Kaymakli sits in the soft volcanic country of Cappadocia, about eleven kilometres from Derinkuyu and eighteen from Nevşehir, and from the road you would never guess what is under your wheels. The village is ordinary: flat-roofed houses, tractors, a few carpet shops. The wonder is below, a city dug downward into tuff, the pale rock that ash from ancient volcanoes pressed into something a person can cut with a hand tool and that hardens with air.
Go in and the scale gets to you in odd ways. Corridors are low enough to make a rider in boots and a jacket walk bent over. Round stone doors, shaped like millstones, can be rolled across a passage from inside and could not be opened from outside. There are wells, ventilation shafts that run down through the levels, stables, storerooms and kitchens whose ceilings are still blackened. Around eight levels are said to exist, and only the upper ones are shown to visitors. Who dug it first is argued over; the habit of hiding underground here goes back many centuries, and Byzantine Christians certainly used these refuges when raiders came through the plateau. Stories of a tunnel linking Kaymakli to Derinkuyu get told with confidence, though nobody has proved them.
The riding around it is gentle, wide and quick on the main roads, with rock chimneys and pigeon-hole cliffs appearing in the fields. Early morning light on the tuff is the best of the day, and tour coaches arrive mid-morning, so you will be glad to be first in the tunnels. Summer on the plateau is hot and dry, spring has green wheat and poppies, and winter can bring real snow at this height, so check the forecast before you set off for the day.
For practicalities, Derinkuyu is a proper town of over twelve thousand people and has fuel and plenty of food, and Nevşehir is bigger still. Between the two there are tea gardens where a glass of çay costs very little. Take a light layer into the underground city, because it stays cool and damp while you sweat outside, and bring a small torch if you want to peer into side passages that the lighting skips.