Cappadocia

Nowhere else on earth looks quite like Cappadocia. Millions of years of volcanic ash, hardened and then sculpted by wind and water, have left a moonscape of tapering pinnacles — the fairy chimneys — honeycombed valleys and soft pastel cliffs that glow rose and gold at first light. Early Christians tunnelled entire cities into this stone, hiding from persecution in churches whose frescoes still blaze with colour.

The image everyone chases is the dawn: hundreds of hot-air balloons rising silently over Göreme as the sun spills across the valleys. It is, genuinely, one of the great sights of travel. But Cappadocia rewards those who stay on the ground too — hiking the Rose and Love valleys, descending eight storeys into the underground city of Derinkuyu, sleeping in a cave hotel carved into the rock itself.

This is also a place of slow pleasures: pottery wheels in Avanos, the local wines pressed from high-altitude vines, lamb cooked in a sealed clay pot and broken open at the table. Days here feel both ancient and otherworldly.