Take a hike

As a leisure activity, hiking has never appealed to me. For one thing, as I've said before, I'm not the biggest fan of walking. Also, Southeast Asia (particularly the Philippines) is not the easiest place to go traipsing into the wild. It's always too hot, humid and sticky, mosquitoes and insects abound, and then there's things like the NPA (which is the kind of thing parents warn you about on a field trip to Mount Makiling.)

My impression is that hiking is a rather dreary activity. What's so fun about trudging on and on for hours? Why would anyone want to walk that much? 

After a sunset hike through the stunning scenery of Cappadocia, I now know why.

How Cappadocia converted me, after the jump:

On our way back to town from the Goreme Open-Air Museum, Marlon and I saw the path in the photo above. It simply... beckoned. So we decided to walk off the road and go on our first hike.

And you know what? I really enjoyed it.

I never really thought about the context of hiking: what you see while you're walking. I'd always thought of it as simply... walking. (Ugh.) 

But you never walk in a vacuum, do you? When you're walking through scenery like this, you just want to keep going. Its beauty simply compels you to go on. (And the cold actually helps!)



Walking through the Cappadocian landscape is like being a character in one of my favorite fantasy, young adult or adventure novels. In this wide, circular clearing, I felt like Aragon (okay, maybe Frodo) waiting for the attack of the Nazgul in Lord of the Rings...

... while these red arrows spray-painted on the rocks (helpfully pointing the way to Rose Valley) reminded me of Labyrinth, where Sarah scrawled red lipstick arrows on the flagstones to mark her path through the maze.

I'd read that Rose Valley with its red rock formations is been a great place to watch the sunset, but with more than 2 km to go, Marlon and I were both worried we wouldn't make it back to the road before dark. Luckily, we found a perfect place of our own to hole up in.

After taking a few photos from our little cave...



... we watched the sunset together in silence.

Then it was time to walk back to Goreme, which welcomed us back with this lovely lavender sky.

Is this what I was missing all along? If hikes are always this lovely, I can definitely see myself hiking more. Consider me a convert!