New Year in Cappadocia: 4 days of valleys on foot, underground cities and balloons at dawn

The New Year where you sleep inside the rock

You leave Malpensa on the evening of the 29th and land in Kayseri the next morning: an hour on the road and you are in Göreme, among the fairy chimneys. In winter Cappadocia changes face: the coaches disappear, snow settles on the tuff, and the valleys that are an oven in summer walk beautifully at ten degrees under a clean sky.

Two real walking days: the frescoed churches carved into the tuff of the Open Air Museum, the descent from the Uçhisar rock down Pigeon Valley to Göreme, sunset from the Red Valley, and on the 31st the underground city of Derinkuyu — eight floors dug into the earth, where twenty thousand people once lived — and the Ihlara valley, a hundred-metre canyon with Byzantine churches in its walls and a river running along the bottom.

Why go with us

• You walk inside the valleys instead of touring the viewpoints by coach.
• New Year's Eve dinner in Göreme, in a restaurant carved into the rock, and midnight on the terrace.
• Every entrance fee in the programme is already in the price: museum, Derinkuyu and Ihlara.
• Small group, 12 Guidders max, with a licensed local guide and a Guiddy Coordinator.

Good to know

The flight is not included: we recommend one below, around €414 return from Milan. You leave on the evening of the 29th via Istanbul and land in Kayseri on the morning of the 30th, so the first night is in the air and you sleep two nights on the ground. Airport transfers are included both ways. We deliberately leave the balloon ride out of the price: it costs €180-250 and only flies when the wind allows, so the Coordinator books it on the spot on the morning with the right weather and you pay only if it flies. Turkey requires a passport, not an identity card.