55 Luft Balloons

August 24, 2012 13 Comments »

Hot air balloons turkey

A multitude of balloons rise up over Capadoccia Turkey

At 5:30 AM we had liftoff – and it was then as we started to slowly rise above the trees I realized that we were not alone. We were 1 of 55 hot air balloons as far as I could see and count. They looked like marbles floating beneath me – brightly colored and designed looking perfectly round from my viewpoint above them. But what struck me about this complex marble game was something that was missing – noise. One would think that when you get 55 of anything together that there would be noise. However as I gazed over the basket filled with 19 other people and a captain, it was perfectly quiet. All of these powerful, massive moving objects were silently ascending into the quiet morning sky.

They say that taking a hot air balloon ride in Cappadocia Turkey is a ‘once in a lifetime experience’ – which quite frankly I scoff at whenever anyone uses that term. But what made it really exciting and unique for me wasn’t the fact that we were floating over the strange and unique land formations of Cappadocia – it was that there were 54 other balloons also in the airspace above the land formations.

Talk about a rush hour.

But somehow the captain navigated the air space calmly and it allowed me to simply hang over the edge and take hundreds of pictures of this, colorful, silent work of art in the sky. I had only once before been in a hot air balloon, and I was hoping that this experience was going to go smoother than my last experience which left me pretty banged up. The day was calm though, which allowed our experienced captain to land the big balloon basket directly onto a flatbed truck exhibiting talent and teamwork.

This ‘once in a lifetime’ experience happens daily in Cappadocia with an early 4AM pickup from your hotel and then a quick safety briefing over some meager breakfast. Then you are whisked away to your balloon which holds about 20 passengers. You watch the inflation of the balloon and soon you pile into the basket and up, up, and away you go!

balloons capadoccia

Connect the dots

Turkish hot air balloon

Turkish Pride

Hot air balloon turkey

Up, up, and away…

Cappadocia hot air balloons

Cappadocia Landscapes

hot air balloon sunrise turkey

Good morning over Cappadocia

over the ledge

Over the ledge

Efes balloon

The beer balloon – Efes

balloon landing

Coming in for a landing

All wrapped up in the balloon

Deflated

View all Hot Air Balloon Cappadocia Pictures

More Information:
Kapadokya Balloon Website 
Price: 165 Euro or 380 Turkish Lyra for 1 hour

I was a guest of Intrepid Travel and Kapakokya Balloon for this balloon experience. However, the opinions are my own.


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