look what I did this morning!

Colin and I be were up early this morning, at 5am for a 5.45 pickup along with 10 others of our group of 37. We drove for about 20 minutes in the pre-dawn darkness including over some extremely bumpy tracks. Suddenly enormous shapes started looming up to either side of us.
Still we kept going until at last we pulled up beside what was to be our balloon. It was already inflated and anchored to the van and trailer which had brought it there. We piled out of our minibuses and the excitedly nervous chatter stilled. We were helped into the oblong basket which was divided into 5 sections - one in the centre which held the pilot and two to either side of him. I have to confess to making rather a meal of the clambering in but I got there eventually. Each section held 5 people. Once all were in we had a brief safety briefing including landing position and then with no fuss and as gently as thistledown blowing in the wind we were off the ground. It was still pre sunrise so the light was reduced, but everything was so calm. Our balloon was one of the first of the approximately 150 which went up. The balloons lit up from time to time with the burst of the flares and that was the only sound. It felt like a quite magical world and the extraordinary landscape below looked like something from Lord of the Rings.
The balloons moved amongst each other, and changed levels coming quite close together at times. The sun came up behind the mountain to the east and we rose higher, to over 1200metres and drifted across the extraordinary landscape of Cappadocia.
I don't really have the words, but it really was quite, quite magical. After just under an hour we started to descend, we could hear the sound of the tiny vehicles on the tracks below us as each truck and trailer followed its balloon to try to work out where it was going to land.
The next thing we knew, we were being asked to hold the landing handles and again as gentle as you like, just like that, we were down, no bouncing on the ground as I'd imagined. No, the basket landed squarely right on top of the trailer behind the truck which transported the balloon and basket (extra is of a nearby landing). Such precision! We finished our adventures with a glass of alcohol free fizz and our certificates and headed for our hotel. Full of awe and excitement and wonder.
It wasn't the cheapest activity we've taken part in, but it was quite, quite magical.