The Golan Trail

NOTE: This blog post is intended to provide a personal account of my experience hiking the Golan Heights. I want to emphasize that my goal is not to engage in political discourse regarding the region’s complex history.

125km, 5 day hiking through the Golan Heights, a rocky plateau located between Israel, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Pomegranates, mine fields, fighting thirst, howling with the golden jackals and bodies covered in scars & ant bites.

The Golan Trail, is it safe? #

The Golan Heights has been a disputed area between Israel and Syria after its occupation by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. Despite the history of wars that have taken place in this area, the trails are well-maintained and very safe as long as you don’t go off the trail and ignore the landmine signs. When we hiked in October 2018, it was very quiet and peaceful, and beautiful.

Our Itinerary: #

Pre-hike Days: Moving to a date farm to meet up with Anna
Day 0: Hitch-hiking to Majdal Shams (Camp 0)
Day 1: 📍Bambook Village & Park → 📍Bental Reservoir (Camp 1) Section 2,3,4 
Day 2: 📍Bental Reservoir → 📍Horvat Khushniya (Camp 2) Section 5,6,7
Day 3: 📍Horvat Khushiniya → 📍Near Shaabaniya Reservoir (Camp 3) Section 8,9,10
Day 4: 📍Near Shaabaniya Reservoir → 📍Near Ein Keshatot (Camp 4) Section 11,12,13
Day 5: 📍Near Ein Keshatot → Tiberius (Sea of Galilee) Section 14, part of 15
\* For detailed location, please look at the map below.
\\ For more information about the route, this site was great.
\\\* Sections refer to the official Trail Sections which you can find on wikivoyage.

• maps: maps.me worked pretty well (+ paper map in hebrew we bought from a local store)
• info about food supplies and specifics of the trail: wikivoyage does pretty well.

Personal Journals #

Pre-hike Days : Meeting Anna

I was in a moshav in central Israel when my friend Anna contacted me and suggested doing a hike together. We had volunteered together in a hostel in Jerusalem that summer and I was instantly excited by the idea of hiking together with her. I said yes and the next day, I was already on my way to meeting Anna, who was working in a date farm in a Jewish Settlement in the West Bank.

Getting around in Israel can be quite tricky. There were only around 3 buses everyday that ran to Jerusalem from the small Moshav I was staying in. Usually, I would hitchhike out of the moshav, a popular tactic I learned from local teenagers who couldn’t drive their own cars. That particular morning, I managed to catch a morning bus.

One of the things I found so interesting about Israel was that for a such a small country, there is such a diversity in the communities and the people who live here. There was a big ultra-orthodox Jewish village right next to the moshav, so the bus was full of people dressed in their religious clothings. An asian girl squeezing through the aisle of the bus in T-shirt and shorts with a big backpack - I got a lot of strange stares.

From Jerusalem, I took another bus towards the North. I was told to get off at a spot on a map and followed instructions. The manager of the date farm my friend Anna was at, came and picked me up from there.

The date farm itself was located in the Jordan Valley, but the accommodation and the place for sorting and packaging were in a Jewish settlement, which is basically like a village but because it’s inside the West Bank, with extra security: Barbed wires and fences around the area with a gate and a guard at the entrance.

I absolutely loved the ambience at the date farm, the people and all the volunteers who volunteered there. Israel produces some of the best high quality dates in the market and I got to eat a tonne of those. It was a Saturday, which meant that we celebrated Shabbat dinner together outside, shared our food and we all slept under the moonlight in the summer breeze that ran through the hills of Judea desert.

Day 0 : #

Hitch-hiking to Majdal Shams, a Druze village at the foot of Mt. Hermon

9 rides, 8 hours, the lost phone incident, ice-creams and tomatoes, hot buttered sweet corns and a good night’s sleep by the lake.

I had my hiking shoes and my 30L backpack, but I didn’t really have anything else that I needed for the hike. So I borrowed everything from the date farm; sleeping bag, inflatable (but practically deflated) mattress, sun-hats and spare tank tops. They even gave us contacts in case of emergencies. I was a little overwhelmed by the kindness I received, it made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I had bought a Hebrew map (which neither my friend nor myself could really read) in Jerusalem which we hoped would be enough.

In the morning, we went for a shopping trip to a nearby Palestinian city where we stocked up with some snacks for the upcoming few days. Anna and I left the date farm in the afternoon, for our hitchhiking trip to the starting point of the trail.

Since we were hitchhiking from within the West Bank, we had to make sure that we hitched a car with an Israeli plate, not a Palestinian one so that we could continue our journey passed the Green Line (the demarcation line between Israel and Palestine) towards the Sea of Galilee. Even though I was not here for a political reason, it was impossible not to feel it. Different colored number plates, different transport system, different roads for people with different ID cards. Check-points and securities. The longer I stayed, the more I knew that I knew nothing about this little part of the world I was in, except for the undeniable fact that I had been accepted with the utmost kindness I could ever ask for from everybody I’ve met, and I felt grateful.

We managed to hitch a ride mostly within 10 minutes of trying every time. An Israeli couple even treated us with amazing ice-cream and some tomatoes for souvenirs.

To Qiryat Shemona, it was quite easy. From there to our final destination, Majdal Shams, was a bit tricky. We would get a ride for a few km and would have to get off. Somewhere in between, Anna had realized that she had forgotten her phone in one of the cars.

We didn’t get contacts from anybody we hitch-hiked with and just as we were about to lose hope, I got a call from the hostel reception me and Anna used to volunteer in. Apparently, the driver of the car with Anna’s phone had remembered our conversation on the car about how both of us met at a hostel. He then called the hostel, asking for a contact for an Asian girl (that’s me) and the hostel somehow guessed it was me. The driver got in touch with me and he then drove out all the way to deliver the phone to us!

We arrived at Majdal Shams and it was already dark. We were trying to find the starting point of the trail which turned out to be still quite far away. We were asking for directions when a Druze family helped us out. They told us that it was not safe to sleep out in the wild, gave us hot buttered corns and drove us all the way to their friend’s campsite for us to stay over-night. That night, I promised the stars that I’ll definitely return the favors of everybody we met and helped us that day.

Day 1: #

On our way, we met a woman who was a family therapist from Haifa. We talked comparing common marriage problems in Israel and Japan. She then took us to a supermarket in Druze’s village called Buk’ata. Due to the religious holidays, all the Jewish Kibbutz were closed, except for the Druze’s.

Druze are unique Arabic-speaking religious and ethnic minority living in this area. Although I didn’t get to learn much about them, I really liked their traditional bread which was very thin peta bread.

After stocking up on some Tahina, we parted with the woman and continued on our journey.

That night, we decided to sleep next to the Bental Reservoir, where we found a stream of HOT water! A lot of people with their families and kids were bathing there, fishing too. After it got dark and all the families left, we stripped to our underwear and jumped into the water with the frogs to wash off the sweat.

Day 2: #

That night, we slept in the field with the cows in an open field, listening to the jackals howling.

Day 3: #

We woke up at 6am to the best sleep we’ve had so far. We started walking and soon we came across a water tap that’s been installed for hikers. We carried two bottles of 1.5L bottle and we filled it up to the fullest. We also washed our hair with the water.

We also made some new friends. Two dogs with collars started following us. At first, we thought they were cute, sweet. They were leading the way for us so we don’t get lost!

Then, they just would not leave us. Fondness turned into curiosity, then to worry, to sympathy and then to plain frustration. They followed us for the next 10 km and basically spent the entire day with us.

While we were walking, an American couple came behind us. They asked us if we knew anything about an ancient circular stone structure. We had no idea of this ancient structure but after walking on for about an hour, we found something that fit the description.

To be very honest, we didn’t really do much research into the trail beforehand, so it was very interesting to just be able to stumble upon these ancient structures and monuments. According to my unreliable online research, the place dates back to about 3000 to 1200 BCE depending on the different theories out there. It’s comprised of 42,000 tons of basalt stone and is quite big. It was in the middle of the nowhere with nobody in sight and accessible only by foot, which made us feel like an archeologists finding our own gems.

Day 4: #

We woke up the next day at 6:50am with our bodies itching all over. I spent the entire night wondering who the howlers were and where they were (I swear to God I heard them very nearby. We also had another big problem. WATER.

We had failed to secure water source the day before, so we started our hike with only about 500ml of water each. Today’s plan was to walk Section 11 through 13, and the first two sections were both gradual but continuous uphill.

We were so desperate for water by the end of section 12 that I regretted every decision that had brought me onto that trail that day. Soon, we dried up completely and our only water source was pomegranates. I still remember the taste of every drop of the juice in my mouth.

We were nearing a Kibbutz where we could finally get a water supply, but to get there, we had to make another steep ascent. That was when we found ourselves next to an orange farm full of oranges. I was barely walking by that point so out of survival, we helped ourselves to some oranges and squeezed the juice out into our mouths. We buried our heads into the oranges and fell silent for a while as we sucked onto every drop of juice. I felt bad for stealing the oranges but it literally brought us back to life. We were so happy and relieved that we made a whole song out of those oranges (which were the best oranges I had in my life, EVER) and sang them all the way up to the Kibbutz.

At the entrance of the Kibbutz, a guy had gave us a lift to the front of the water fountain in the village which was next to the village store where we treated ourselves with some chocolate milk and cakes.

Day 5: #

Our last day on the trail. I woke up from probably the most peaceful night and we both slept in, feeling our bodies getting used to sleeping outdoors and walking all day. It was a 9km walk with the view of the Sea of Galilee on our right the entire time. We finished the trail by the beach on the lake and we jumped right in.

We didn’t really reach the end point of the trail, but rather, deviated towards what seemed like the quickest way to reach the water. We were so badly in need of a bath that we cut across the banana plantation which must have been private property, and headed for the nearest beach.

We both had numerous spots and bruises on our bodies and it stung badly in the lake. Now, I don’t know where these spots came from but I’m guessing ant bites although Anna has a different theory. They covered our entire faces and bodies and tormented us for the next few weeks. Even after a year (I’m writing this blog post after a year, yes) I still have the scars from these bug bites on my hands. This is why, even during the dry season when you know it won’t rain, I would definitely bring a tent.

After hitchhiking to Tiberius where we met some other friends we met during our travels, we headed back to the date farm where I spent the next few days.

The end.