OUR EUROPEAN ODYSSEY pt 27
The menacing shadow over our motorhome got bigger and bigger, like an unidentified spaceship hovering threateningly above. I held my breath. “Look!” said my five-year-old daughter Dorothy, excitedly. She was bundled in a duvet against the chill of the dawn air, and pointed at the imposing shape looming over the horizon.
Rising up out of a deep canyon was a hot air balloon, grand and majestic and oddly out of place, because it was apparently coming out of the ground.
The basket came into view and in it, we could soon see a slightly worried-looking couple, who were taking a tour of Cappadocia’s famed fairy chimneys (aka hoodoo landforms).
Marcus and I were rather worried, too, because the balloon was so close to our vehicle, we might have touched it with our outstretched hands.
The smiling pilot, however, was unconcerned, waving at us cheerily before pumping the gas several times, making the balloon rise inches above our motorhome before floating across the stunning sandstone landscape.
We were in the semi-arid region in central Turkey, renowned for its topography and those strange columns known as fairy chimneys. We were wild camping at one of the few
