Cappadocia begins before sunrise.
Which basket actually gets you over the valleys. What the Red Tour skips. How deep Derinkuyu really goes. Every tour in Cappadocia, reviewed, priced and ranked.
Göreme's balloons fly once, at first light.
All balloon flights →Take-off is before dawn and the whole fleet is down by breakfast — there is no second slot. Wind grounds them without warning, so the three below are the ones travellers keep rebooking onto when a morning is called off.
- 1Cappadocia Hot Air Balloon Ride / Royal Balloonfrom $133.02
- 2Goreme Hot Air Balloon Flight at Sunrisefrom $142
- 3Cappadocia Hot Air Balloon Ride/ Turquaz Balloonsfrom $175.35
One hour in the basket, over the chimneys
Inflation in the dark, lift-off as the horizon goes copper, an hour drifting between rock cones, then the champagne toast at the landing trailer.
The same sunrise, from a rock ledge
A driver, a viewpoint above the valley and a hundred envelopes lighting up in front of you. Runs on the mornings flights are grounded, and costs a tenth of a seat.
A photographer, and the balloons behind you
The flying-dress pictures every feed is full of are a real local industry: a studio dress, a valley rim, and a photographer who knows where the fleet drifts.
Red, Green and Blue: Cappadocia sorts itself by route.
Almost every guided day here is one of three minibus loops, and the names are local shorthand, not marketing. Book the wrong colour and you miss the thing you came for.
Red Tour (North)Göreme Open-Air Museum, Paşabağ, Devrent, the Uçhisar castle rock and a pottery stop in Avanos.
The short one — most of it is within ten minutes of Göreme, so it suits an afternoon arrival.
- 1Full Day Cappadocia Red and Green Combined Day Tourfrom $22
- 2Guided Red Tour with Lunch and Ticketfrom $21
- 3Red (North) Tour Cappadocia (small group) with lunch and ticketsfrom $54.42
Green Tour (South)Derinkuyu or Kaymaklı underground city, the Ihlara Valley walk, Selime monastery and Pigeon Valley.
Long driving day and a 4km river-gorge walk. This is the one with the underground city in it.
- 1Full Day Cappadocia Red and Green Combined Day Tourfrom $22
- 2Green (South) Tour Cappadocia (small group) with lunch and ticketfrom $54.42
- 3Guided Green Tour with Lunch and Ticketsfrom $21
Blue Tour (East)Soğanlı, Mustafapaşa, the Keşlik monastery and the quieter valleys nobody photographs.
Runs on far fewer days and half-empty when it does. Worth it on a third day, not a first.
- 1Blue Tour with Entry Fees and Lunchfrom $24
- 2Cappadocia Daily Blue Tour with Lunchfrom $90
- 3Blue Tour and Sunrise Balloon Tourfrom $97.95
Roughly one operator in five sells Red and Green welded into a single day. It works, but you get the underground city and the museum at a jog.
The tours that fill Göreme's minibuses.
Every review →Ranked by how many travellers have actually been and left a rating — not by what an operator paid to promote.
1
Cappadocia Hot Air Balloon Ride / Royal Balloon
Ride a Royal Balloon over Cappadocia at sunrise with hotel transfer, breakfast, expert pilot commentary, and a champagne toast.
From · $133.02
Read our review →2
Goreme Hot Air Balloon Flight at Sunrise
from $142
3
Full Day Cappadocia Red and Green Combined Day Tour
from $22
4
Cappadocia Hot Air Balloon Ride/ Turquaz Balloons
from $175.35
5
Cappadocia Sunset ATV Tour
from $18
6
Cappadocia Sunrise Hot Air Balloon Flight / Discovery Balloons
from $119.72
7
Guided Red Tour with Lunch and Ticket
from $21
8
Sunset or Daytime ATV Adventure Tour
from $1.18
Under Cappadocia, a city eighteen storeys deep.
Derinkuyu drops about eighty-five metres through eighteen carved levels — stables, chapels, wine presses, ventilation shafts and rolling stone doors that seal from the inside. Kaymaklı is shallower and wider. Both are on the Green Tour; both are cold, tight and unforgettable.
Cappadocia names its valleys after their colours.
Rose and Red glow at the end of the day, Love is the one with the chimneys, Pigeon still has the dovecotes cut into its walls. None of them need a guide to be beautiful, but the marked routes cross private orchards and the light windows are short.
How you get across Cappadocia when you are not in a basket.
The valley floors are sand, dust and old orchard track — too far to walk end to end, too rough for a hire car. Locally that leaves a handful of answers, and they cost wildly different amounts for the same two hours of scenery.
- 1Cappadocia Sunset ATV Tourfrom $18
- 2Sunset or Daytime ATV Adventure Tourfrom $1.18
- 3Horseback Riding Adventure Tourfrom $18
Cappadocia, from a $6 saddle to a $180 basket.
Every tour on the site sorted by what it actually costs. The spread here is wider than almost anywhere — the same sunrise is a fortune or a rounding error depending on how you meet it.
Horseback hours, quad trails, the Red Tour minibus, underground-city entry and the balloon-watching runs.
Guided route days with lunch and tickets, pottery and coffee workshops, dervish evenings, jeep safaris and hammam sessions.
The basket itself, paragliding, private photographers, classic-car mornings and the multi-day tours that come in from Istanbul.
- 1Cappadocia Hot Air Balloon Ride / Royal Balloonfrom $133.02
- 2Goreme Hot Air Balloon Flight at Sunrisefrom $142
- 3Cappadocia Hot Air Balloon Ride/ Turquaz Balloonsfrom $175.35
Clay, cave and Sema: the Cappadocian originals.
Balloons fly over a dozen countries and every one of them has a jeep tour. These three do not travel — they only work on this rock, in these towns.
The Cities Under the Fields
Soft volcanic tuff cuts with hand tools and hardens on contact with air, which is why Cappadocians spent two thousand years digging downward instead of building up. Derinkuyu alone is thought to have sheltered around twenty thousand people with their livestock. The ventilation shafts still work; the stone doors still roll.
- 1Full Day Cappadocia Tour( Red Tour + Underground City )★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,862 reviews
- 2Green Cappadocia Underground City and Valleys Tour. Lunch incl.★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,103 reviews
- 3Highlights Tour (Red Tour & Underground City)★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 955 reviews
The Avanos Wheel
Avanos sits on the Kızılırmak, the Red River, and has thrown pots from its clay since the Hittites. The kick-wheel workshops along the riverbank are family businesses several centuries old, and the hour they give you is genuinely hands-in-clay, not a demonstration with a souvenir at the end.
- 1Traditional Mosaic Lamp Workshop★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 309 reviews
- 2Historical Pottery Making in Cappadocia★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 261 reviews
- 3Authentic Pottery Workshop Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 241 reviews
The Sema in a Cave
The Sema is a Mevlevi prayer ceremony, not a dance: the turn is a form of remembrance, and audiences do not clap. Several Göreme venues hold it inside a rock-cut hall, which is closer to the historical setting than any theatre. Half an hour, no photography during the turn.
- 1Cappadocia Whirling Dervishes ceremony★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 276 reviews
- 2Whirling Dervishes Show in Historical Cave★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 169 reviews
- 3Mystical Rhythms Whirling Dervish Show★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 90 reviews
Book these before you land at Kayseri.
Most of Cappadocia can be arranged from your cave hotel the night before. These four cannot — they run on capped permits, short seasons and flight legs that sell out long before the tour does.
- 01Cappadocia Hot Air Balloon Ride / Royal BalloonThe number of balloons allowed up each morning is capped, and cancelled mornings roll their passengers into the next day's allocation. In season the queue is weeks long.
- 02Erciyes Ski and Snowboard Tour with Full Equipment & InstructorThe Erciyes ski season is short and entirely snow-dependent — roughly December into March, and nothing at all outside it.
- 032 Day All Inclusive Cappadocia Tour from Istanbul with Optional Balloon FlightThese packages price in a domestic flight. The tour has space long after the cheap Istanbul–Kayseri leg has gone.
- 04Cappadocia Tandem Paragliding & TransferTandem flights only launch in settled morning air. Pilots hold a small number of slots per window and release nothing extra on the day.
On the mornings the balloons stay grounded.
Flights are called off for wind more often than anyone books expecting — a normal winter loses a good share of mornings, and even summer has them. Nothing below cares about the weather: the underground cities are a constant fourteen degrees, the workshops are indoors, and the hammams are the point.
Turkish Night at Cave Restaurant with Dinner and Unlimited Drinks
Read our review →By base — where you are actually sleeping
Göreme & the north loop173 tours
Derinkuyu & the south loop140 tours
Avanos pottery, on the Red River21 tours
Mustafapaşa & the east5 tours
Kayseri & Nevşehir airports45 tours
Coming in from Istanbul13 tours- Every tour on the site →
By experience — what kind of morning is it?
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