The Hike

Prepare yourselves…this might be a long one!

                I know that I haven’t written a post in quite a while now, and I honestly think it’s because I have been trying to decide how to put such an incredible period of about two weeks encompassing so many exciting occurrences into words.  I know that I haven’t even been here for two months yet, but I can easily say that the past few weeks have been the best ones yet.

                It all began on Tuesday October 11 when we received a text from Year Course telling us to check out the news of a possible deal for Gilad Shalit.  For anyone who doesn’t know, Gilad was an Israeli soldier in the tank unit.  He was in his tank at Kerem Shalom, a kibbutz near the border of Gaza. On June 25, 2006, Hamas militants traveled through underground tunnels into Israel and attacked Gilad’s tank, killing two soldiers and injuring Shalit.  The terrorists then captured Gilad and took him into captivity in an unknown location in Gaza where he had been held for over 5 years where Hamas did not allow any visits from Israel or the International Red Cross.  No signs of a possible deal had been published in the preceding days or even months, so this announcement came as a surprise to many, but a happy one.  The deal was eventually made to return Shalit to Israel for 1,027 Arab prisoners (many convicted murderers, sentenced to life in jail).  This may seem like a crazy price to pay for one soldier, but Israel promises each soldier that if he is captured, Israel will do anything in its power to retrieve the soldier.  Additionally, in a poll, over 70% of Israelis were in support of the exchange.

                The Shalit deal was incredible, and the prospect of the deal set the tone for the morning of Thursday, October 13, the first day of Sukkot, when I stuffed a backpack full of food, supplies, and a few clothes (which of course I never used) and left Arad on foot with two roommates (Aaron and Eitan) and two other friends (Sam and Evan).  Our plan was to hike to the Dead Sea and return the next day, but we had no idea what we were in for.  We had a map and we knew roughly where we were heading, and around 10:00 am, we started hiking.  The first five kilometers of our hike were parallel to highway 31 which crosses through Arad, and since we were not sure where the actual trail began, we walked along the narrow shoulder of the busy road until we reached the intersection where we would begin the desert part of our journey.  By this time we were getting hungry, so we took a break in a large cement pipe.  We saw that we could almost stand up inside the pipe and that it provided shade, so we pulled out a few cans of tuna and a loaf of bread and feasted while being swarmed by an army of flies. It was a slightly repulsive, but the break was definitely what we needed.  After we finished eating and relaxing, we got up and got back on our way.  There were signs as we entered the trail from the highway that urged all hikers to carry food for several days and at least five liters of water each…we decided we would be fine with two meals and at this point about 2-3 liters of water per person. 

                The next five and a half hours were amazing.  The hike was not too challenging as it was mostly downhill, and the countless mountains and sand dunes that we passed and traversed were breathtaking.  We took breaks every so often for water and occasionally a snack, but we made sure to maintain a solid pace so that we would make it to our destination at a decent hour.  Throughout the hike several jeeps and four wheelers had passed us going in the same direction.  Most cars either honked or waved, but there was one car that stopped and rolled down their windows to ask if everything was okay; the family made sure we had food and water and that we didn’t need anything.  Although this family did not have to go far out of their way to check up on us, I really feel like this was something that would not happen anywhere else beside Israel.  It was such a nice gesture and their sincerity truly made the five of us feel good.  Around 3:00, after we had not seen any cars in a little while, we were all drenched in sweat and the sun was still beating down on us, so we decided it would be a great idea to remove some (all) of our clothing.  Disclaimer: For anyone who thinks that this is weird, or has not heard of a group of heterosexual, teenage boys getting naked for a part of a desert hike, I can assure you that this is a rather common thing to do and is not weird at all.  Anyway, let’s just say that the breeze felt great!!  We walked naked for about a half hour until it started to get old and uncomfortable, but we did have a small scare.  At one point we heard a car coming up and over a hill from behind us.  Since we could not see the car, and we only started to hear it when it was quickly approaching, we didn’t have time to throw on our clothes.  We covered up as much as possible but it was clear that we had been hiking naked.  If this were just a regular looking family it would have been funny and maybe a little embarrassing, but as the car neared, I realized it was the same green pickup truck that all of the park rangers in Israel drive.  I started to freak out, assuring myself that we would receive a hefty fine, but when the car stopped next to us, it was just a family laughing hysterically. 

                A couple hours later, we arrived at a plateau overlooking the Dead Sea and Jordan from about a kilometer high.  The view was beautiful, and we were able to climb up even higher to look all throughout the desert from which we had come.  As we got to this point we noticed that the family who stopped to talk to us had set up a table and were relaxing with some other families.  They spotted us and called us over to offer us cake, cookies, and coffee.  We ate and talked to them for a while (in Hebrew, of course) before we thanked them profusely and began our descent down the mountain.  We got halfway down before the sun had completely set and we had to break out our flashlights.  When we reached the bottom, we had arrived at Ein Bokek, the touristy part of the Dead Sea with a strip of hotels and a little shopping center.  We found a huge field in the middle of the hotels where we lay down and cooked pasta with our portable stove.  It was hard to resist the temptation of buying a burger from the McDonalds 50 meters away from us, but I decided that McDonalds was not part of camping, so I stayed strong.  After dinner, when we were exhausted and ready to sleep, we heard music coming from a parking lot across the field.  We knew that it was Jewish music like at a bar mitzvah, but we could not tell what was going on, so we went over to check it out.  We saw a crowd of people watching about ten black hat (religious) men and boys dancing next to a sukkah while two were singing and playing the keyboard on a stage. We immediately dropped our bags and got into the action.  We danced for fifteen minutes and then walked over to ask one man who was not dancing what was going on.  He explained to us that every night of sukkot we celebrate by singing and dancing.  He invited my friend Eitan and me into his sukkah and gave us a snack and a couple shots of Arak so that we could say the blessings of eating, drinking, and being in the sukkah.  We also discovered that this man, Sinai (who lived in NYC before making aliyah years ago) is the head Rabbi of the Chabad house in Arad!  This was a crazy coincidence because Eitan and I had been looking for a Talmud class that we could take while in Arad since we aren’t really learning anything here, so we talked to our new friend with whom we are currently working something out.  After we had our share of dancing, we went to the beach and found an open place to lay out our sleeping bags and rest up for the next day.

Drinking coffee and eating cake and cookies overlooking the Dead Sea

                By 5:30 in the morning, the sun had risen and we were wide awake.  Though exhausted from only several hours of sleep, we quickly packed up and walked back to the beginning of the trail.  The first part of the hike this morning was the straight uphill which was quite a challenge even before considering the fact that we planned on waiting until we reached the plateau to eat breakfast, and we therefore had no energy off which to work.  Only a few minutes in, I was convinced that any second I would threw up.  I felt awful and I was questioning my ability to make it to the top.  I stopped for a couple minutes to eat an apple and drink a liter of water (1/3 of my supply for the day) and got back up to climb to the top.  When I finally got there, even though we had about 25 more kilometers lying ahead of us, I felt like I had accomplished so much.  We ate a quick breakfast of crackers and peanut butter and got back on the trail.  Today was mostly uphill, but it was generally not too steep of an incline, and we wanted to get home for shabbos, so we were determined not to stop.  We hiked quickly and efficiently, and made it to the highway by mid-afternoon.  We ate lunch once again in the cement tunnel and walked the rest of the way home.  I can’t completely describe the feeling of stepping into the shelter of our apartment after hiking 60 km (about 37 miles) in two days, but it was remarkable.  We had a very relaxing weekend and slept a lot to rest up for what was to come the next week!