7a.m.,Garry, Seggafreddo, Yoni, park a car at the end, drive other car to the start. As usual.
This time the start was atop Mount Tabor. The drive up is far scarier than anything we've had to walk so far on the trail. A road so narrow that it should be one way but is indeed two way, with tour buses loaded with Nigerian pilgrims and local Bedouin daredevils going in both directions on both "sides" of the road. Read "any available direction and side of the road". The narrowness wouldn't have been such a problem if the slope had been slightly more gradual and the countless switchbacks less sharp. Still, we drove up and down the mountain without mishap and with a feeling of driving the Alps right here in Israel. The Nigerian pilgrims were coming up the hill to visit the monastery at the top which has some holy significance related to a bloke that walked these same mountains that we were going to walk today, some 2000 years ago. In fact apparently there is a three or four day route of walks in the area that goes between Mt. Tabor, Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee that retrace Jesus' footsteps. The tourism ministry markets it to religious Christians that want to combine proximity to holy sites and being close to nature in the holy land. Another way for the Yids to take some cash off the Goys. I think its called "the Jesus route" but I'm going to call it shvil Jesus and I think today's leg of shvil yisrael coincides with shvil Jesus. I can't say for sure because we didn't meet another soul on the path today, not regular shvillers and not messianic Christians. It's getting late into the all-in-one-go shvill season, the many shvillers that we saw last time having already migrated south to the Negev for the winter.
I may have a photo of a shvil Jesus marking, I may not. The few photos that we did get of this leg were courtesy of the camera on Garry's cell-phone. I did bring a camera but it had been disabled by our house pixies. How many people know of this phenomena where in a house that has kids under, say, 15, and specifically twins in the 12 year old bracket, things just get magically broken or go missing? When a parent has the gall to ask if anyone has any idea how the memory stick happened not to be in the camera, you get a look that is a mixture of indignation and angelic innocence, accompanied by a smart-arse reply of "well why didn't you check before you took it?" The pixies did it. We have very active pixies in our house.Anyhow, instead of shvillers or Christians, we met up with Tracey on the top of Mt. Tabor, who was joining us for this leg. Those of you from Melbourne reading this blog probably know Tracey. Those that don't, she's an old friend of Garry, Yoni and I back from school days, when the boys would hang out with the girls two years younger. Over the years I've kept in contact with Tracey and when we got to the area that is close to where she lives I invited her along. Its nice having a guest walker. You know after over 30 years and probably close to 100 hours of walks through the Galilee and Umbria Yoni, Garry and I still don't run out of topics of conversation, but a guest walker is a welcome thing.
So the 4 of us set off down the familiar orange blue and white marked path, readying ourselves for a steep descent. This leg actually starts at the base of the mountain and would have us attempt an assault on the summit before descending the path that we were now on. I wanted to climb up from the bottom but the assault would have been on me had I tried to insist. In retrospect it was good that I was unanimously outvoted and we started at the top as by the time we got to the end of today's walk we were all pretty bushed.
We'd been walking a few minutes when something, call it a sixth sense or dumb luck, came to me to ask Yoni, the present Keeper of the Book, to check that we were descending the down path, and not the up path. Sure enough, if we'd continued on this path to the bottom it would have led us to the official start of the leg, the place that the shvil planners would have us climb up from, and nowhere near anywhere we wanted to be. Having wasted no more than 5 minutes and with Lady Luck smiling down on us, we turned around and found the correct down path on our way to Nazareth. One day our luck will run out on us and keys will be lost, or we'll end up miles in the wrong direction, but for the moment all was fine.
. The spectacular views from the top of Mt. Tabor in the direction of Nazareth make it appear as if its a long way to walk and that it entails a pretty steep ascent up a mountain to get there. That is, a steep descent from where we were now into a valley and then the ascent to Nazareth. Our collective eye left a mountain out of the route.Today we were to descend Mt. Tabor, climb Mt Dvorah, descend Mt Dvorah and then finish it all off with an ascent of Mt. Yonah which is in Nazareth. We didn't account for that extra mountain in between.
After about a half hour or so we got to the bottom. The descent was indeed steep but not difficult, and the walk along the narrow path through the leafy oak forest in the chill of the morning was one of the sections that makes this 960km shvil yisrael trek so worthwhile. We would have quite a few of these sections today. This path came out at a large bus parking area with the mandatory tourist souvenir shop and the cynic\lazy amongst us commented that we could have parked here and saved the kamikaze drive up and subsequent walk down. I think someone just as cynical replied along the lines that we could find a way to drive the entire route and thus save ourselves all together the need to sweat. Anyhow we continued on, resisting the temptation to but a tee-shirt that said something like "Jesus loves Nigerian pilgrims (and their money) at Mt. Tabor "
We've walked to this point about 120 km and for the first time we were walking through an Arab (Bedouin) village. We had walked through Tiberius Elite (city), Moshavat Kinneret (village), Kibbutz Kinneret (kibbutz) and now we were going through Shibli, a large Bedouin village. We exchanged numerous pleasantries and salutations for a pleasant festival (today was Id-el Adkha, the most important festival in the Muslim calendar. It's based on the same idea as the biblical demand that God made of Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on the alter, but the Muslims claim that God demanded Abraham to sacrifice Ismael. Judaism and Islam have so much in common that sometimes it seems ludicrous that there is so much enmity between the two) and continued on our way
After a kilometre or so we left Shibli, passed through olive groves on the outskirts of the village and soon entered the Beit Keshet forest which we would walk through for the next 6 or 7 km. It became pretty obvious pretty soon that we'd bottomed out and since we were walking across the valley and not along it we wouldn't have much flat time. Sure enough, it didn't take long till we we started to climb. This was, however, for a good distance, the best way to climb. In the shade of beautiful forest, on a perfect autumn day and the slope very gentle. Add to this a good wide comfortable walking track and magnificent views of mountains in front and behind and us in a green valley. If this idyllic picture of heaven on earth wasn't enough , then add the bright green of the grass that is growing everywhere after the early and heavy rains that we've had since our last walk. Amongst the grass, dainty little pink flowers. And white ones. And purple ones (The purple ones are crocus, the others I wouldn't have a clue). We even saw for the very first time some pheasants, or partridge, or some type of almost flightless bird that people with shotguns like to kill in the name of sport. (never understood that one. That's about as much sport as putting me in the ring with Mike Tyson). Now I'm going to add some cows who look as happy as us to see the green grass (wouldn't you, if you'd been eating mouldy hay for these past 6 months?) to the portrait and there you have it. A good 7 km stretch that reminds us why we're here on the shvil.
Well, it had to end sometime. And end it did. We came out of the forest and almost immediately the grade went up a good few notches. We'd gone from gentle slope to sharp incline very quickly and this was a sign that we had come out of the valley and were now ascending Mt. Devorah. Whilst we were walking the gentle slope bit we didn't feel its affects too much, mainly due to all the fore-mentioned peripherals distracting our attention. Now we were really having to use our muscles to get up the hill, the previous 7 km of uphill, as easy at it was, started to have its affect. So we huffed and puffed and forgot that a few minutes earlier we had been as serene as the cows we'd walked past. Instead we were cursing the very idea that on our day off we chose to sweat out here in the sun rather than sip macchiato and eat croissant at the local boulangerie, as is becoming of people of our age and status. What, me fickle?
I kid you not. Here on top of Mt. Dvorah, between Mt. Tabor and Nazareth. It was adorned with the royal emblem even. If there is a more surreal monument on the rest of shvil yisrael then I'm a hippo's uncle. Somehow we managed to pull ourselves away from the monument and found under a tree in the forest a very inviting picnic table, doubtless donated by the Queen herself. This was the perfect spot to eat our playlunch. Tracey was a good deal more relaxed than us since from previous experience we expected a parks inspector to jump out from behind a tree at any moment and demand payment for the right to sit at the table. Given the circumstances, next to Lizzy and Phil's 50th wedding commemorative monument, perhaps the inspector would have a cockney accent "'scuse me guv, gotta pay 2 quid to use that table" After a nice long break we headed off down the path, back towards Yoni's car, civilisation and life. There's no doubt that one of the primary reasons that we've embarked on this adventure is because it is a break from life. It had been almost two months since our last walk because sometimes life just gets in the way of our walks. Its safe to say that we all lead good lives, no complaints (except Yoni's usual complaints about how hard the uphills are. Today Tracey took his role as chief grump) but these walks once a month are a break from life that put so much into perspective. If more people did it there'd probably be a lot of unemployed therapists out there.
Enough pop psychology crap. We found ourselves descending very quickly through thick forest until we inevitably bottomed out. That is the nature of the relationship between shvil yisrael and mountains. You walk up a mountain just so you can walk down its other side and then climb another. And there's the rub. We got down to the bottom, looked west and up and saw in the distance the approximate area that we had to get to. And it wasn't close and it was above us. So off we trudged, slowly, along narrow back paths, through old olive fields and almost always on the up. Sometimes the path took a down direction, but this was in no way a relief. Au contrare. It meant that we'd lost precious elevation that we would only have to re-climb. During the earlier parts of today's walk there was lots of conversation. Now we all walked silently, just trying to get one foot after the other and not wanting to waste even a solitary kilojoule of energy on anything else. Occasionally we'd turn around or get to a point where we saw what we'd covered and at the same time saw the Tabor sitting alone in the middle of the Jezreel valley and it was stunning. I might consider using the word "breathtaking" but it was this path and the final push to the car that was taking our breaths at this point. But of course we did eventually get to Yoni's car, very tired and very satisfied. If we needed a jolt back into the real world then here it was. After walking for 5 hours through some of the most untouched and least walked areas that we'd seen, here was the car, parked in a small, unofficial garbage dump, where the butchers of the village of Ein Mahral threw unwanted carcasses. Lovely.Those that have bothered reading previous blogs will know that the meal at the end, usually humus, is as much a part of the day as panting up hills. Today's leg conveniently finishes right next to one of Israel's best Arab restaurants, named El Tanur . Not Abu Rami or Malachim, our beloved humus joints in our home area. Not the generic Abu Abu in any Arab town. This is fine Palestinian cuisine and we figured that today we deserved it. Hmpf. I mentioned earlier that today was Id-El Adkah, the Muslim holy day. The restaurant was closed! As we drove down through the town of Cana, everything was closed. Just as we were giving up all hope of finding somewhere to quell our appetite we found the one restaurant in the area open. The Abu Abu humus joint of Cana may not have been gourmet Palestinian cuisine but it just hit the spot all the same.
