konya ihlara valley

We woke up to the bleak Anatolian plateau landscape,bare land ,bare mountains,the only vegetation to see in riverbeds and around the villages.we were at over 1000m and the wind blowing through the windows was match fresher than in Istanbul.We arrived in Konya at 8:30 am where a coach was waiting to take us to the Mevlana dervish museum the home of the whirling dervishes.The museum is a large complex of buildings with the mosque as a centrepiece.Inside is loveshly decorated in tiles and carpets and other moslem books and memorabilia .Konya is the holiest city in Turkey and the area around it is the most religious.Another 1hr 30mns of travelling we reached Agzikarahan caravanseray, A very large building ,more like a fort, where caravans and travellers found shelter during the Selcjuk times,extensively restored (some parts of it badly) it contains living quarters stables and a mosque.After lunch at a roadside cafe we move on to Ihlara valley,the most enchanting place and one of the major attractions in Cappadocia.The valley (16 km long) is actually a canyon in some places 300ft high carved by the Melendiz river over millions of years.Is divided in 2 parts with the village of Bellisirma in the middle,Ihlara on one side and Selime on the other.The older Greek name for it was Peristremma wich means" turn of the river",thats what exactly ihlara means in Turkish.There are over 100 Greek churches in the valley,probably there are more undiscovered,several monasteries,hermitages and rock cut settlements.We started at Selime monastery,a huge soft rock, that contained a church,a refectory,a school,cells for the monks and it served as an observation post and a fort during dangerous times.Next to it the rock cut houses and churches continue until we reached the old abandoned village,the christians only left the area in 1923.We carried on walking next to the river until we reached the old village of Bellisirma and our camp next to a beautifull spot by the Melendiz river.