Recently, I
had the opportunity to visit the Ramon Crater, which is basically a giant hole
in the middle of the desert. I'm not going to talk too much about it. It's primarily a cool landscape in the desert and a prime place to hike, so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. Honestly it's one hundred percent in the middle of nowhere but I'm still a big fan. It's pretty desolate, but in a good way, although as a result, most of the people living out there are very poor, because it's such an underdeveloped area and it doesn't have much happening besides tourism. As Isa says, it's stark. And she's right. All the Israelis seem to like the green parts of the country better, but I grew up on a lake so I came out here for something new.
The Ramon Crater was definitely striking. It's really dry, even in the winter (when all it seems to do in Tel Aviv is rain), although it was a little chilly and windy and the visibility was a little cloudy due to the dust in the air. Definitely carry a ton of water with you. You don't realize how dry it is in this country until you're super thirsty. It's also unique because it was created by the process of natural erosion and not by an asteroid.
I was
thinking the other day while hiking there, how Moses led the Israelites through
the desert for forty years. I was tired
after a couple hours and I had a couple giant bottles of water, other people
and a cell phone equipped with 3G.
Later in
the day, when I was using Whatsapp with my friends back home, one asked how
there was service in the desert. My
response was that when half your country is desert, you put up cell
towers. It’s also a tiny nation and
Israel has the infrastructure and finances to do so. But, I can definitely see how in other, less
developed nations, you’d be pretty unsupported out in the desert.
It’s
interesting how much travel has changed.
If you think about it, it’s existed forever, since before Moses led the
Israelites out of Egypt. But, when the
first humans were moving around following their food sources, it wasn’t really
about having a good time around the world, going for long runs along the beach,
meeting new people of different cultures, trying different recipes/foods,
picking up a few words of a new language and spreading your own, having an
adventure…
It was all
about survival. Survival… Going
somewhere where you could find food and water to nourish you, shelter to
protect you from outside dangers… A place where you wouldn’t be imprisoned,
killed or mistreated… Or a place where you could expand your empire into and
garner all the natural resources available to you… A conquest.
Today we
hop airplanes on a daily basis… for work, family, adventures… to learn a new
language, get some good pictures, meet someone new… To have fun, to explore,
for a change of pace. Sure, sometimes we
get frustrated, but later, we’ll probably turn it around and say that getting
lost in that random city was the best experience of our lives because we learned
more about ourselves than we ever imagined…
I wouldn’t
disagree… We travel to learn how to fail and to learn how to succeed… Or because we want to… To try new foods, dig
into history, culture, religion, landscapes… to go to war… to escape it… to
help parts of the world fraught with conflict and disrepair… To escape it… and
so on…
But, it
wasn’t always like that.
When did it
become for fun?
About
snapping photos on the beach with your friends, riding a horse, racing
alongside runners from all over the world, soaking up history, seeing sights
that have been rebuilt just for tourists, gazing across the ocean into
countries like Egypt that you are unable to enter?
But, move
back a few paragraphs and understand that it’s not always fun, it’s not always
an adventure. Sometimes it’s a sense of
duty. Sometimes it’s a sense of fear.
Why do you
get on that airplane or the ship? Why do
we study abroad? When did our lives
become a melting pot of friendships with people from all over the world? When did it become so easy and affordable to
call your parents back home?
You don’t
have to wait for letters anymore or wait in line to use a payphone to talk to
your mom and dad.
The biggest
obstacle now is the time zone (and that’s not going anywhere, but it’s a much
smaller obstacle than what people faced a thousand, or even thirty years
ago).
That said,
I have a strange habit of expecting to get emails or Whatsapp messages from
people back in the U.S. in the mornings.
But, then I look at the clock and realize that it’s 10:48 AM so at home,
it’s 3:48 AM and no one’s awake… When I first got here, I made fun of my mom when I called her at 8 PM
and she asked how work was, assuming I was there. But, it’s really easy to get caught up in
your own time zone when it’s super sunny out and completely forget that it’s
pitch black out on the other side of the world.
Because the
company who sold me my Israeli SIM card has a business plan primarily focused
on the thousands of American students who take gap years and go on birthright
and internship programs every year, they offer an American number attached to
your line for $10 USD a month and then you can call your friends and family
back home for free. I initially wasn’t
planning on doing that (I mean that’s why we have Skype and Whatsapp) but it’s
honestly been incredibly convenient and has made it really easy for me to make
any calls I need.
Subsequently,
technology has opened an endless realm of opportunities for travellers. From Google Translate to Moovit and Waze
(apps for navigating) to the high speed train from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (that
will hopefully be completed in the next decade; just kidding, make that 2 years), we have so many means available to us when in the past, we would shave been forced to rely on word of mouth and a paper map (that said, I spend a surprising amount of time with those).
Technology
has also opened up an endless realm of opportunities for the world.
This past
weekend at Caesarea, I was looking out at the arena where the Romans would
gather to watch deadly chariot races or make a day of skinning “rebels”
alive. Then, our guide led us to a well,
where the Romans would toss the name of someone they disliked in hopes that
the action would send them to hell and perform other spells.
I can’t say
that humanity has changed completely since those times, that violence doesn’t
exist and the age-old questions of whose land is whose or what religion is the
correct one, have faded.
But, we’ve
definitely strived to become more civilized and maybe in a thousand years,
someone will look back and call us uncivilized.
We look back to the past to understand, maybe we’ve softened, but life
expectancy has risen with that realization.
Would we be able to survive in the desert for forty years if we were to
try right now? Wouldn’t someone find us
first, come to save us? Wouldn’t we want
them to as the sun beats down and it hasn’t rained for days or we are powerless
to stop the wind?
I’m pretty
sure that Moses and his people were out there in the desert even before the Ramon Crater was
even created. If it had been there, what would they have said? "Let's take some selfies?" Or "Let's climb down. Maybe there's water down there"? Your guess is as good as mine. Humanity has changed a lot, but maybe that's okay. Maybe, that's simply to be expected. It’s amazing how much has
survived the last several thousand years, but how much has changed too. We stand in the Holy Land, a land of history,
of anguish, of hope… We dig up artifacts and fortresses, sometimes even one on
top of the other. But, we also walk
through the fortress, and find ourselves looking at the piles of rubble that
lay behind, the deep unknown that no one has found the time or money to
excavate yet.
In how many
years will this nation have stopped changing?
When will it be safe to say, “I’ve been there already. No need to go back”? When will the world have lost its charm, will
history be a thing we can’t learn from anymore?
When will everyone stay in place, instead of wandering as nomads in
trains, planes and automobiles?
I have a
feeling that travel won’t ever be a thing of the past. The stockmarket waxes and wanes, foreign
dollars strengthen and weaken. Someone
will always want to go somewhere, as long as it’s safe to do so. As long as Tel Aviv is the "City That Never Sleeps", Jerusalem is the pillar of religion and the Dead Sea is there to float in, I think it's safe to say that people will always want to come here. And who am I to say that if the nightclubs die down and the Dead Sea dries up, the history won't be enough to continuously bring tourists in flocks?
Walk
through the footsteps of our ancestors and their tormentors. Listen to the stories of the people who first
settled here and follow their customs.
Then bring your own to the mix.
That’s why
in Israel, they eat hummus, Baklava, Turkish Delight, Sahlab (yuck), and even
McDonald’s (apparently they have kosher and non-kosher ones). They speak a smattering of languages and
practice all sorts of religions.
And yet, the
Jewish people own their nation too. They
speak the language of Hebrew, which they brought back and modernized as a
spoken language over a hundred years ago.
A nation they fought for. They
shut down public transport and shops on Saturdays and focus on family.
You have the Holy City and you have the Sin
City (Tel Aviv), just an hour or two apart. People
argue over the best way to handle the Sabbath, and yet the country pulls
through on not becoming too secular.
Well, that’s all I have for now. Catch you later.
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