Türkiye Overland Part 2: Kapadokya to Batumi via Derinkuyu, Sultanhanı & Karadeniz

Ennar Cave House in Nar, Nevşehir, where this Kapadokya leg began inside the rock.

We woke inside a rock.

After the long run down from Ankara, we had checked into Ennar Cave House in Nevşehir. Morning made the change impossible to ignore. This chapter continues directly from Türkiye Overland Part 1, where Shehzadi carried us from Kapıkule through İstanbul, Bursa, Frig Vadisi and Ankara before reaching Kapadokya.

Türkiye Overland Part 2 — Post Summary

This second Türkiye episode begins in Kapadokya with a cave hotel, a sunrise balloon flight and Derinkuyu, then follows Seljuk kervansaraylar through central Anatolia before turning north to Aybastı Perşembe Yaylası. From Ordu, we run east along Karadeniz on part of the coast we had driven westbound earlier, cross from Sarp to Sarpi, and return to Batumi, Georgia.

What's Covered
▸	Nevşehir: Cave Hotel in Kapadokya — rock-cut overnight base
▸	Uçhisar and a Kapadokya Balloon Flight — sunrise flight and Avanos pottery context
▸	Derinkuyu Yeraltı Şehri — underground refuge and engineering
▸	Sultanhanı Kervansarayı — Seljuk road architecture and caravan trade
▸	Saruhan Kervansarayı and Mevlevi Sema — evening ceremony in a Seljuk waystation
▸	Tokat to Aybastı Perşembe Yaylası — inland transit and highland stop
▸	Ordu and the Karadeniz Coast — eastbound coast road and earlier-route flashback
▸	Sarp–Sarpi: Back into Georgia — border crossing and Batumi return

We drove from Nevşehir in Kapadokya to Batumi, Georgia, in Shehzadi via Derinkuyu, Seljuk kervansaraylar and the eastern Karadeniz coast. The road began underground, climbed into the yayla country, then turned east toward the Sarp–Sarpi border. This leg closes our two-part Türkiye crossing and puts us back in Georgia.

Route: Nevşehir / Kapadokya → Sultanhanı → Aybastı → Karadeniz → Sarp / Sarpi → Batumi
Method: Overland by truck
Time: 4 days
Themes: rock-cut Kapadokya · Seljuk kervansaraylar · Karadeniz return
Vehicle: Shehzadi (2024 Toyota Tundra)

Route at a Glance

1. Nevşehir / Nar — Ennar Cave House in Kapadokya
2. Uçhisar — sunrise hot-air-balloon flight
3. Derinkuyu — Derinkuyu Yeraltı Şehri
4. Sultanhanı — Sultanhanı Kervansarayı
5. Avanos / Saruhan — Saruhan Kervansarayı and Mevlevi Sema
6. Tokat — northbound inland transit
7. Aybastı — Perşembe Yaylası overnight stop
8. Ordu → Giresun / Eynesil / Trabzon / Rize / Arhavi / Hopa — eastern Karadeniz road
9. Sarp–Sarpi → Batumi — Türkiye–Georgia border crossing and return to Georgia

Nevşehir: Cave Hotel in Kapadokya

At our cave hotel in Nar, the architecture did not bother pretending to be conventional. Kapadokya sits on volcanic material shaped by erosion into ridges, valleys and fairy chimneys; generations then carved homes, churches and underground settlements into the softer rock. Eruptions from mountains including Erciyes, Hasan Dağı and Göllüdağ helped lay down the volcanic material that erosion later sculpted. The geology did the rough draft. Humans supplied doors, stairs and an impressive refusal to waste a usable wall.

Our cave room put us directly inside that long habit of subtractive architecture. We had spent the previous leg moving through state buildings, bazaars, bridges and broad roads. Nevşehir changed the method completely. Here, construction often meant taking rock away until a room appeared.

Our rock-cut room inside Ennar Cave House.

Outside, the same rock-cut logic spread across the slopes. Openings, rooms and facades were carved directly into the soft stone, turning a building method into a settlement pattern.

Rock-cut homes and volcanic ridges near Nevşehir, Kapadokya.

Uçhisar and a Kapadokya Balloon Flight

We spent the morning around Uçhisar, whose huge carved rock mass contains rooms, passages and spaces used for shelter and defense. The fortress dominates the town without needing a tape measure. It is the sort of place where geology appears to have volunteered for military service.

Then we chose the easier staircase: none.

We went up in a hot-air balloon at sunrise. From the basket, valleys became corridors, ridges became walls and the dense pattern of carved settlement made much more sense. It was also quieter than driving, although this advantage was partly offset by the large burner directly above our heads.

Sunrise balloon flight over Kapadokya’s valleys and fairy chimneys.

Nearby Avanos keeps a pottery tradition tied to clay from the Kızılırmak, with techniques traced back to the Hittite period. The edible cousin of this habit is testi kebabı: meat and vegetables cooked in a sealed clay pot that is broken open for serving. Dinner with its own demolition phase is hard to dislike.

Derinkuyu Yeraltı Şehri

By evening, we went down instead of up.

Derinkuyu Yeraltı Şehri reaches about 85 meters below ground. Its rooms and tunnels include stables, cellars, dining areas, churches and food-processing spaces. A 55-meter ventilation shaft also served as a well, while some water shafts stopped short of the surface to reduce the chance that attackers could contaminate the supply.

Entrance to Derinkuyu Yeraltı Şehri in Nevşehir.

Claims about Derinkuyu’s exact number of levels and ancient capacity vary widely. The well-documented features are dramatic enough without forcing a tidy head count onto an underground city built and expanded over centuries. The internet’s underground-city census department can survive without us.

A narrow passage inside Derinkuyu Yeraltı Şehri.

The engineering was the part that stayed with us: narrow passages, heavy stone closures, ventilation, water, storage and spaces for animals. People were not decorating an eccentric basement. They were making extended shelter underground workable. Afterward we returned to our cave hotel, where the main security problem was finding the light switch.

Sultanhanı Kervansarayı

The next morning we drove west to Sultanhanı, home to Sultanhanı Kervansarayı, one of the major surviving Seljuk caravanserais in Anatolia.

Sultanhanı Kervansarayı: the town approach, open courtyard and köşk mescidi, covered hall, and monumental portal. Built in 1229 under Sultan I. Alaeddin Keykubad, the complex put rooms, storage, baths and shelter behind very serious stonework.

The plan makes the road logic obvious. A monumental portal opens into a large courtyard, while the covered section gave caravans protection in bad weather. The raised köşk mescidi stands in the courtyard on four arches. This was travel infrastructure built for an age when arriving before dark was a sensible life strategy rather than a hotel preference.

The portal carries the inscription Elminnetü Lillah, rendered in Turkish as Kudret Allah’ındır — “Power belongs to Allah.” Seljuk roadside architecture was capable of both elaborate stone carving and getting to the point.

We walked the courtyard and covered hall before returning to the road. The Silk Road can sound romantic at brochure distance. Inside a caravanserai, the practical side is much harder to miss: walls, water, storage, animals, shelter and a door thick enough to make tomorrow’s problems wait outside.

Saruhan Kervansarayı and Mevlevi Sema

Evening brought us back toward Avanos and Saruhan Kervansarayı. Saruhan dates to 1249, during the Seljuk period, on the Aksaray–Kayseri caravan route. Its open courtyard and covered section survive after restoration, and the building is now used for tourism.

Saruhan Kervansarayı near Avanos: Shehzadi at the gate, the stone courtyard and a lamp-and-kilim-lined side chamber before the evening Mevlevi Sema.

We ate dinner there and stayed for a Mevlevi Sema. The setting was commercially organized for visitors, but the ritual itself carries rules far older than the ticket desk. The Mevleviye formed in Konya in 1273. The characteristic turn is made on the left foot, driven by the right, to music that includes the ney and percussion. Historical training could last 1,001 days. Apparently “spin until convincing” was never the curriculum.

The stone hall at Saruhan Kervansarayı prepared for the evening Mevlevi Sema.

The clothing and gestures carry established symbolism. The tall felt sikke symbolizes the tombstone of the ego and the white tennure its shroud; one hand turns upward and the other downward. Modern visitor performances can be shortened or simplified outside the ceremony’s traditional context. That distinction matters. We watched a visitor-facing ceremony in a restored caravanserai, not a medieval caravan stopping for devotions between camel loads.

Video: the Mevlevi Sema we attended inside Saruhan Kervansarayı during our Kapadokya overland leg.

We drove back to Nar and spent one last night inside the rock.

Tokat to Aybastı Perşembe Yaylası

We checked out the next morning and aimed north through Tokat toward the Canik highlands. Dry central Anatolia slowly gave way to greener country, then the road climbed toward Aybastı Perşembe Yaylası in Ordu Province.

Shehzadi above the menderesler at Aybastı Perşembe Yaylası, Ordu.

The yayla lies about 17 kilometers from Aybastı at roughly 1,500 meters elevation. Its looping menderesler curl through high grass as if the river misplaced the instructions for going straight. The area was declared a tourism center in 1991.

This is also festival country. Each July, local yayla celebrations include folk performances, wrestling, horse races and other events. We were there for the road, the meanders, the little Perşembe Yaylası Göleti and a night parked in the highland air, not for the festival. The distinction is useful; travel blogs have enough accidental time travel already.

Ordu and the Karadeniz Coast — A Road We Knew in Reverse

We dropped from the highlands to Ordu and met the Karadeniz again. The mountains press close to the sea here, so the D010 alternates between tunnels and sudden open water. Ordu’s economy is deeply tied to fındık, one of the province’s defining agricultural products.

This road was familiar in reverse. On our earlier Georgia-to-Europe run, we left Batumi, crossed Sarpi–Sarp and drove west along the Karadeniz through Arhavi and Samsun, then inland to Düzce and İstanbul. Now Shehzadi was coming back east along the same Karadeniz edge. Hopa was no longer an unfamiliar border town at the start of Türkiye; it was a marker telling us the loop was almost closed.

Eynesil on Türkiye’s Karadeniz coast during our eastbound return toward Georgia.

We continued through Giresun, Eynesil, Trabzon, Rize, Ardeşen and Arhavi. Rize’s relationship with tea is much younger than the hills make it look. Türkiye’s first tea-leaf processing factory opened in Rize in 1947. By the time we drove through, çay had long since become the region’s most dependable punctuation mark.

The food shifted with the coast as well. Hamsi and karalahana belong firmly to the eastern Karadeniz table, a long way from the clay-pot meals of Kapadokya. We kept moving. By late afternoon the Sarp–Sarpi border was ahead, with Georgia on the other side and Batumi just beyond it.

Türkiye had spent this leg giving us cave rooms, underground refuge engineering, Seljuk caravanserais, a Sema, highland meanders, hazelnut country and tea country. It was a lot to fit between two border stamps. Türkiye has never shown much interest in being one thing at a time.

Sarp–Sarpi: Back into Georgia

Shehzadi crossing from Sarp, Türkiye, toward Sarpi, Georgia at sunset.

Crossing at Sarp–Sarpi felt different from most borders because we had already driven the same gate in the opposite direction. On that earlier westbound run, Georgia had been the launch point and Türkiye the road ahead. This time Batumi was the return. Papers still needed checking, of course. Bureaucracy is admirably resistant to symbolism.

Batumi arrived in neon and sea air.

Batumi at night from our hotel after the return to Georgia.

We ordered Ajarian khachapuri, the boat-shaped bread filled with cheese, butter and egg, and let Shehzadi cool down. This western loop had started when we left Georgia westbound, crossed Europe to Morocco, then bent back through the Balkans and Türkiye before returning here. The loop was complete. The Silk Road journey was not.

Kapadokya and the Seljuk caravanserais showed how central Anatolia adapted rock and roadside architecture to movement and shelter; the northbound turn then carried us into yayla country and back onto the Karadeniz corridor we had driven west earlier. At Sarp–Sarpi, the westbound road we remembered and the eastbound road under our wheels finally met at the same border booth.

Up next, we return from Batumi to Tbilisi, take a short break, then point Shehzadi north through Verkhny Lars into Russia, Astrakhan and onward to Kazakhstan.

Rubber on the road!

- #VagabondCouple and Shehzadi