Rose Valley Sunset

East of Göreme, we climbed through monastic cells and dark churches carved into outlandish formations of soft, pale stone.

Hidden from the sun since the 10th century, the domes had some of the richest blues I’d ever seen.

On the way, we had met a windswept Russian poking around the fairy chimneys, his orange beard and assembly of brown corduroy garments deeply matted with dust and clay. I’d seen him walking around town a few times already, talking animatedly to himself as he adjusted his grip on a plastic grocery bag. In conversation, however, he was warm and intelligent, praising the desert’s color palette with a wink as he pinched his own sandy clothing and spoke about the drive from Irkutsk. When I mentioned I was from California, he touched my hand, smiled, and began to sing softly—“All the leaves are brown / and the sky is gray…”—as he turned and walked back into the valley.

There were rumors of a hilltop where young travelers congregated at dusk, so we followed the highway north out of town, cutting through dusty roadside farms and infertile orchards as ATV tours roared past, led by confident young men who balanced on the handlebars and flashed lurid smiles at their convoys of Central Asian tourists. A jeep spun haphazard doughnuts in a nearby field, flanked by two German Shepherds who ran and snapped at the wheels.

At the base of one of the larger mountains, we followed a droning noise deep into a tunnel, where we discovered an elaborate generator system. Thickly insulated extension cords trailed up a slope, and the stone face opened to reveal a patio looking out over Rose Valley—a complete home, with mismatched materials jackhammered into the rock and cleverly hidden from the highway. Farther along the path, we followed the sound of throbbing, trance-like music across a dry creekbed and pushed up through chalky white soil to a low, folded ridgeline, streaked with lines of yellow sediment.

By now, all the ATV tours had converged on the hill and there were dozens of people milling around, dancing, watching the sunset. At the end of a long, gentle slope, a couple of windswept Kazakhs leaned serenely against their white Land Rover, which was coated in Chinese decals with a massive WeChat QR code on the door. Speakers trailing out the back blasted Europop as groups of Turks hawked a weak mulled wine and styrofoam cups of warm salted corn.

A cry rose up as the sun fell below the horizon. We made our way up to the peak and balanced on the large rock at its edge, leaning out over the desert to watch the dry air swell with pinks and reds unknown in Karaköy. A compact, well-groomed American named Ken offered to take our picture. He was a data scientist who had graduated from Irvine in the 80s and was now living in a rental car, building apps as he roamed from Berlin to Istanbul. After chatting about LA, Ken offered us a ride to the underground cities of Derinkuyu and Kaymakli the next day and then drove us back to our small room, where we ate our second Sichuanese meal of the day and fell asleep beneath the jagged hole in the ceiling.