Israel on a bike in February - Part 1 - Days 0-4

Bike trip to Israel 7-25 February 2015. Part 1. Days 0-4.

It was a particularly gloomy winter in Saint-Petersburg so I decided to go somewhere warmer with a bit of sun. We have this local bike forum VeloPiter, and there was a guy suggesting to go to Israel from 7th to 23rd of February. I wanted to visit Israel for a long time at that point, so without much deliberation I decided to join. Plan was to go north and come back to Jerusalem around 20th of February, so I bought myself return ticket for 25th of February, planning hitchhike or take a bus to the south and stay there for a couple of days as well.

Highlights:
Participants: 6 at the start, 2 at the end

Length: 2,5 weeks

Distance: about 500 kilometers

Budget: 10500 rubles plane tickets Saint-Petersburg-Tel-Aviv-Saint-Petersburg + $125

Accomodation: 6 nights couchsurfing, the rest - tent

Day 0. Packing

I suggested a friend to come with me, and we took one small light tent for the two of us, and light sleeping bags, which affected our route a lot. We expected weather to be +22 C during the day, +15 C at night, but when we arrived maximum we got during the day was +15 C, and at night it got as low as +4. We were not prepared for that. The guy who organized it told us to take lightest stuff, and that if the weather was worse, we were to go south instead of north.

My bike all ready for transportation

An this is the same bike in a super bag made out of tarp (light and cheap!)

Day 1. February 7. Arrival and first night in the park 

Here's the group composition at the starting point in Tel-Aviv (assembled on bike forum; I only knew the guy I invited to join): 2 men of "after 50" variety (one of them - the "organizer"); 2 mid-thirties guys, and 2 kids: me, 26, and my friend, 23.

Assembling the bikes near Tel-Aviv airport

While we were assembling our bikes (by the way, there were 2 other bike tourists from the same bike forum who came from Saint-Petersburg on the same flight (and knew the organizer); they went south separately), we got an opporunity to experience the Israel spirit: all of a sudden security started running around and getting everyone inside the airport building. We stayed there for 10-15 minutes and were let out. I guess someone found a suspicious package or somehting.

After we finished our bikes, we went to a nearby town to get something to eat and buy some provision As organizer was in charge of the route for the first several days and wasn't very informative in the very beginning, I'm not very sure where we stayed first couple of nights :)

I think that first night was in Britannia Park. When we got there it was already dark so we quickly had dinner, put up our tent and went to bed.

Day 2. February 8. Caves and a shooting range

Next day was quite uneventful: we visited a kibbutz (which had an entrance with a gate), bought some food, visited some caves, and then biked along some shooting range full of "danger" and "no entrance or you might get shot" signs, near which we stopped for the night.

Kibbutzes in Israel are these local communities which have some sort of specialization (dairy, or technology) and where members have their duties to help the kibbutz function. Apparently it's a thing to come and stay there (we met some Americans later who came to Israel on this sort of volunteering program, and some volunteered in kibbutzes).

By the way, Israel is very expensive comparing to Russia, and with the latest weakening of ruble, it became super expensive. Alpro Soya milk - 15 shekels. Cheap low quality pasta (here on the picture lower, there was some promotion, which made it not expensive at all, but maybe not such a good price/value deal still) - 3 packs for 10 shekels.

We came up with this "Snickers index" (analogous with "Big Mac index") to figure out which supermarkets have better prices: some supermarkets sold 1 small Snickers bar for 7 shekels, and the best deal we found in Eilat: 5 for 10. At some point I just started to calculate everything in dollars, which made prices look a lot more reasonable :) Now that the ruble got a bit stronger, it's not as bad (when we were there, 1 USD was like 65 rubles (40 rubles several months before that), and now it's about 52).

On the left: caves; on the right: in the kibbutz

Caves and our camp near the shooting range

Day 3. February 9. Yatir Forest.

Overwhelming though at this point: damn it's freezing at night! I was in some survival mode, having more and more thoughts about going south. Well, we were heading south, but organizer planned to go north in a couple of days (believing for some reason that the weather would get better while forecast s told a different story).

We pass through an Arab town where I firmly ask to get some carrots. By the way, here was my first lesson of the trip: discuss in advance how eating will be organized and don't hesitate to separate from the group if you don't feel comfortable (we were told to put in 200 shekels in the common "bank" for food, and I didn't feel like it was appropriate to discuss it at that point, which is totally my fault too. I didn't quite predict how unreasonable people would be with their spending).

I was the most uncomfortable, because people would buy small expensive cans of fish (which I don't eat), some unreasonably priced sweets every day (like halva, which is dirt cheap in Russia and not the best treat for my taste, but was quite expensive there) and wine (which I didn't expect at all: bike trip and alcohol? weird).

So I think the best way is to use common money for grains, pasta, bread and hummus, but buy "luxury items" like sweets, alcohol and fruits separately. Sure, it seems petty, but everyone stays content and it's definitely fair for everyone.

In this town "leader" (which by that point I already called The Despot, as he was too authoritarian for my taste) tells the men to surround me to hide me from the Arabs. He would constantly try to scare everyone, saying stuff like "you shouldn't wear bike leggins" (which I didn't adhere to and weren't stolen and raped), separate from the group more than 50 meters (as I would be stolen as soon as I'm on my own) and that if you show you knees and I guess any skin some people would throw yoghurts and stones at you.

Another point of view was from a girl on that bike forum which said that she never had problems wearing bike shorts. I'm sure that dressing appropriately and minding country's mentality is imporant and it's better to be cautious, but I've seen many Israeli girls wearing leggins and other "revealing" and "sexy" clothing, so I think any decently dressed girl will do just fine there.

I wouldn't say it felt dangerous at any point. Ok there was one time when several small kids ran to the bikes, but they didn't throw anything. I guess not having expensive equipment hanging from your bags is enough to stay safe (in case they want to grab something).

So we reached Yatir Forest in the afternoon.

And started arguing whether we should try to quickly reach the lake depicted on a map (it was sunny and I really wanted to get into water at least for a short while to balance out the desperate freezing nights) or go on a longer bike trail. For some reason The Despot was adamant about not letting people separate. Super weird. I think that separating from time to time is a good hack to avoid Polar Disease (or Expedition Choler) and it should be encouraged, not prohibited.

In the end we decided to go on the bike track and try to reach the lake as fast as we can.

Met some nice sheep in the way

O, no! Disappointment. "Lake" turned out to be some sort of a water reservoir which wasn't even reachable as it was surrounded by some tarpaulin cover. We talked to the part ranger who hung out there, and he confirmed it wasn't possible to use it for swimming, so we shoud just go and set up camp.

We found a place for our camp, and for the first time I was able to have wash myself with some warm water (it wasn't dark yet so not too cold).

The ranger showed up once again to check up on us (The Despot thought that was because we were Russians, or just because we were bike tourists, I don't know, but he said it was because he didn't trust us. I prefer to think it was just general niceness (this hypothesis was later confirmed by some other evidence: behaviour of other locals offering help).

We got some extra bottles to make warmers (it was just impossible to sleep at night): they helped, but only for half the night. As soon as they got cooled down I was awake.

Day 4. February 10. Desert. Desperation. Arad.

Today we planned to visit Masada, which was only about 15 kilometers away, so it was decided to go through the desert to kill several hours.
It turned out that biking in the desert was impossible (Israeli desert is just a pile of rocks), it was only possible to walk and drag the bikes and all the gear behind. Often uphill. At some point I was telling people how this reminded me of the Handicap Principle of sexual selection, guys dragging all this gear and being all heroic about this (while going in the desert (as it turned out, with bad navigation) in the first place wasn't the best idea).

We got lost, navigation lied to us... By the way, everyone thinks "desert - hot - water shortage - dehydration - death", but it wasn't hot at all, it was comfortable, we had enough water and were wel-hydrated, the only problem was having to drah the bikes with all the gear. It was windy, and we often got knocked off our feet by the wind. And the temperature was supposed to drop to zero at night.

We ended up spending about 12 hours in the desert and hot out only late at night.

We had two flats (one of which was mine, when it was already dark) and the main emotion of the day was Desperation.

Anger and frustration were there as well.
At night we got to Arad, went to the store and looked for a place to set up camp.

We ended up staying in the town, near a stadium, right on some concrete. It was very windy and cold.

And here the first part ends. Next day was the beginning of good times: we decided to separate (escape the cold by continuing south; and equally important for me was escaping the authoritarian regime as it really frustrated me) and life became a lot better.

Read on...