Prior to connecting with our Intrepid Travel tour through Türkiye, my travel companion and I spent a couple of days in Cappadocia. We were there early because we had a lot we wanted to do in this area. We got it all in (stay tuned for an epic Cappadocia post!). And one of those amazing excursions was hiking Rose Valley.
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Spoiler alert: I loved Cappadocia.
While in Cappadocia, we flew in a hot air balloon. We saw Cappadocia from up high and also down in the dusty valleys. We drove out to underground cities and also saw churches carved into the tops of rocks. We saw Cappadocia from all angles in all lights. It is otherworldly everywhere and all the time. I don’t think there is anything else like it.
Our Rose Valley hike was a highlight of our whole trip to Turkey, for me. It was gentle and full of beauty. A bonus surprise I was not anticipating was the ancient churches (and the mulled wine, but we’ll get to that in a moment).
On our walk, we saw Kolonlu Kilise (the columned church), which we were able to go inside and walk around. We also poked around another old chapel, and there were opportunities to explore cave dwellings in the landscape. It was certainly unique!
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Rose valley Hiking Stats
This was a very easy, gentle, and easy-to-follow “hike.” In fact, I’d say it was more of a walk.
We only did 2.5 miles, with little elevation gain. Our walking time was 1 hour, but we stopped once for beverages and another time to watch the sunset before heading back to town, so our entire trip was just over two hours.
There is some uneven terrain, spots walking between large rocks, and a bit of an incline in places. But any challenges were short-lived and, in general, the entire hike is achievable for those with a reasonable level of fitness and good mobility.
You can choose to take a horse tour through the valley and up the hills. (There are also ATV Tours, but I really hate those things so would advocate against that. It is hard to appreciate the stillness and serenity of the experience with the noise they make, and they destroy the environment.)
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Hiking Rose Valley Cappadocia
Red Valley, Rose Valley, and Meskendir Valley trails all connect, with various overlooks. You can see a good option to connect Red Valley and Rose Valley in this article.
It is also possible to hike up to Uchisar Castle as well as through Love Valley. We chose to do a Rose Valley hike at sunset and loved it (although I am not sure you can really go wrong wherever you hike in this region).
We ended at the Rose Valley viewpoint for sunset.
Our starting location for the hike wasn’t too far out of Göreme center, but we hired a guide for this hike. I highly recommend arranging a private car service at the very least for this experience.
Once we began hiking, we didn’t really need our guide – the trails were pretty easy to follow and we went in almost a full loop. Our guide didn’t share much by way of history or perspective. What he did offer, which was worth it, was transportation to the trailhead and transportation back from where we ended.
Having walked by foot to the Open Air Museum earlier in the day (actually, twice due to a mishap that I’ll share in an upcoming post), as well as around Cappadocia the evening before, it is fairly easy to get turned around in this area. Google Maps is pretty useless and there isn’t much navigational infrastructure or signage. It likely would have been easy to hail a cab to get to the trailhead, but a little more complicated to take one back.
It is possible to walk from downtown Cappadocia to the trailheads and back. But given how inexpensive it was to hire someone to help us, it was a far more relaxed experience to have help.
From the trailhead, we walked easy paths that took us by cave houses and the first church we visited, the columned church. It was beautiful, eerie, and spiritual all at once.
As another stop on our walk, towards the end given our direction of choice, we spent some time at Hacli Kilise (Church of the Cross). At the base of this ancient church which is carved into the rock above, sits a refreshment stand that’s been in operation for 20 years.
Pleasantly surprised, we used cash to purchase some of the mulled wine, take in the scenery and hive of activity, and enjoy. (Although note: do everything you can to avoid the bathrooms here. That was not a good situation.)
We also took time to scurry up the ladders and makeshift steps to poke into the church. We had spent time at Göreme Open-Air Museum and were familiar with churches carved into mountainsides with frescoes that defy the odds and still exist. But this was a different sensation, to see this place of worship after hiking to it. It still exists and it is still gorgeous. For some reason, it felt more pure.
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Our guide nudged us onward, although we could have stayed at this stop longer. He wanted to be sure we were at the lookout in time for the evening sun to set. We were gifted with a stunning sunset at the Rose Valley viewpoint (Cappadocia is known for having breathtaking sunsets, and our two nights there delivered). Up here, there was only one other group of tourists (that clearly hadn’t done as much hiking as we had – they seemed to have walked up from the nearby parking lot and then back down). There was a Turkish family huddled over a campfire, which helped keep hands warm as the sun took its warmth and slowly left.
It was reminiscent of my Grand Canyon hikes. The earth turns colors you didn’t know it possessed. There is a stillness against the wind that comes with so much breadth and expansiveness you can’t even conceive it.
Cappadocia suffers the weight of being an incredibly popular tourist destination right now. How it will continue to adjust is unknowable. But at this point in time, standing on the path looking out over stones that were white, pink, rose, and even green, I saw that Cappadocia will always be special. Being able to hike some, to feel the special ground beneath my feet and to experience a fraction of what the original settlers who sought religious refuge in the rocks did, was remarkable.
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