Ihlara Valley © Ricky Yates

After an interesting week here in Prague with the events marking the twentieth anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, I shall return to writing about our trip last month to Asia and back.

The final place we visited in Cappadocia was the Ihlara Valley. This lies about 40km south-west of Derinkuyu and was somewhere I had not visited during my 1975 trip. It is located near Mount Hasan and Mount Melendiz, two of the now extinct volcanoes whose past eruptions have left Cappadocia covered with volcanic lava and ash. The Ihlara Valley or Gorge has been formed by the Melendiz River cutting down through this soft rock to depth of around 100metres over a distance of some 14km.

There are a limited number of access points to the valley. The one we used was about 4km from the village of Ihlara, adjacent to a . . . → Read More: Cappadocia – The Ihlara Valley