“The Pasha’s Vineyard”
The minor road to Zelve that leaves the main Avanos-Göreme road in Cappadocia is signposted by a striking fairy chimney standing in isolation like a highwayman guarding it, The road leads to Paşabağ, not so much a settlement as a cluster of dramatic fairy chimneys.
In the Zemi Valley behind the Tourist Hotel in Göreme the most famous and most photographed fairy chimneys are undeniably phallic-shaped. At Paşabağ, however, they come in all shapes and sizes, many of them double or triple-headed so that they resemble weird monsters from an episode of Doctor Who that you could almost imagine sprouting arms to snatch you as you walk past.
Here, too, there is a rock-cut church dedicated to St. Simeon, one of those strange medieval holy men who spent much of his life perched on top of a pillar. It hunkers down amid smooth-sided rock walls covered with a top layer of rock that looks almost as if someone had run a cheese wire along it ready to lift a slice off and onto a plate.
Inside another smaller cone the modern-day Jandarma continues the tradition of inhabiting the chimneys, in this case to run the local policing business.
Paşabağ used to be open to everyone but has now been corralled behind a ticket office-cum-tourist-shopping-centre to extract money from the site. Gulag Paşabağ, a friend wrote after a visit.
Transport info
The two-hourly bus linking Avanos and Ürgüp via Göreme passes through Paşabağ although if you get out you’ll have a long wait for another ride.
The best bet might be to take the bus to Zelve, then walk back down to Paşabağ and pick up the return bus from there or vice versa.
