Some countries photograph well at noon. Turkey photographs at dawn. The first light across the Cappadocian valleys — low, gold, catching on the chimney stones — is a sight that rewards whoever arranged to be there for it.
A private Turkey journey in its most classic form is a short week: two or three days in Istanbul, then a private transfer to Cappadocia for four days of cave rooms, early balloon-light, and long afternoons in small studios and terrace gardens. It is one of the most concentrated journeys we design.
Istanbul, privately
A suite on the Bosphorus is our beginning point — a yali hotel, if possible, with the water an arm’s reach below the window. A private morning at Hagia Sophia before the gates open publicly. A lunch in a restored Ottoman mansion on the Asian side. An afternoon in the quiet inner courts of the Topkapi with a curator. Dinner in a room that will hold one table that night.
Cappadocia at dawn
A small cave hotel near Uchisar, no more than a handful of rooms, with a private terrace that catches the valleys’ first gold. A hot-air balloon at six-twelve, lifting into a sky already crowded with the silhouettes of sixty others — for a moment it feels, quietly, like the only thing the region has ever been for.
By nine, back on the ground, the day unfolds slowly. A private walk through the valleys of Goreme, a lunch in a vineyard, a nap, a studio visit to a Turkish ceramicist in a nearby village. A carpet, perhaps, bought thoughtfully. A dinner, much later, at a single-table restaurant cut into the rock.
We prefer April and May for Turkey, or a second window in mid-October. The winter light is beautiful but the weather unpredictable. The summer is, as the summer tends to be, too much of itself. April rewards the traveller with exactly the Turkey the poets wrote about: gold at dawn, mild at noon, the call from the small mosques unhurried in the evenings, and the early roses already along the walls.
