Cappadoica crowns its unique beauty with wildness of Yılkı Horses. It is really a once in a life experience for every horse lover and especially for equine photographers.
Beside its unique rock formations, colourful morning balloons and all magestic spirit Cappadocia is a rich area for all kind of equine activities. For long years, there have been horse riding events organised and contributed by many various horse farms. Even in the history Cappadocia always referred with horses. The word of Cappadocia means the land of beautiful horses in Persian language. So Cappadocia and horses are as close as two coats of paint.
For riders, Cappadocia is a perfect land with its long and many valleys with special rock formations and fairy chimneys. Today many horse farm offers various horse riding routes in Cappadocia both for experienced and nonexperienced riders. You can find for an hour riding tour or an 3 days riding tour with camping in Cappadocia.
All of these are very good reasons to start to organize a Cappadocia trip for yourself. However it is not finished yet. The bonus of Cappadocia for every horse lover is the wild and semiwild horses! There are more than 300 wild horses very close to Cappadocia. These horses are Anatolian horses in breed.
Before technology, the villagers and farmers were in need to have horses to use in their daily life. However after agriculture technology developed and the machines appear to use in farming, people didn’t need horses anymore. And most of the villagers release their horses to live in free. (That’s why in Turkish they get that ‘Yılkı horses’ name, which means released tamed animals to the nature.) The reed land is a very proper environment for these kind of horses. They could live in the green and water land freely. As we can imagine, the new foals never seen or pet by a human, so they started to being wild. After decades, we can easily call them wild. Because they weren’t get close to you, they never touched by a human being and they were living without any interference.
Until, they discovered by photographers! Today, everyday many photographers, wedding photographers and horse lovers visit them for almost 7 years. That’s why they, again, started to get familiar with people. And that’s why we started to call them semi-wild instead of wild. They still wild, but they don’t escape from us anymore.
Today there is a man take care of them and gather them together for photographers. This is a rare event you can find on the world. Because there are more than 300 horses and you can go very close to them with car.
For equine photographers this place offers an amazing view with a former volcano on the background. In summer the horses create a huge dust cloud whle they are running. To have that view during sunset light is an opportunity to create sihouttes in dust with golden light.
During spring the reed land have more water and horses are running in the water. Green field and running horses in the water has amazing views to photograph.
And during the winter, if there is snow, it looks crazy with pure white land and hundreds of horses on them.
Very shortly, Cappadoica crowns its unique beauty with wildness of Yılkı Horses. It is really a once in a life experience for every horse lover and especially for equine photographers.
I would love to meet different photographers from all over the world and show you the beauty of Cappadocia and its horses.
All my best!
Ferda