A town you drive through, not to
Aksaray sits about 90 minutes south-west of Göreme, on the flat agricultural plain between the volcanic cone of Hasan Dağı and the edge of the Ihlara canyon. It’s a working provincial capital of a few hundred thousand people, with the usual mix of apartment blocks, tea houses, a covered market and traffic roundabouts. None of that is a criticism — it’s simply not what this guide is about. Aksaray has no cave hotels, no fairy chimneys, no open-air museum, and nothing that would justify a special trip on its own terms. Put it next to Göreme or Ürgüp and there’s no contest.
What Aksaray does have is location. It’s the last town of any size before the road drops into Ihlara Valley, and it sits within easy reach of the Sultanhanı caravanserai and the vast, shallow expanse of Tuz Gölü, the salt lake. On a day trip built around any of those three, Aksaray is where you refuel the car, grab lunch, use a cash machine, or wait out a tour transfer. Treat it as infrastructure rather than a sight, and it does its job well.
This page is written for that purpose: to explain honestly what Aksaray is for, how it fits into a day trip from Göreme, and where the real attractions in this southern part of Cappadocia actually are.
Getting from Göreme to Aksaray
The direct drive from Göreme to Aksaray takes around 1 h 30 on the main road via Nevşehir, mostly open plain with Hasan Dağı visible to the south for much of the way. It’s a straightforward drive if you’re renting a car — see the general notes on driving in Cappadocia for road conditions and fuel stops.
Without a car, almost nobody goes to Aksaray as a destination in itself. The practical way to see this area is a Green Tour-style day trip booked in Göreme, which routes through the region without leaving you stranded in Aksaray between connections. A private guided option, such as the guided full-day tour of the underground cities and Ihlara Valley with lunch included, covers this ground with transport and an English-speaking guide, which matters more here than in the valleys near Göreme because distances are longer and public dolmuş connections thin out south of Nevşehir.
| Route from Göreme | Drive time | What it’s for |
|---|---|---|
| Göreme → Aksaray direct | ~1 h 30 | Fuel, lunch, supplies before Ihlara or Tuz Gölü |
| Göreme → Ihlara Valley (via Aksaray or Selime) | ~1 h 15–1 h 20 | The canyon walk itself |
| Göreme → Sultanhanı | ~2 h | The caravanserai, often combined with Konya |
| Göreme → Tuz Gölü | ~1 h 30 | The salt lake, mainly a photo stop |
| Göreme → Aksaray & Güzelyurt combined | ~1 h 30 + local driving | A quieter alternative pairing, see the Aksaray and Güzelyurt day trip guide |
What’s actually in Aksaray
If you do stop in the town centre, there’s a citadel mound, a couple of Seljuk-era mosques, and an ordinary bazaar street. None of it is badly maintained, and none of it is worth rearranging a day trip around. The more useful facts are practical: Aksaray has supermarkets, pharmacies, fuel stations on the ring road, and a hospital, which is more than you’ll find at Ihlara or out at the salt lake. If something goes wrong with the car, or you need supplies before a long stretch of open plain, this is the town where you sort it out.
Being honest about this matters, because some tour itineraries and blog posts inflate Aksaray’s appeal to pad out a day’s programme. It doesn’t need padding — the destinations around it carry the day on their own.
The real reason to come this way: Ihlara Valley
Ihlara Valley is a 14-kilometre canyon cut by the Melendiz river, with roughly 4 kilometres of it walkable between the main entrance stairway — close to 380 steps down from the rim — and the hamlet of Belisırma. Around a hundred rock-cut churches with surviving frescoes line the route, though only a handful are easy to spot without a guide pointing them out. Budget half a day for the visit once transport is included, and see the Ihlara Valley hike guide for the full walk breakdown.
At the downstream end, Selime has a monastery cut into the cliff face, often called the “cathedral” for its scale, and it’s usually the last stop before heading back towards Aksaray or on to Güzelyurt, a quieter valley town with its own rock-cut churches and noticeably fewer visitors than Ihlara itself.
This is the part of the region that actually earns a day trip. Aksaray is simply the town you pass through, or occasionally stop in, on the way there and back.
Sultanhanı: an easy detour, not a separate day
The Sultanhanı caravanserai, a Seljuk trading inn completed in 1229 and the largest of its kind in Turkey, sits on the road between Aksaray and Konya, roughly 35–40 minutes past Aksaray. It’s a substantial stone building with a covered hall and an open courtyard, worth 30–45 minutes, and it slots naturally onto the end of an Ihlara day trip if you’re not also driving on to Konya itself. See the Sultanhanı caravanserai day-trip guide for how it pairs with Ihlara without over-extending the day.
Don’t try to add Konya to the same day. Konya is a further hour beyond Sultanhanı, and combining Ihlara, Sultanhanı and Konya’s Mevlâna Museum in one day from Göreme means over four hours of driving on top of the sightseeing, most of it in the dark on the return leg.
Tuz Gölü: a photo stop, honestly labelled
Tuz Gölü, the great salt lake, sits about 1 h 30 from Göreme and roughly 45 minutes north-west of Aksaray. It’s vast and startlingly white in summer when the surface dries out, and shallow enough in places that visitors walk out onto the crust for photographs. There isn’t much more to the visit than that — no walking trail, no facilities beyond a few roadside stalls, and the appeal fades fast outside the hour or so it takes for photos and the walk back to the car. Treat it as a detour bolted onto an Ihlara day, not a destination that deserves its own day. The Tuz Gölü day-trip guide covers timing this properly.
A tour that includes it alongside the underground cities and Ihlara Valley, such as the green tour covering the underground city, Ihlara canyon and a stop at the salt lake, gives a sense of how operators actually sequence these stops — usually with the lake added on to a longer loop rather than visited alone.
Where Aksaray fits in a day trip
A realistic day built around this part of the region, starting and ending in Göreme, runs something like this: an early departure, a stop at one of the underground cities near Derinkuyu or Kaymaklı, a pass through or near Aksaray for lunch and fuel, the Ihlara Valley walk in the early-to-mid afternoon when the canyon offers shade, and then either Sultanhanı or Tuz Gölü on the way back, not both. That’s a full day, usually ten to eleven hours door to door once walking and stops are counted.
A packaged option that covers most of this ground is the multi-activity package pairing a cave hotel stay with a hot air balloon flight, an ATV outing and the Ihlara Valley visit, useful if you’d rather have transport, guiding and the balloon flight bundled together than arrange each piece separately. A more traditional option, the standard Green Tour taking in Derinkuyu, Ihlara Valley and Selime in a single day, follows roughly the same route on a shared coach with a fixed group.
If underground history interests you more than the canyon walk, the region also has a genuinely obscure option: an Aksaray-based tour to the Tatlarin underground city and a hilltop church, which sees a fraction of the visitors that Derinkuyu or Kaymaklı do. It’s not a replacement for the big underground cities described in the Derinkuyu or Kaymaklı comparison guide, but it’s a genuine option for anyone basing a day around Aksaray specifically rather than passing through.
For a wider view of what does and doesn’t belong in a single day from Göreme, the what is not a day trip from Cappadocia guide is worth reading before you plan — it rules out the destinations agencies sometimes stretch the truth on.
Practical basics for the Aksaray leg
Turkey uses the Turkish lira (TRY, ₺). Cards are accepted at fuel stations, supermarkets and most restaurants in Aksaray itself; carry some cash for the roadside stalls near Tuz Gölü and the small cafés around the Ihlara entrance, where card machines are less reliable. Prices swing with the lira’s exchange rate, so treat any figure here as a rough guide rather than a fixed number — expect somewhere in the region of 35–70 EUR per person for fuel share, lunch, and entry tickets to Ihlara Valley and Sultanhanı combined, more if a guided tour is booked instead of self-driving.
Fuel stations are frequent along the main road through Aksaray but genuinely scarce once you’re out towards Tuz Gölü or deep into the Ihlara side roads, so fill up in town rather than assuming you’ll find another station further on. The same applies to water: buy a couple of bottles per person before leaving Aksaray, since the shade at Ihlara Valley is limited to the canyon floor itself and there’s none at all out on the salt flat.
Timing matters more here than around Göreme. The Ihlara stairway and the walk to Belisırma are best done in the morning or mid-afternoon to avoid both the midday heat on the exposed sections and the worst of the tour-bus crush, which tends to cluster around late morning. If Tuz Gölü is on the plan, late afternoon gives softer light for photographs, but it also means driving the last stretch back to Göreme after dark — acceptable on the main roads, worth avoiding on the smaller village lanes.
Aksaray day-trip questions answered
Is Aksaray worth a special trip from Göreme?
No. Aksaray town has no sight that competes with what’s a short drive further on. It’s worth passing through only because Ihlara Valley, Sultanhanı and Tuz Gölü all sit near it.
How far is Aksaray from Göreme?
About 1 h 30 by car on the direct road, longer if you route via Uçhisar or stop at Selime and Belisırma along the way.
Can I visit Ihlara Valley without going into Aksaray town?
Yes. The main entrance stairway and the Belisırma end of the walk both sit off the highway well outside the town centre, so many day trips never actually enter Aksaray itself.
Is Aksaray safe to drive through and park in?
Yes, it’s an ordinary provincial town with no particular safety concerns. The practical issue is dull streets and paid parking, not risk.
What’s the point of stopping in Aksaray if there’s nothing to see?
Fuel, food, a cash machine and a supermarket. It’s the last sizeable town before the Ihlara canyon and Tuz Gölü, both of which have limited services.
Should I combine Aksaray with Sultanhanı or Tuz Gölü in one day?
Pick one, not both, if Ihlara Valley is also on the plan. Ihlara alone takes half a day with the walk; adding either Sultanhanı or Tuz Gölü is realistic, adding both makes for a rushed day.
Is there anywhere to stay overnight in Aksaray?
There are ordinary town hotels, but nothing resembling the cave hotels of Göreme or Ürgüp. Almost no one bases a Cappadocia stay here, and there’s no reason to when Göreme is 90 minutes away.
