Translation Results Requested Through Conyac Made Public

Once we were armed with maps and gas, we were on our way, driving the roads out of Goreme and toward Nevsehir. The surrounding landscape featured tall rocks formed into cones with caps on top that had doors and windows carved into them, hundreds of nooks carved into mountain sides to create kind of rocky villages, and rolling hills made out of stone, all in the shadow of the giant snow-capped mountain Hasan Dagi that loomed in the distance.

We soon learned the capped cones were called “fairy chimneys,” which is actually a perfectly apt name for them. They looked magical and other-worldly and there thousands of them. Fairy chimneys are formed when a small cap or boulder of basalt (volcanic rock) remains after erosion and protects a cone of tuff (consolidated volcanic ash) beneath it from continued erosion. Many people used to live in them, hence the windows and doors, and some people still do, as we noticed gardens outside and curtains in the windows.

We finally made our way to one of the area’s numerous underground cities. Derinkuyu. Derinkuyu was probably used as temporary shelter by Christians being persecuted by various groups during various times. It has eight stories open to the public, but there may be as many as twelve.