Hotels near Love Valley (Bağlıdere Vadisi)

Bağlıdere Vadisi, universally called Love Valley, holds the tallest and most photographed fairy chimneys in Cappadocia - free-standing tuff columns capped with harder basalt, some of them over 30 m high. The walk inside the valley itself is about 5 km round trip with roughly 120 m of cumulative climb, taking 2 to 3 hours at a browsing pace. Start from Göreme village centre instead of driving and you add around 3 km each way on the road towards Uçhisar, making a 10 to 11 km day of it. Difficulty is easy to moderate: the valley floor is flat sand and dust, and the effort is concentrated in the short scramble up to the rim at the Uçhisar end.

There is no ticket office and no entrance fee, which is unusual for anything this famous in the region. A metal sign reading Bağlıdere Vadisi marks the turn off the Göreme to Uçhisar road, with a rough map on it and an arrow pointing left into the gorge; miss the sign and you will end up on the panoramic viewpoint above instead, which is a fine place to stand but not the walk. This is the best of the five for sunrise, because the balloons lift out of Göreme and drift directly over the columns between roughly 05:30 and 07:00 depending on the month. Carry at least 1.5 litres of water per person in summer, since the valley walls trap heat and there is nowhere to buy anything.

Pro Tip: Set out from Göreme 45 minutes before sunrise, walk in on the road with a head torch, and be standing on the valley floor when the burners fire. Then climb out to Uçhisar for breakfast and take the dolmuş back rather than retracing the same 5 km in the rising heat.