| On our walk around the Goreme Open-Air Museum, we saw exposed just to the right of Karanlik Kilise the interior of an earlier church whose exterior walls had fallen away. Further down, we saw many hallowed-out monasteries embedded in the rock formations where monks used to live and work. Across the way, clusters of rock-cut holes could be seen high up on the valley wall. These had once served as pigeon houses, and farmers would put grain in each of the holes to entice the pigeons. Even as late as the 1990�s, farmers in Cappadocia use to keep these birds for their droppings, supposedly nature�s best fertilizer for grapes. |
