Pamukkale - the Cotton Castle of Turkey

Pamukkale translates literally to ‘cotton castle’ and was our next stop in our Turkey travels. We jumped on a bus and it took us about three long hours to get there. Pamukkale is a natural site in Turkey that is full of hot springs and travertines, which are basically beautiful naturally created terraces that form the basis for hot water springs. The mountain area is covered in white carbonate minerals, which look like clouds or cotton!

When we first entered the area we could see Pamukkale spread out before us – it actually looked like a snowy mountain! When you get to the section where the travertines have begun to form you have to take your shoes off and there is water flowing the whole way down the side of the mountain slope! It was really cool and looks really slippery but was actually really grippy. The whole side of the mountain is bright white and looks like you’re walking through solid clouds = amazing!

Playing amongst the cotton castle!

We felt like we were on another planet, I have never experienced anything like this in my life – the beautiful blue hot springs were just gorgeous! The whole bottom of the pools is actually clay like, it’s supposed to be good for your skin and lots of people were covering themselves in it!

We took our time making our way up to the top of Pamukkale, I pretty much walked through every small pool I could – the water was pretty warm! As you can see Michael wasted no time in getting his gear off and attempting to cool off in the water. 

We got to the top which was almost empty, there were some big parks so we walked around them and lay down in the shade of a while because the heat was pretty unbearable! We had an amazing view of the travertines and the surrounding towns; there were also lots of paragliders passing above us!

Next it was time for a swim! We walked about half way down the mountain (for some reason the top half was packed) and found an almost empty pool, which we ended up having all to ourselves. It was a really weird swimming in the warm pools while sitting in white clay!

This might look refreshing but the water in these springs ranges from 35 – 100 degrees!

Pamukkale is a World Heritage site and really popular place to visit in Turkey, when we were there, despite it being 38 degrees it was packed with people, although you can't really tell from our photos as everyone seemed to run away from our pool once we got in (fine by me!)

We spent about an hour just chilling in the hot springs before it got unbearable hot! Hot water on a 38 degree day doesn't do much for cooling you down!

Once again we headed to top the and to a different side of the park - again there was barely anybody here but the view was amazing so I can't really understand why nobody chooses to ventre like 200m out of the way to check it out!

If anyone in interested in how the travertines of Pamukkale are actually formed I managed to paraphrase this information from the brochure: the water coming out of the ground at this site includes calcium hydrocarbonate, which mixes with the oxygen in the air the carbon dioxide and carbonmonoxide escape and the remaining calcium carbonate settles and forms the travertine! That’s about as simple as it can get and I still don’t fully understand it haha!

We had an amazing day in Pamukkale, it is an unique and amazing place that is like nowhere else on earth!