Two classic day routes, both small group, both from $33. What separates them is driving distance, time on your feet, and how much energy is left after a pre-dawn balloon pickup.
Updated 16 October 2026
Both routes cost the same on this site, from $33, and both include lunch, small-group travel and collection from your hotel. The gap is in the clock and the ground covered: the northern loop is listed at 6-7 hours and stays close to Göreme, while the southern loop is listed at 7-9 hours because it drives out of Nevşehir province towards Aksaray for the Ihlara canyon before coming back.
If you only have one free day, take the northern route. It holds the rock-cut sites most people came to see, it keeps the walking in short bursts, and two extra hours of minibus do not land on a day when you were awake at 04:15. If you have two free days, do both, northern first.
| Tour | Price from | Duration | What is included | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Red (North) Tour, small group | from $33 | 6-7 hours | Hotel pickup and drop-off, professional guide, driver/guide, lunch, all fees and taxes; drinks not included | The Göreme-side valleys and fairy-chimney sites with admissions handled |
| Green (South) Tour, small group | from $33 | 7-9 hours | Admission fee, entrance fee, lunch, air-conditioned vehicle; drinks at lunch paid by guests | Trading two extra hours of driving for the underground city and the Ihlara canyon |
Hotel pickup and drop-off, a guide, lunch and all fees and taxes inside 6-7 hours, from $33, rated 5.0 ★ (2277 reviews), which makes it the route that survives a 04:15 balloon alarm.
★ 5.0/5 · 2,277 reviews
The northern day carries hotel pickup and drop-off, a professional guide, a driver/guide, lunch and all fees and taxes, with drinks the only thing left to you. It rates 5.0 ★ (2277 reviews). The admissions are the part worth reading closely, because this is the expensive side of the region on the Ministry's own tariff.
Göreme Örenyeri, the rock-cut monastic enclosure about 2 km east of the town, is €20 for foreign visitors. Inside it, the Karanlık Kilise (Dark Church) is an explicit exception on the tariff: €6 extra on top of the site entry, reduced to ₺100 for MüzeKart holders. Check whether that church is on your day's ticket list and carry the €6 if it is not. It is one of the ten monuments on the official record, alongside the Girls and Boys Monastery, Elmalı, Saint Barbara, Serpent, Saint Catherine, Çarıklı and Tokalı churches.
Zelve and Paşabağ are €12 on the tariff and a single ticket admits you to both, which is the best value of any admission in the area. Between those stops the day fills with panorama viewpoints over the valleys north of the village, the Çavuşin and Love Valley side of the landscape, and the pottery workshops at Avanos, 18 km north of Göreme.
The green route is built around two things the northern loop does not reach: a multi-level underground city and the Ihlara canyon. Admission and entrance fees, lunch and an air-conditioned vehicle are included, drinks at lunch are paid on the day, and it rates 5.0 ★ (2653 reviews) across 7-9 hours.
Derinkuyu and Kaymaklı are both €13 for foreign visitors and itineraries use one or the other. Derinkuyu is about 85 metres deep, with a 55-metre ventilation shaft that doubles as a water well; only about ten percent of it is open, and it has received visitors since 1965. Kaymaklı, 20 km from Nevşehir, has eight floors of which four are unearthed, lit and walkable, including a third level of storage rooms, wineries and kitchens with an andesite block drilled with 57 holes for crushing and grinding. Seeing both on separate days means walking through much the same rooms twice, so pick one and spend the saved time above ground.
Ihlara Valley sits in Güzelyurt district of Aksaray province, outside Cappadocia proper, which is where the extra driving in a 7-9 hour day goes. The Ministry record gives it as roughly 14 km long and up to 120 metres deep, with hundreds of rock-cut churches and chapels identified inside, Ağaçaltı and Kırkdamaltı (St George's) the best known. The site is open daily 08:30-17:00 with the ticket office closing at 16:15, which is why this tour leaves early and gets back late. Admission is €15 for foreign visitors on the official tariff.
Time in the minibus is the honest difference between these two days. The northern loop works ground within a few kilometres of Göreme, which is 15 km east of Nevşehir and 5 km west of Ürgüp, so stops come quickly and the drives between them are short. The southern loop adds a long run out towards Aksaray province and the same run back, with the underground city on the way.
Walking on the northern day is the museum-enclosure sort: uneven rock paths, steps cut into tuff, short climbs at viewpoints, with the vehicle never far away. Nothing in it is sustained. The canyon is a different proposition. The main descent at the Ihlara entrance is a staircase of 394 steps, and the valley floor path is loose underfoot in places; tours walk a section of the 14 km valley rather than its full length, but the steps are not optional and the climb back out is where people regret the choice of footwear.
Wear closed shoes with grip and flat soles for either day. If stairs, knees or heat are an issue for anyone in your group, book the northern route and skip the canyon.
A balloon morning is a three to four hour block that starts before dawn: pickup is roughly 60 to 90 minutes before sunrise, which in late June means around 04:15 against a 05:15 sunrise, and you are back at your hotel by mid-morning. Pair that with the 6-7 hour northern route and the day works. Pair it with a 7-9 hour drive south and you will sleep through the canyon.
Keep the green tour for a morning you have woken up normally. It is the longer day, the one with the steps, and the one where the last site closes its ticket office at 16:15, so there is no slack in it.
One more piece of scheduling logic: balloons flew on only 223 days in Cappadocia in 2025, leaving roughly four mornings in ten with nothing in the air. Whether your sector of the designated LTB1 (Kapadokya) area is cleared for a given dated window comes down to a flag colour published in advance, so a red or yellow one means no commercial balloon leaves the ground that window, and a green one still leaves the launch call with the pilot and the operator on the morning itself. Book the flight for your first full morning and hold a day tour as the plan for a grounded one.
With two full days, book the balloon for the first morning, the northern route for that same afternoon, and the southern route for day two. That sequence gives you the valleys and the rock-cut churches while you are fresh, the long drive when you have slept, and one morning of margin if the flags go red.
With three days, do the same two tours on days one and two and leave the third morning open. It is your rebooking slot for the flight, and if the balloon already happened, it is the morning to walk into Göreme Örenyeri at the 08:00 opening listed on the Ministry's museum record, before the groups arrive. The official daytime closing on that record is 17:45 and the site is open every day with no stated weekly closing day, though a separate seasonal listing gives 08:00-19:00 from 1 April to 1 October, so check the posted hours on the day.
Evenings are easy to fill without another full tour. The sunset ATV ride over Love Valley and Rose Valley runs 2 hours from $40 with hotel pick-up and drop-off, and it doubles as the activity for a no-fly morning.
Yes, the colours and the compass names are used interchangeably locally. Red is the northern loop around Göreme and the valley sites close to the village, listed at 6-7 hours. Green is the southern loop that reaches an underground city and the Ihlara canyon in Aksaray province, listed at 7-9 hours.
Southern itineraries use one of the two, and both cost €13 for foreign visitors on the official tariff. Derinkuyu is about 85 metres deep with a 55-metre ventilation shaft that also served as a well, and roughly ten percent of it is open. Kaymaklı has eight floors with four unearthed, lit and open to visitors. Seeing one is enough; they cover similar ground.
No. The admissions for each route are handled inside the tours themselves, so there is nothing left for a pass to cover. For reference, the Ministry's listing prices the Museum Pass Cappadocia at €65 for three days, valid at the underground cities but not for Night Museum visits.
That is exactly what these days are good for. Only 223 days of 2025 carried commercial balloon flights, the fly or no-fly decision is published per sector for each dated window, and a red or yellow flag means no clearance at all. Both routes run as scheduled day trips, so a grounded dawn turns into a 6-7 hour or 7-9 hour day out instead of a wasted one.
Closed walking shoes with grip and flat soles, because of the 394-step descent into Ihlara and the uneven valley floor. Layers help year-round: dawn minima at the Nevşehir station average 5.1°C in April, 6.8°C in October and 13.7°C in July, against July and August daytime maxima of 28.5°C and 28.7°C. May is the wettest month at 57.9 mm, so pack a shell in spring.
Book the southern day
The green (south) tour runs 7-9 hours with admission and entrance fees, lunch and an air-conditioned vehicle included, from $33, rated 5.0 ★ (2653 reviews). Book it for a morning after a normal night's sleep.
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