11 December 2025
We entered this almost other worldly looking valley, the Ilhara valley. The winter landscape makes it look even more from a different planet. The earth colours and the strange cave houses, mountain cliffs and fairy chimneys made this place very special. We explored a lot of them, but because of different reasons we did not do the complete Ilhara valley hike, which is beautiful in every season but extremely green in summer.
The fairy chimneys are made by nature, but people started to make houses in them. The cave houses where made by Byzantine monks who after their education usually started living in cave homes inside of the valley, living a simple and solitary live full of prayer. Many generations of people where born and lived in the cave house next to Selime afterwards, until about one/two generations ago. The whole area is beautiful and absolutely worth exploring.
