Cappadocia Red Tour: Love Valley, Avanos, Zelve, Paşabağ and Devrent

The red tour is the day trip that covers northern Cappadocia. Booked with Get Turkey Tours, it lasts roughly six hours and starts from $80 per person. The stops are Göreme Panorama, then Devrent Valley, then Paşabağ (Monks Valley), a workshop where Avanos potters work, Zelve Open Air Museum and finally Love Valley. Hotel pickup, a guide, lunch and the entrance fees are part of the price. Before you set our offer against others, note one point: the Göreme Open-Air Museum is not one of our stops, so you do not go in. Plenty of operators include it in their red tour. Further down we explain why ours differs and how you can still visit it.

What you get for $80 on the red tour

The small-group red tour runs in a small group and begins and finishes at your hotel door. The price pays for:

• Collection at your Cappadocia hotel and the return ride when the day is over.
• A professional guide from start to finish.
• All driving between the stops.
• Tickets for every site on the route, so there is no waiting at the gates.
• Lunch in a local restaurant.
• Time for photos at the panoramic lookouts.

You pay yourself for drinks with lunch, tips, any shopping (the pottery workshop is glad to sell you a vase) and your travel insurance.

You will find this day among our day trips in Cappadocia, alongside the green tour, balloon flights and sunset rides. Travelling in from Istanbul and want us to handle the flights and the hotel as well? Every one of our multi-day Cappadocia trips has the red tour built in.

Each stop on the red tour route

In Cappadocia, "red" is simply another word for "north". Agencies here divide the region in two: a northern circuit through Zelve, Avanos and Göreme, and a southern one that heads for Ihlara Valley and the underground cities. The colour labels stuck over time and carry no other meaning. We drive the northern circuit in the order below, although your guide can switch stops around to stay clear of the tour coaches:

1. Göreme Panorama. A lookout on the Göreme to Uçhisar road with a view down into the valleys. You stop here briefly for pictures.
2. Devrent Valley. You will find rock shapes here and nothing else: no caves, no churches. Visitors spot a camel, a seal, two lovers. That is why it also goes by the name Imagination Valley.
3. Paşabağ (Monks Valley). Fairy chimneys topped with two or three stone caps. This is the image of Cappadocia most people carry around.
4. Avanos. A visit to a potter's studio on the banks of the Kızılırmak river, followed by lunch.
5. Zelve Open Air Museum. Here you explore a deserted cave village that stretches across three valleys.
6. Love Valley. Tall columns with smooth sides close the day, and then you ride back to your hotel.

Our version of the day takes six hours. You will get on and off the minibus many times, walk a short way on dirt tracks at every stop, and walk further at Zelve.

The heart of the day: Paşabağ and Zelve

At Paşabağ the fairy chimneys match the postcards most closely. A number of them carry more than a single cap, and inside one sits a tiny chapel with a hermit's cell. Hermits once lived in these cones, which explains the second name, Monks Valley. The trails are short and level, so nearly anyone can manage this stop. Expect company, though. By mid-morning coaches fill the car park, and other groups will be standing at the best viewpoints with you.

Zelve feels completely different. It is calmer and wilder, and it rewards people who enjoy poking around. This was a working village cut into the cliff face, with homes, chapels, a mosque and dovecotes. Its people stayed on until the mid-20th century. Then erosion and falling rock made the place dangerous, and the village relocated to a new spot close by. Now you wander through the empty rooms over uneven ground. Choose shoes that grip, because the paths turn slippery after rain.

Zelve is where our guides show how people really lived inside the rock. A balloon flight or an ATV ride will not give you that side of Cappadocia.

Love Valley and the Avanos potters

Avanos lies on the Kızılırmak, whose name means "Red River". Local potters have shaped the red clay from that river since long ago. In the workshop a potter demonstrates the kick wheel, and normally one person from the group gets a turn at it. After that you are taken to the showroom.

To be straight with you, this stop is partly a demonstration and partly a sales pitch. Buying is entirely optional, and our guides never pressure anyone. If ceramics do not interest you, spend the half hour outdoors beside the river.

Lunch, included in your price, is at a restaurant along the way; you pay for drinks. The last stop after lunch is Love Valley, where tall smooth rock columns stand up from the valley floor. You stop for photos here rather than for a hike. For a walk through Rose Valley or down into Love Valley, keep a free afternoon for it, or look over them from above at sunset during our quad bike ride at sunset.

Does the red tour include the Göreme Open-Air Museum?

With many companies it does. With us it does not. Look at the large booking platforms and you will see most red tour plans include the Göreme Open-Air Museum, frequently together with Uçhisar Castle, and a few drop Zelve to make room for it. Our group day goes to Zelve, a cave village and not a monastery complex, and that keeps the tour at six hours.

What is the Göreme Open-Air Museum? A cluster of monastery churches carved from the rock, with painted interiors. In 1985 UNESCO made it part of a World Heritage listing, "Göreme National Park and the Rock Sites of Cappadocia". The Dark Church (Karanlık Kilise) has the best-preserved frescoes, and the ministry treats it as a separate site that needs a second ticket. If painted churches are what brought you here, you can choose between two sensible routes:

• Go independently. Göreme town centre is about 2 km away, close enough to walk from most hotels in town. According to the official site, muze.gov.tr, it opens daily from 08:00 to 17:45, and ticket sales stop at 17:15. That page does not give the foreign visitor ticket price, which changes through the year, so look it up on muze.gov.tr before your visit. Be there when it opens, because by late morning queues form at the small church doors.
• Book a private day. Our private highlights day that goes into the museum starts from $400 and lasts 6 to 8 hours, with your own van and a guide who goes inside with you. That tour does not include museum tickets or meals.

A lot of our guests join the red tour and then visit the Göreme museum by themselves the following morning. You spend less than on a private tour and still get the frescoes as well as Zelve.

Which is better, the red tour or the green tour?

One day: choose the red tour. Two days: do both. The red tour is about scenery, with fairy chimneys, rock villages and lookouts, all near Göreme. The green tour heads south to an underground city, the walk through Ihlara Valley and Selime Monastery, and the drives between stops are longer.

Below are our per-person starting prices as of October 2026. They change with the season, the hotel and the inclusions, so contact us for the current price on your travel date.

Families, older travellers and people with little time get the most from the red tour. Pick the green tour if the underground cities interest you and a longer drive is fine. Anyone who feels uneasy in cramped spaces will be happier on the red tour. For a closer side-by-side look at every day trip, see our guide to Göreme-based day tours.

Doing the red tour without a guide

It is possible if you have a car, or plenty of patience. The sites lie along the roads linking Zelve, Avanos, Çavuşin and Göreme, and a few are several kilometres from the next. In a hire car the route is simple to follow, and every stop has parking. Without a car you can mix walking with taxis and local minibuses, but that eats up most of the day and some viewpoints will get left out.

Going alone, you give up the commentary at Zelve and Paşabağ (signs there are few), the organised lunch and the transport. In return you set your own schedule, so you can reach Paşabağ before the coaches do. You will also buy each entrance ticket at the gate, at whatever the price is that day.

If your stay in the region is only a day or two, the group tour makes better use of them. With a week, a day behind the wheel makes good sense. Planning your own loop? Each valley is described on our Cappadocia sights page, and our regional travel guide explains how to get around.

Booking, cancellation and red tour packages from Istanbul

The majority of our guests travel from Istanbul. Two of the packages we sell for the region are planned with the green and red tours at their centre. The shorter, 2-day trip starts at $800 with one night in a hotel, and the 3-day trip starts at $1,050 with two nights. Each one covers return domestic flights, airport transfers, hotel breakfast, the two day tours including lunch, guiding, and museum entry on those tours. On both, the balloon flight is an optional extra at additional cost. The 2-day plan is packed; the 3-day plan leaves time for a balloon morning and an evening to yourself.

If you only want the day tour, book on the tour page or message us your hotel and travel dates. We send confirmation and your pickup time by WhatsApp or email. Cancel at least 7 days ahead and you pay nothing and get a full refund; cancel later than that and nothing is refunded. Every day tour we run, balloon flights included, is listed on our Cappadocia day tours page.

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