Cappadocia: One of Turkey’s most spectacular hiking destinations

(CNN) — A rich palette of shimmering caramel swirls, ochers, creams and pinks unfolds across the landscape like an enormous handwoven carpet. Stands of poplars line paths carved by ancient lava flows from three now extinct volcanoes, crisscrossing valleys studded with conical peribacı.

This is Cappadocia, central Turkey, famous for its whimsical “fairy chimneys,” to give peribacı their English name.

Cappadocia has an abundance of them, as well as rock churches and monasteries. The region is dotted with former farming communities with dwellings and outbuildings carved out of stone, where ordinary people lived next door to monks.

When the volcanic ash cooled down, it left behind soft porous rock called tufa. Over thousands of years the tufa was eroded and shaped by water and wind.

It’s easy to carve but hardens on exposure to air. Until the 1950s most of the population lived in these surreal rock formations, a tradition dating back centuries.

Now they’re one of Turkey’s most striking tourist attractions, often viewed from the air by the floating legions of hot air balloons that regularly fill the sky.

But, say locals, the real way to appreciate all this is on foot — or hoof. Here are some of the best options for exploring Cappadocia:

Zelve Open Air Museum

Cappadocia is often explored by visitors in hot air balloons, but is just as captivating on food.

YASIN AKGUL/AFP via Getty Images

Here it’s possible to imagine what Cappadocia’s fairy chimneys looked like when Orthodox Christianity was at its height during the medieval Byzantine period.

“Zelve was permanently occupied from the sixth century to the 20th century, which is something amazing,” says Tolga Uyar, a medieval art historian at nearby Nevşehir Hacı Bektaş Veli University. That’s more than 1,400 hundred years.

Like most of the inhabited caves in Cappadocia, spaces were re-used, re-carved and transformed. Now Zelve is a model of a rock carved civilization preserved from early Christian times through to the modern Turkish Republic.

Clearly marked paths make Zelve easy to get around and give an idea of what you’re likely to come across elsewhere in the valleys.

Ihlara Vadısı

In summer, much of Cappadocia appears arid and lifeless. The plains on the approach to Ihlara Vadısı seem no different, until you peer over the edge and see the tops of the lush green trees lining the Melendiz River below.

The length of Ihlara Valley stretches along its banks, the location of a pleasant eight-mile hike beginning at Ihlara Village and ending at Selime Manastırı.

In early spring, bush nightingales warble love songs, flowers dance to the “oop oop” call of the ibibik or hoopoe bird, and the burble of water lulls you into a contemplative silence.

Like anywhere in Cappadocia there are centuries-old churches decorated with murals.

There are picnic spots or small…