British, 56, resident in Göreme, Nevşehir Province. Moved to Cappadocia in 2007 on what was supposed to be a two-month working holiday; by 2008 the holiday had become a job, a flat, a Turkish wife, and never quite got around to going back. The flat is a converted stone house on the north side of town; the job became a career.

For sixteen years I worked chase crew for three different balloon operators across the Göreme – Çavuşin – Ürgüp triangle. The chase crew is the team that drives behind the balloon as it drifts across the valleys, meets it wherever the pilot sets it down, holds the basket steady during landing, deflates and packs the envelope, and gets the passengers back to town for breakfast. The job is 4:00 am starts, a lot of Land Rover driving on tracks that aren’t officially tracks, enough radio-work to know every pilot in the valley by voice, and knowing every farmer in a twenty-kilometre radius by name because that is whose field the pilot has just put a balloon down in. I came up through crew to chief chaser and spent the last eleven of those years in that role.

I retired properly a couple of years ago. I still help out a few mornings a month in high season for a friend who runs a smaller operation; this is for the shift, not for the money.

01Why this reader exists

A trip to Göreme throws the same handful of questions at every traveller: when to book, how to choose an operator, why the deposit might not be refundable, what to do about the 4:30 am alarm, what happens if the weather cancels. I was answering those questions, in person and by email, often enough that writing the answers down once was faster than retyping them. The document grew. A friend in Istanbul published it on a webpage. This is that webpage.

02What this site is not

Not a balloon operator and not a reseller. Not an official tourism website for Göreme, Nevşehir, or the Republic of Türkiye. Not affiliated with any licensed operator, with the General Directorate of Civil Aviation (SHGM), or with the Ministry of Culture & Tourism. There is no advertising, no sponsored content, and no affiliate link anywhere on this site. The author does not receive a payment when a reader subsequently books a flight.

Operator names are not used anywhere in the text, by design. A fair review of any single operator can change from one month to the next depending on the duty pilot, the state of the envelope, and the quality of the office that week. A guide that recommends a single company by name becomes outdated marketing the moment the recommendation is wrong.

03Corrections

If a page is out of date, or something doesn’t match what you saw on your trip, drop a line via the contact page. Factual errors are corrected and attributed in the correction note if the reader prefers.

Enjoy Cappadocia. Dress warmly.

* * *

Filed under About · Last updated 15 October 2026