a few hundred people with cattle on the path. The far end is Selime. A monastery there is cut several stories into a cone of tuff. It holds a stable, a hall and a chimney shaft you can climb inside.

Fourteen kilometers, five to six hours at our pace, one long stop. The climb out at Selime is the hard part of the day.

The balloons are not part of this reservation

Cappadocia is known for the balloons, and this trip does not include one. The office arranges no travel by air of any kind. If you want a flight, you arrange it yourself once you are there, with the company that operates it.

Two things are worth knowing before you plan a morning around it. Flights are cancelled for wind, and in April and November that happens often. Operators decide at about four in the morning, so you get up in the dark either way. A cancelled flight is usually rescheduled or refunded by the operator, but a short trip may not have a spare morning.

The viewpoints are also busier than photographs suggest. On a clear September morning several hundred people stand on the ridge above Goreme. Most of them arrive in the last twenty minutes before sunrise. It is worth walking ten minutes further along the rim.

Ash first, then water

The rock is welded ash from eruptions of Erciyes, Hasandag and the Golludag centers. It was laid down in sheets over millions of years. Where a harder cap sits on softer ash you get the cones, because the cap sheds rain and the column under it survives. Where there is no cap the whole face erodes into ribs and folds.

Soft rock also means people cut into it rather than building on it. Storerooms, stables, dovecotes and churches are dug everywhere, often four or five levels above the valley floor with the stairs long gone.

We visit one underground settlement, either Kaymakli or Derinkuyu depending on numbers that day. Both go down several stories. There are ventilation shafts, stone doors, and passages you cross bent double. If low ceilings are a problem for you, say so; there is a straightforward alternative walk that morning and nobody minds.

Where $1,960 else goes

This departure sits on the $1,960 rung, and it is not alone there. The office keeps every trip at that figure on one page so the number can be seen doing different work in different parts of the world. It does not rank them and will not tell you which is the better buy, because that is not a judgement a figure supports.

• The whole of the $1,960 rung
• All eight figures side by side
• Every departure in one table