Kayseri is a city completely surrounded by mountains. Luckily for me, a mountain lover! The majestic Mount Erciyes is just 25 km away, and serves as a popular skiing resort in the winter. I am hopefully going to further explore this later on, and write a report on that! Anyway, there are also less demanding, but similarly rewarding mountains which you can choose for a hike. 
From whichever direction you arrive to IYACA, you will probably notice the two peaks overlooking the Talas municipality (unless it is very, very foggy). This is the Ali Mountain, or Ali Dağı as they say in Turkish. About 2000 metres high and of volcanic origin. It is a popular place for weekend trips, picnics, barbecue, and also a popular paragliding spot (even World Cup tournaments took place here in 2004 and 2007). I also found on the internet that Ali Dağı is a record site: the longest flight from this take off was 157 km made by Yurdaer Etike in 2008 and also in 2010 a Turkish pilot Durali Karaca made an altitude record of 4900 m there.
