Underground Cities - Kaymakli, Turkey
4 Stars This place was Great visited Nov 6, 2005
On Sunday morning we took a series of buses and domuses to get to Kaymakli, one of the most popular underground cities. We had been told that it was worth getting a guide as many of the rooms have no sort of explanation of what they were used for (stables, kitchens, living rooms, storage etc), but there weren't any official ones, and neither Kate nor I could stomach entertaining the hustlers that offer themselves as guides at the entrance. We decided to explore on our own, which would have been fine - if we had remembered our torch! We had carefully packed a torch when leaving Istanbul, then managed to leave it in the hotel room the entire time we were away! We did have Kate's little red key light, but that wasn't really enough. Although all the main passages of the city are well lit, there are many passages leading off the main route that invite exploration, but without a torch it's all a bit scary! Luckily we quickly met some other anglophones - an american couple who had bought a torch outside the entrance and were intent on exploring every nook and cranny of the place! The four of us crawled down every tunnel we could find (many passages were too low to allow just bending over) and poked the torch into every corner of every room. Surprisingly, it was quite warm underground, and between that and all the exercise and contortions required, we were soon stripped down to t-shirts and were carrying all the warm clothes that were necessary outside. I thought it odd, as I had heard that it could be quite cold in the underground cities, but I guess the caves are about the same temperature all year around, and it would seem pretty chilly in summer when it's 35 degrees or more outside! After more than an hour underground, we emerged mole-like into the grey sunlight, dusty, hungry, with thigh muscles killing from all the crouching and bending and crawling and hair full of bits of roof-rock from all those times we had failed to crouch and bend enough.