Istanbul to Nevşehır, Capadokya

Sometimes when you think something is going to be simple, it’s just not.
I was staying in Nevşehır, but flying into Kayseri airport. Kayseri and Nevşehır are less than an hour from each other so it didn’t seem too hard.
Firstly the shuffle from my hotel in Istanbul to the airport took me to the wrong terminal. That wasn’t too much of a problem as they are walking distance apart. It took me two times stopping at an information desk though to understand the directions. 

The flight to Kayseri was quite pleasant as I had an empty seat between myself and the lady sitting on the aisle. Great! When I got to Kayseri airport there were some car hire desks and not much more. I was standing out on the pavement wondering what to do so I walked up to a man next to a bus and started to say ‘Do you know a bus…’ when he interrupted with ‘no’. ‘So you don’t know a bus?’ ‘No’. ‘That’s funny,’ I thought ‘you are standing next to one’. Next I walked up to the taxis and was told TL100 to get to Nevşehır. That was out of the question. My only alternative was a local bus to Kayseri Otogar (bus station) and then another bus to Nevşehır. That sounded like a nice adventure and much cheaper. So I jumped on the bus.
I arrived at Kayseri Otogar, which was rather large and was ushered inside to a ‘friend’ to buy a ticket. Then I was shown the bus stop. I have noticed less people speak English here in Capadokya and are more shy than in Istanbul. They will, however, go the extra yard to try to help you. So the bus arrived and I jumped on and found a nice seat.
After a while the bus was getting ready to go and a lot of people were getting on at the last minute. I managed to throw the bus into confusion and it seemed to have a domino effect. I hadn’t realised that there were allocated seats and I was sitting in someone’s seat. There was a lot of muttering and talking in Turkish, maybe they were saying ‘dumb tourists’. It doesn’t matter anyway because they weren’t mean about it. Someone tried to help me find my seat. I ended up sitting next to a young lady with a headscarf who I imagined was a student. These buses were really good. They had a screen in the back of the seat like a plane and a lovely young man went up and down the aisle handing out food and drink. How nice!
As we were driving along we were making stops and people were getting off but I had no idea where I was. People were being dropped off on the side of the road. I started to see signs saying Nevşehır and after a few more stops became nervous that I would miss my stop. I turned to the girl next to me and said ‘Nevşehır?’ I could see panic creep into her eyes but she managed to do a ‘stay’ gesture with her hand. I repeated this question a couple of times at each stop and at one point she got up and fetched the young food and drink man who did the same gesture. May be they were just saying ‘Chill out’. I was enjoying this. I loved being the only one on the bus who didn’t speak Turkish.
Eventually we arrived at the Nevşehır otogar which was well out of town. I said thank you and alighted the bus. I asked for a taxi and was directed to an area outside but not before experiencing a sales pitch for tours of Capadokya.
I finally arrived at my hotel and was glad to check in. I think I paid TL10 for the first bus, TL15 for the second and TL10 for the taxi. It was much cheaper than taking a taxi the whole way and I got to see how the locals travel between towns.