Turkiye Explorer

Welcome to Turkey. Your journey begins with a connecting domestic flight from Istanbul to the heart of Anatolia, where the landscape itself feels like a dream.

Arrive Istanbul: Connect to domestic flight to Kayseri Airport (ASR). Note: domestic ticket timing is arranged based on your international arrival time in Istanbul.
Airport Transfer: Private vehicle meets you at Kayseri Airport and transfers you to your boutique hotel in Cappadocia.

Evening: The evening is yours. Step outside into the fairy-tale valleys and let Cappadocia arrive slowly.

Meals: Breakfast • Stay: Aravan Evi Boutique or similar, Cappadocia

Cappadocia reveals itself today – volcanic rock carved by wind and water into spires, cones and underground cities that feel genuinely impossible.

Optional: 6:00 am call time for hot air balloon (to be confirmed separately, not included).
Optional: Hot air balloon at 6:00 am – one of the most extraordinary experiences in Turkey. To be confirmed and booked separately. Not included in the package.

• Underground City: Carved by early Christians deep into the volcanic rock – a network of tunnels, chambers and passages descending eight levels underground. Thousands of people once sheltered here.
• Pasabag – Monk’s Valley: The most spectacular concentration of fairy chimneys in Cappadocia, rising from the valley floor in clusters of mushroom-shaped rock pillars.
• Pigeon Valley: Named for the thousands of pigeon houses carved into the cliffs by villagers who used the birds’ droppings to fertilise the extraordinary vineyards below.
• Uchisar Castle: The highest point in Cappadocia – a natural rock fortress riddled with tunnels and rooms, with panoramic views stretching across the entire valley.
• Göreme Panorama: The classic sweeping view over Cappadocia’s incomparable landscape as the afternoon light turns the rock formations golden.

Meals: Breakfast • Stay: Aravan Evi Boutique or similar, Cappadocia

A second full day in Cappadocia reveals its deeper layers – Byzantine frescoes, a red river, ancient Greek villages and one of the region’s most beautiful valleys.

• Ortahisar Castle Panorama: A magnificent rock fortress at the heart of Ortahisar village, offering extraordinary views over the valleys of central Cappadocia.
• Imagination Valley (Devrent Valley): A surreal landscape of volcanic rock formations eroded into shapes that the imagination cannot help but name — camels, eagles, monks and figures from myth.
• Göreme Open Air Museum: A UNESCO World Heritage Site — a complex of rock-cut churches and monasteries from the 10th–13th centuries, their interior walls covered in extraordinary Byzantine frescoes.
• Avanos & the Red River: A riverside town famous for its pottery tradition, with the distinctive red clay of the Kızılırmak River still shaping pots on hand-turned wheels as it has for 4,000 years.
• Cavusin Old Greek Village: An abandoned Greek Orthodox village built into the rock face, offering a haunting and beautiful window into Cappadocia’s multi-layered history.
• Love Valley: The valley of dramatic phallic rock formations — one of Cappadocia’s most photographed landscapes, best seen in late afternoon light

Meals: Breakfast • Stay: Aravan Evi Boutique or similar, Cappadocia

Check out this morning and drive west through the Anatolian plateau. Seven hours of beautiful Turkish countryside, arriving at one of the natural wonders of the world.
Drive: Cappadocia → Pamukkale, approximately 7 hours. Scenic highway through Central Anatolia.

• Hierapolis Ancient City: Founded around 190 BCE as a thermal spa city, Hierapolis sits above the travertines in remarkable condition. Its Roman theatre, necropolis and Byzantine-era ruins span over 1,000 years of continuous civilisation.
• Travertines: The white calcium carbonate terraces that cascade down the hillside like frozen waterfalls are one of Turkey’s most iconic sights. Warm mineral-rich thermal water still flows through the pools, and you can walk barefoot across the terraces (shoes are not permitted on the white calcium formations).
  Check-in: Hotel with breakfast and dinner included this evening – one of only two dinners included in the programme.

Meals: Breakfast + Dinner • Stay: Colossea Thermal Pamukkale or similar

From white travertine terraces to white marble ruins – the ancient city of Ephesus is one of the best-preserved Roman cities in the world. Then on to the Aegean coast.
Drive: Pamukkale → Ephesus, approximately 3 hours.

• Ephesus: Once the second-largest city in the Roman Empire, home to 250,000 inhabitants and the Temple of Artemis (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World). Walk the marble-paved Curetes Street, past the Library of Celsus, the Great Theatre and the Terrace Houses. A professional English-speaking guide accompanies you here.
• Selçuk Town: Charming modern town adjacent to Ephesus, with its ancient aqueduct, Byzantine castle and Basilica of St John.
  Overnight: Kuşadası – a charming Aegean seaside town with the best of the Turkish coast on your doorstep.

Meals: Breakfast • Stay: Ramada Resort Kuşadası or similar

Drive north to Bursa – the first capital of the Ottoman Empire and one of the most important cities in the history of Islam. This day is deeply significant for Muslim travellers.

🕌 Mosque & Islamic Heritage: Ulu Cami (Grand Mosque), Bursa – built 1396–1399 by Sultan Bayezid I. Twenty domes, two minarets and 192 original calligraphic inscriptions. One of the finest examples of early Ottoman mosque architecture in the world. Free entry. All five prayers observed daily.

Drive: Kuşadası → Bursa, approximately 5 hours.

• Osman & Orhan Gazi Tombs: The mausolea of Osman Gazi and his son Orhan Gazi — the founder and second ruler of the Ottoman Empire. Situated within a Byzantine chapel converted into a sacred Ottoman site. A genuinely moving place for Muslim visitors.
• Ulu Cami (Grand Mosque): The great mosque of Bursa, built in the Seljuk-inspired style with twenty small domes and an interior ablution fountain beneath a skylight. The calligraphy covering its walls is among the finest in the Ottoman world.
• Koza Han (Silk Bazaar): A beautifully preserved Ottoman caravanserai at the heart of Bursa’s historic bazaar district, still trading in the silk for which Bursa has been famous since it sat on the Silk Road.
• Old Bazaar: The covered market district of Bursa — spices, textiles, copper, jewellery and the famous Bursa towel, woven here for 600 years.

Meals: Breakfast • Stay: Holiday Inn Bursa City Center or similar

A morning in the clouds above Bursa, then an afternoon in a village where the Ottoman world is still intact.

Morning: Uludağ Mountain by cable car (ticket not included in package – at additional cost). The cable car climbs from Bursa city to the mountain summit at 2,543 metres. The views across the Marmara plain are extraordinary. In winter there is snow; in summer, wildflower meadows.

• Cumalıkızık Village: A 700-year-old Ottoman village at the foot of Uludağ, where the original stone-and-timber houses are so well-preserved they appear unchanged since the 14th century. It is one of the earliest examples of Ottoman domestic architecture in the world and a UNESCO Tentative List site. Narrow cobbled lanes, Ottoman fountains and a village atmosphere that has quietly survived seven centuries.

Meals: Breakfast • Stay: Holiday Inn Bursa City Center or similar

Drive to Istanbul and check in to your Sultanahmet hotel — in the heart of the old city, within walking distance of everything that matters.

Drive: Bursa → Istanbul, approximately 3 hours via the ferry crossing over the Marmara Sea.

Check-in: Dosso Dossi Old City Sultanahmet or similar. The Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque and Grand Bazaar are all within walking distance of your hotel.

Free Afternoon: Explore the Sultanahmet district independently – wander to the sea walls, sit in the gardens between the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, or find a rooftop café with a view of the Bosphorus.

Meals: Breakfast • Stay: Dosso Dossi Old City Sultanahmet or similar

The great day in Istanbul. With a professional English-speaking guide, you cover the historic peninsula’s most significant sites in one extraordinary day.

🕌 Mosque & Islamic Heritage: Hagia Sophia – built as a Byzantine cathedral in 537 CE, converted to a mosque in 1453 by Mehmet the Conqueror, museum from 1934 and restored to active mosque status in 2020. Fajr through Isha prayers observed daily. Entry is free for worshippers. One of the great buildings in human history.

• Hagia Sophia: The greatest surviving Byzantine structure and one of the most significant mosques in the world. Its massive dome was the largest in the world for nearly 1,000 years. The interior gold mosaics, Islamic calligraphy medallions and the sheer scale of the space are overwhelming.
• Grand Bazaar (Kapalıçarşı): One of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world, with over 4,000 shops across 61 covered streets. Established in 1455 by Mehmet the Conqueror, it has been the commercial heart of Istanbul for nearly 600 years.
• Topkapı Palace: The administrative centre of the Ottoman Empire for 400 years, home to the Ottoman sultans and their court. The Treasury contains some of the most extraordinary Islamic artefacts in the world, including the Sword of the Prophet − − upon Him be peace − − and sacred relics of the Prophets.
  Optional: Bosphorus cruise (not included – can be arranged at additional cost). A 1–2 hour boat journey along the strait that divides Europe and Asia, beneath the suspension bridges and past Ottoman palaces on both shores.

Meals: Breakfast • Stay: Dosso Dossi Old City Sultanahmet or similar

A final morning in one of the world’s great cities before your journey home.

Free Time: The morning is yours until your airport pick-up time. A last breakfast on a Sultanahmet terrace, a final walk along the Bosphorus, or a visit to the Blue Mosque before the call to prayer.

Airport Transfer: Private vehicle to Istanbul Airport at the agreed time. End of service.

Ma’ as-salama – go in safety, and may Allah bless your journey home.