The Mistake That Almost Ruined My Plans:
Our journey from Denizli to Goreme was supposed to be an easy one, but it wasn’t. There are no direct flights from Denizli to Goreme, so you have to travel by bus or rental car. I knew that before going to Turkey, but I still made the mistake of not pre-booking our bus tickets. I thought I could get them from Pamukkale the day before our travel. I didn’t consider that it was a long national holiday for Turkish people at that time. So a lot of people were traveling. The manager of our hotel at Pamukkale broke the bad news to me first. He tried to book our tickets online but couldn’t find one. So he advised me to go directly to the central bus terminal of Denizli to try my luck. I have already prebooked my hotels and everything in Goreme. I didn’t know what to do if we couldn’t go there on time. We took a taxi from our hotel to the bus terminal. I was talking with my taxi driver about my situation on the way. The taxi driver suggested that if I failed to get bus tickets, I could always travel with a rental car. He said it would cost around 4000-5000 Lira (local currency), and I knew I couldn’t afford it. So I was desperate for bus tickets. The taxi driver was kind enough and decided to help out by talking to the ticket counter people on my behalf. We went door to door at the terminal and everyone was saying they were sold out for the next day. Suddenly, one guy at a counter proposed that he had an emergency arrangement, but it would cost about 300 lira per person. It was a bit higher than the bus ticket, but i took it anyway.
The next day we found out that the emergency arrangement was a tourist mini bus. It was two Pakistani graduate students and us. We were traveling through a cold night in the unknown. My wife felt a bit insecure being the only woman in the car. But the Pakistani students and our driver all turned out to be very friendly. The driver was supposed to drop us 30 minutes away from Göreme as he had to go somewhere. But when he realized that he would drop us off around 4 am in the morning and we did not know our way around there, he decided to take a detour and drop us at our hotel door. Couldn’t thank him enough for his generosity. Overall, I found Turkish people to be very friendly.
The Sunrise in Göreme:
We reached our hotel safely and soundly, but it was too early. I started knocking on the main gate anyway, as it was freezing cold outside and we couldn’t just stand on the road any longer. Fortunately, a caretaker was sleeping in the reception. He opened the gate and told us to wait at the reception until the current guest leaves from our room. I need to mention that we booked a budget hotel but the hotel was more than okay. The guy who runs this was especially friendly and always eager to make us feel at home.
While we were waiting at the reception, the caretaker Salman suddenly told us to go to the roof. We were not sure why he was so enthusiastic about it. But we found out soon enough. The sky was filled with hot air balloons and they were swimming in the divine color of dawn. The sun was just peaking from behind the mountains near the horizon. We were stunned for a while to see the sheer beauty of it. Dear travelers or photographers, do not miss a single sunrise while you are in Göreme. There is no way you can afford to miss the magic of these mornings. No wonder this place is so famous for this balloon ride. We went through quite some hurdles to ride one though. I will write about it in another article.
