Four thirty in the morning. The cave hotel is a warm animal in the cold air. We have slept in a room carved into rock, under a wool blanket that weighs slightly more than a small child, and the alarm goes off in the dark like something apologising.
The night man is already up. There is always a night man, in this kind of hotel, in this kind of country, and there is always tea. Black tea in a small tulip glass, sugar cube on the saucer, a plate of two olives and two pieces of white cheese, in case we need a reason. We do not. The reason is what is about to happen outside.
You climb the small stairs cut into the courtyard wall. The valley below is entirely still. The fairy chimneys, the tall stone shapes the guidebooks all call fairy chimneys because there is no better word, are silhouettes against a sky that has not yet decided what colour it will be. Somewhere in the distance a call to prayer starts, and a dog answers it. Otherwise nothing.
Then, one by one, the burners.
They light up in the far valleys first. A single orange flash, held for a second, gone. A pause. Another one, closer. Then two together. Then a whole cluster. From up here they look less like industrial equipment and more like fireflies that have overshot the season by seven months. Someone next to us says oh, very quietly, and it is the only correct thing to say.
The valley below fills with light the way a bath fills with warm water, slowly, from the far end first.
By five thirty, the first balloon lifts. It is not one of ours yet. Ours is still being unrolled in a field on the other side of Goreme, by three men in overalls who have done this six days a week for fifteen years. We will get to it in an hour. For now we are only witnesses.
The sky does the thing it does. Pink, then peach, then that particular yellow that only exists at high altitude and inside old paintings. The valleys are still cold. The tea is still hot. Nobody is speaking above a whisper because it does not seem to fit.
You realise, standing there, that the whole trip is going to be measured against this quarter of an hour. The balloons, when we finally rise in one, will be beautiful. The wine cave for lunch will be beautiful. The pottery workshop in Avanos will be beautiful. But this, the fifteen minutes before the town wakes up, is what we came for and did not know we came for.
Later, at breakfast, someone at another table will ask if it was worth the alarm. We will smile and say yes and not really try to explain. Some mornings are their own currency. You do not spend them, and you do not lose them. You keep them.
Belvi is where places like this become trips.
See how it works