How To Get Through Love Valley to Uçhisar Castle
Love Valley is one of the most hilarious creations I’ve seen from Mother Nature to date. Over millennia, various types of rock, including volcanic ash, have eroded to create dozens of massive, phallic-shaped rock formations, technically known as hoodoos. Love Valley eventually gives way to White Valley, which is a deep canyon with nearly pure white walls of rock jutting up on either side. The hike itself is mostly gentle, and can be completed in under three hours. In my opinion, walking through Love Valley is the hands-down the best route to get from Göreme to Uçhisar Castle.
HIKE BASIC INFORMATION
Distance: ~ 6-7 kilometers (we also went up the equivalent of 190 flights of stairs)
Time: ~ 3 hours (with a handful of breaks)
Starting/Ending Points: We were dropped off by our hotel at the trail marker to enter Love Valley and ended at Kocabağ Şarapları in Uçhisar
Difficulty: Easy to moderate
What to bring: Small backpack with enough water (large water bottle per person should suffice), hat, light weight rain jacket, snacks, phone with downloaded offline map, camera, athletic shoes (hiking boots not necessary)
Who: Anyone with moderate to good physical health can do this hike — it is very beautiful and fun. For those looking for a bit more of a physical challenge, check out my post on The Absolute Best Hike in Cappadocia which takes you through Red and Rose Valleys
We used Anywhere We Roam‘s blog post as a guiding source to plan our trek, although we ended up doing things slightly differently. They have a good, downloaded offline map that I highly recommend.
Starting point
We started the hike by being dropped (for free) by our hotel, Aydinli Cave Hotel, at the trail marker head. It is possible to walk from Göreme to the trail, but it is about a 40 minute walk on dusty roads. If your hotel will drop you off (it is a less than 5 minute drive), I recommend that. All hotels should be familiar with this trail.
Love Valley
As you begin walking into Love Valley, you are essentially walking on a small country road — it is possible one or two cars may pass you. We saw some small sheds and people working on their land, but otherwise it was completely void of humans. It is a short jaunt before you begin to see the massive rock formations looming up ahead.
We started the hike around 10:30am, so we were surprised when we arrived that there was no one else around. A small restaurant is set up close-by and the owners were just beginning to set up their tables and chairs.
We decided to take advantage of this opportunity… to act like children. (We couldn’t help ourselves. I’m sorry!)
Thankfully the couple at the restaurant completely ignored us. I imagine that is because our behavior is nothing new to them (even for 30-something-year-olds).
When we were done cracking ourselves up, we continued onward into the valley. The phallic formations are only really at the beginning of the valley, so soon we were into the portion known as “White Valley”.
White Valley
Much like our hike into Red Valley and Rose Valley, there were some portions of this hike that were very “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe”. It felt like a magical fairy tale land, which was aided by the fact there was no one else in the valley!
Essentially this entire portion of this hike is very flat. As you near the end of the valley, you begin to gain a bit of elevation, and the gorgeous white rock walls become more visible.
When you see the end of the valley up ahead, keep your eyes to the left, because there are various trails that lead up the edge of the valley and onto a road that is barely visible from down in the canyon. We chose the path that appeared well-traveled/the least steep — it only took about a minute or two to scramble out of the valley, but make sure you are wearing shoes with good traction.
Once you are onto the road above, you will be able to see Uçhisar Castle in the distance. While hiking, it feels as though you are in a very remote area, but ultimately these valleys are very small and close to town. So, we were not that surprised to see an orange juice vendor sitting in front of us as we climbed out of White Valley.
To Uçhisar Castle
As we began the walk into town, it was getting close to noon and we were starting to feel quite warm. By the time we started walking uphill through the streets of Uçhisar, we both needed to take off our jackets and stops for sips of water. In retrospect, we probably should’ve started the hike around 9am instead of 10:30am because the entire hike is without shade.
Once you get through the streets of Uçhisar to the castle, there are numerous food and drink vendors (plus trinkets and everything else imaginable). It was a Saturday for us, and there were several tourists buses, so we had to wait a few minutes in line to buy tickets to the castle. The castle costs 8 lira/per person, which is the equivalent of about $1.50.
Although the castle never actually served as a traditional castle, at one point it is thought to have been inhabited by more than 1,000 people. The natural camouflage created by living inside of rock formations was used as a defense mechanism at various points in history, including the Hittites and the Byzantines.
The walk to the top take about 15-30 minutes depending on your fitness level — we saw families with children and grandparents on the stairs. The walkways are well cared for, so it is not dangerous, and you can turn around at any point if it is too difficult.
The views from the top are quite beautiful. Having been hiking in much of the area by that point, it was fun to see the various valleys from this perspective. There isn’t actually that much to do at the top of the castle, and there is no where to sit down, so after the obligatory photos, we were headed back down again.
Leaving Uchisar
While the photos from the top of Uçhisar Castle are quite impressive, if you don’t want to make the trek to the top, do not fret. Ultimately, the real show-stopper is the castle itself. Seeing all of the windows, doors, rooms carved out of this 60 meter high mountain is absolutely incredible.
To finish our walk, we made our way to Kocabağ winery for a wine tasting. For more information on Kocabağ and wine tasting in the Cappadocia region, see my post here.
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Definitely got a good chuckle from this post, but what a beautiful place! Love following along on your adventures!
Thanks! Haha, yes, the rock formations were just too hilarious! If other people had been around we probably would’ve acted a bit more.. maturely. But they weren’t, so here we are!
Loved this post Brittany!!! I hope I can go there someday and enjoy the beautiful scenery.
I hope you get to visit someday too! The nice thing is that Cappadocia is just a short 1hr flight from Istanbul, and the tickets can be as cheap as $40!
So fun to be part of your adventure. Thank you for sharing.. Beautiful hike.
Thank you, Shannon! My favorite types of hikes are ones that are only a BIT challenging, but you still get awesome views!
Very informative! What a neat place! It looks like a hike most people could do with a lot of things to see. You should get a lot of people looking at this blog.
Nice job Buggy.