On Sukkot, Old School

Sukkot is a holiday that celibates nature, and more specifically, rain. See, rain is incredibly important to life in ancient Israel, and obviously provided the basis for a few holidays, Sukkot included. Basically, Sukkot is a rain dance, and it represents the last foray into nature before the heavens separate and God takes a gigantic piss. So we took a foray. 

Over Sukkot, Ari and I went backpacking in the Galilee. Our madricha, dropped the two of us off at the Shvil Israel trailhead (Israel Trail) north of Mount Meron, and we were off on our "true Sukkot experience". First thing I noticed about Meron is that it is drastically different from any other mountain in Israel. It's not like the mountains in the Golan, they're too dry. Carmel is too developed. Obviously, it's nothing like the mountains in the desert. No, Meron stands out. First off, it's big...not by hiking standards (at all), but looking at it from afar, it's a beautiful sight. Second, it's green. You hear that, Israel, green. There are trees and shit. Finally, it's on the Israel Trail, which is a pretty sweet hike from the south near Eliat all the way north to Kibbutz Dan, and tons of cool people hike the trail.

Mediterranean in the distance

For the sake of my sanity and your clarity, look at this link. This is our route, with the places we camped as a waypoint. Actually the link isn't working, so here's a file of the map, you need Google Earth, though. Download.

The first night we camped at this pretty legit campground on top of the mountain. There was one other person camping there, his name was Daniel and I smoked a cigarette with him. Cool guy. We made this incredibly warm fire, on a surprisingly chilly night...and then get this, it started raining, so we took shelter in our tent and went to bed. Things were dry in the morning.

Tent nestled in the trees, beautiful campground

After Meron came the Nahal Amud, which is a valley between Meron and the hilly city of Zefat with a stream running through it. See pictures for effect. It was tight. That night we could not quite find the fabled campground our madrich mentioned was there, so we talked to some other people in the same boat and decided to basically camp in the dirt parking lot we're in. I walked to this gas station, re-upped on food, and set up tent. Turns out there were a lot of cows that roamed the land we were tenting on, so we had to be mindful of our steps.

The Nahal Amud under a natural bridge

It was gorges...get it? yeaaah.

Morning broke and we took off towards Mount Arbel, with the intent of camping up there. The hike was pretty nondescript (stole some fresh fruit from a kibbutz...yummy). So we get to the Arbel trailhead at around three o'clock and realize that camping is not only illegal, but near impossible to get away with (it's a really popular hike and the mountain is barren, so hiding amongst trees would be a no-go). These two travelers from Manchester, England offered to give us a ride to the beach, where they knew people camped out. We were in a bit of a pickle with the sunset and whatnot, so sure...why not? Bad choice. We get to the beach and it's loaded with arsim (thugs) and fat people. And they had loads of food...we had none. Anyways, we're pretty exhausted so we decide to crash at around 7. That's when the music started. Ari, a little pissed off, went to the main gate and asked when quiet hours were. The response: "quiet hours? people come to the beach to get drunk and listen to loud music, not to sleep." Fun! Sleep was pretty scarce.

Galilee from Arbel

Still exhausted, we resumed our trek in the morning, summiting Arbel by noon, and finding our way into Tiberias by two. We spent the day hanging out by the sea, reading and whatnot, and caught an early ride back to Jerusalem. Chag fucking sameach.

Caves are cool

Oh, and somewhere along the way, Ari and I caught some bug from some food we ate or something and subsequently spent the next couple days sick as a dog, hospitals and whatever.

Aruarian Dance - Nujabes