Coverage / Israel
Israel
Western Asia
A small country on the eastern Mediterranean that packs an unusual range of landscapes and experiences into a few hours' drive. The coral reefs of the Red Sea at Eilat sit at its southern tip, the Dead Sea and the fortress of Masada lie in the Judean Desert, and the Ramon Crater opens across the Negev. Jerusalem holds world-class museums and four thousand years of history, Tel Aviv is a Mediterranean beach and food city, and the green Galilee in the north draws walkers, cyclists and one of the planet's great bird migrations through the Hula Valley.
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What you can do in Israel
Trekking / Hiking
- MasadaJan Feb Mar Apr Oct Nov DecMasada is the great set-piece walk of the Judean Desert, and it pairs with the springs of Ein Gedi to make one of the finest desert hiking days in the country. The classic route climbs the Snake Path, a switchbacking trail up the eastern face of the mesa in around 45 minutes, timed to reach the summit as the sun lifts over the mountains of Jordan and floods the Dead Sea below. On top spread the ruins of Herod's first-century palace-fortress, a UNESCO World Heritage site, where a Roman siege ended the Great Revolt in 73 CE and the earthworks of the besieging legion still ring the rock. A short drive north, the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve cuts green canyons of waterfalls and pools into the cliffs, where ibex and rock hyrax come down to drink and trails run from a short family loop to a demanding day. Add a float in the mineral-heavy Dead Sea, the lowest point of dry land on Earth, and you have desert, history and water in a single walk.
- Mitzpe RamonJan Feb Mar Apr Oct Nov DecMakhtesh Ramon is the largest erosion crater on Earth, a 40-kilometre gash in the Negev highlands that is not a meteor or volcanic crater at all but a landform found almost only in this desert, carved as water stripped away a soft core and left a steep-walled amphitheatre of coloured rock. Trails drop from the rim town of Mitzpe Ramon into a floor of rainbow sandstone, volcanic dikes, ammonite fossils and the strange prisms of the Carpentry, and the Israel National Trail threads the length of it. Nubian ibex pick along the cliffs, and the crater sits inside one of the darkest reserves in the region, so a night in the makhtesh brings a sky thick with stars. This is desert walking at its most elemental, from a two-hour rim-to-floor descent to multi-day treks that link the crater to the springs of Ein Avdat and the Nabataean ruins along the ancient Incense Route. Spring brings brief desert blooms, and the light at dawn and dusk turns the walls gold and rust.
Best months at a glance
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