You step onto an air-conditioned coach as the Anatolian sunlight slices across lunar ridges; domes and chimneys—rock chimneys shaped by wind and time—slide past like a slow-moving film. The driver eases toward Göreme Open-Air Museum and the guide, an art historian, outlines frescoes hidden inside cave churches where Byzantine painters once mixed pigments with egg whites to make images that still hold color. For eight hours the region feels both ancient and immediate: valleys that dare you to explore them, a river in Avanos that has been shaping pottery clay for millennia, and Uçhisar Castle standing watch over the horizon.