Inside Turkey’s incredible underground city

                 It’s a landscape that looks almost alien. Soft tufa rock — spewed from volcanoes millennia ago to create a series of ethereal “fairy chimneys” that have been shaped and sculpted by nature. This is Cappadocia.

Rising above the Anatolian Plains of central Turkey, this historic region is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, drawing in thousands of tourists every year. Many take to the skies in hot air balloons as the sun rises, all the better to get a view of the rock formations whimsically referred to as “fairy chimneys” that come in all shapes and sizes — cone ones, pointy ones, even some suggestive ones.

Nature may have created this landscape, but it was ancient civilizations that turned and adapted it to their own purpose. Local people have worked hard to preserve this history and the traditional cultures which have grown in its wake. And nowhere is this more obvious than deep beneath those towering limestone peaks.

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 Weird, wonderful and unique

 But Galip doesn’t just specialize in pottery. He has another interest, something which marks him out in Cappadocia and doesn’t derive from the natural landscape. Through the back of his pottery shop is the Avanos Hair Museum. Understandably, it’s been billed as one of the weirdest museums in the world. And with good reason.

There are more than 16,000 tresses, from all over the world here. This is not so much a collection — rather a shrine to female locks. It’s hard not to shake the feeling that it’s all a bit strange.

“I am not forcing them to give, they give by themselves,” says Galip. “Who am I to say if it is strange or not?”

Women have been donating their hair to Galip for over 30 years, including Lilian. “I’m so used to it because I live in it,” she laughs. “But I remember in the beginning I thought it was very funny.”

The hair does at least have a purpose. Everyone who donates their locks leaves a label on them, with names selected randomly for a free week of board, lodging and pottery classes. A way, albeit a somewhat different one, for Galip to pass on his skills as a potter.

All of this is not to suggest that Cappadocia isn’t steeped in more traditional Turkish pursuits. In fact, it’s one of the best places in the country to come for its most famous export: carpets. And few people know more about them than Ruth Lockwood, a carpet connoisseur from New Zealand who came to Turkey more than 30 years ago.

She says that while the tradition of making, selling and haggling for carpets remains strong, things have changed “enormously.”

“When I first came here, it was wild. It was like the Woodstock of carpets, and people will still say to me, ‘Oh, you weren’t here then were you?'”

Lockwood explains that traders bring out a huge number of carpets and tapestries to entice tourists into parting with their cash. The key, she says, is not to get too excited when you spot something you like.

“It’s always best not to look too enthusiastic when you’re buying,” she says. “Because, you know, they get an idea that you love it. And of course the price is going to go up.”

Lockwood has learned to pick out the very best vintage rugs, ones which help tell the history of Cappadocia. Rather than seeing them as secondhand she says that they’re “… beautiful vintage. They’re antique. And they represent a history and a tradition we can’t go back to.”

“Every area, every region, every village, every tribe have sizes, colors, and designs that belong to that group.”

That love of the specific, of the ornate and of the beautifully crafted is what sums up Cappadocia. It is a complete one-off. There is a landscape that is one of a kind, with experiences that are unusual and enriching.