ABSTRACT
Since the time that Whiting journeyed to Cappadocia the region has most definitely become marked out as a tourist place, so that now over half a million tourists visit yearly.1 Entering the Göreme valley for the first time, visitors today also appear awe-struck by the ‘moonscape’ of valleys and fairy chimneys stretching out in front of them. Unlike Whiting, however, these contemporary visitors inevitably carry in their imaginations ideas and images of the Cappadocia region taken from guidebooks, magazines and television, tourism brochures and, increasingly today, from the Internet. What Whiting probably did not realise is the part that his writings, among other early travel articles, would play in the forming of these images that today inspire so many tourists to visit Cappadocia and that have culminated in the production of the region as a ‘tourist place’.
