Sunrise over the Sea of Galilee by Flickr user Beny Shlevich

The first wave of exhaustion hit right around the northernmost part of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee). Highway 92 meets Highway 87 so far away from the Kinneret that as I strained to get a glimpse of the water I wondered if we’d accidentally pedaled into Syria. Catching the 5 p.m. bus back to Jerusalem, which I had insisted upon strongly on multiple occasions, was quickly becoming impossible. When we thought we had reached Neveh Hadar, more than three-quarters of the way around the lake, it was actually Kfar Nahum – we still had 50 percent of the ride! And when we asked about a shortcut along the shoreline to Tiberias, the construction workers on the side of the road laughed and pointed skyward toward a large, hulking hill. “There’s nowhere to go but up!” they said, smirking.

Sweating, straining, and struggling up the hills around the Kinneret gives you an appreciation for the rolling landscape of Galilee that you can’t understand from the comforts of a car. The landscape changes so dramatically as you circle around the water, from cities to moshavim to barren rocky hills, that you’ll feel as if you rode through time as well.

Off road cycle tracks cross the country by Flickr user Tierecke

A bike trip around the entire Kinneret, or just parts of it, is a perfect family outing and you’ll circumnavigate the entire water supply of Israel, under your own power, in just a few hours. When you bike around the entire body of water, you can appreciate the true size of the Kinneret – every last meter.

The easiest place to start and end a round-the-Kinneret trip is Tiberias, since the city boasts bus options, hostels and bike shops. Starting in Tiberias and biking in a clockwise direction will have you climbing steep yet short hills at the beginning and finishing off with an easy afternoon on shaded bike paths. The western side of the Kinneret is busier and more built up, so riding mid-morning will help you avoid heavy traffic. The eastern side offers better views and quieter roads, as well as some opportunities to get off the main highway on new bike paths and dirt roads.

Plan for at least five hours to complete the Kinneret bike tour – six if you want to take frequent breaks. Bike enthusiasts will argue that true aficionados can whiz around the lake in roughly two hours, while every bike store I asked in Jerusalem assured me that four hours was the absolute maximum. Right. We finished in exactly five hours and couldn’t have done it any faster, given our clunky mountain bikes. For kids under 12, try the eastern half of the ride from the Ma’aleh Gamla Junction to the Tzemah Junction, which should be about a three-hour ride with plenty of stops.

In the north, between Capernaum and Ginossar, a new stone path with vine-covered trellises and benches beckons bikers to get off the saddle and enjoy a snack and the view. The 6.5-km bike path between Kibbutz Ma’agan and Shizaf-Rotem beach was finished two years ago and funded by the Jewish National Fund and the Ministry of Tourism and the Ministry Industry, Trade and Labor. Plans are currently under way for a bike path that circles the entire Kinneret to draw more bicyclists and tourists to the area, and some parts have already been completed.

But you don’t have to wait for the bike path’s completion, since about 95 percent of the highway riding is on newly paved roads with wide shoulders. Around Tiberias and a few spots in the north, the shoulders disappear, but generally cars give plenty of space and honk at you only about half the time. Biking against traffic (on the left-hand side of the road) in the shoulder is the safest way to ride on highways. In Tiberias, the roads are quite narrow and it’s advisable to ride on the sidewalks.

The two big hills around the Kinneret are located near Sussita Beach and Ginossar. The top of the hill on the east side of the Kinneret, near Sussita, offers a panorama with views of Tiberias, Safed and the Arbel. Called the Nokeyev Overlook, it commemorates a battle in March 1962 when eight Golani soldiers were killed in combat against Syrian troops, and offers the best views.

The bike ride can be tailored to a variety of interests, with plenty of spots around the Galilee to explore just seconds from the main roads. Bikers fascinated by world religions should stop at Rachel’s Tomb in Tiberias, where Rabbi Akiva’s wife is buried, or the churches around Capernaum where Jesus performed various miracles. The Byzantine and Ottoman ruins on the Berniki hill, above Tiberias’s Old City are perfect for history buffs, as is the peaceful cemetery at Kibbutz Kinneret, the resting place of Rachel the Poet and other famous early Zionists. Looking for something a little more lighthearted? See ostriches at Kibbutz Ha’on, at the southern tip of the Kinneret.

Our bike trip around the Kinneret had special meaning. It was our last adventure, for the time being, with two American friends who were just days from being drafted into the IDF. Watching the afternoon sun peek over the Arbel as the golden rays danced on the Golan Heights across the water, my friends had a chance to experience the land in a gorgeous and physical way that they carried with them to their induction a few days later.

As for miracles, I wish I could say I rolled up to that 5 p.m. bus to Jerusalem just in time, ice coffee in hand, looking snazzy in my Spandex shorts. But some miracles are impossible, no matter how fast you pedal.

Cycle tips:

Bikes can go on most buses, but they’ll make you pay a full fare for your two-wheeled friend.

Bike rentals are available at a variety of Tiberias locations, including:

Aviv Hotel & Hostel.
NIS 60 a day for a mountain bike, including helmet.

Hanoter 2.
Call (04) 671-2272 or go to http://ilh.hostels-israel.com/en/hotel-aviv/hostel

Other relevant articles: Biking in Israel and Sea of Galilee travel guide

Does anyone have Bono’s phone number? If so, could they give it to Merav Ayalon because she’d like a word. Ayalon leans back, pats her dog and draws languidly on a cigarette. I’m sitting with her near the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth, 400m below sea level.

Cicadas chirrup and a lustrous full Moon illuminates the cacti and baobab trees in the middle distance, making them seem like old men frozen in time. Even at 10pm on a November evening, it’s warm enough to sit out in shorts and a T-shirt. My drinking companion is wistful, and so am I, but for different reasons.

“I need Bono to help save the Dead Sea,” says Ayalon, a member of Kibbutz Ein Gedi, where I’m staying tonight. “Politicians never get anything done. It’s only musicians and artists who do.”

Ein Gedi used to be closer to the Dead Sea, she tells me. The kibbutz hasn’t moved, but the waters have. Over 30 years the shores have retreated by more than a kilometre. Less water is flowing in from the River Jordan and a large potash plant to the south is also blamed. It’s a man-made problem and, according to Ayalon, only the publicity supplied by an Irish rock-god can start to solve the issue.

I’m also in a reflective mood, my mind temporarily full of “what ifs”. I’m not one for regrets, but in my late teens I did think about coming to work on a kibbutz — as did Bono, Bob Hoskins and Simon Le Bon — but chose to head Down Under instead.

Until the 1980s a few months’ stint in Israel picking bananas or mucking out cows was a rite of passage, whether or not you were Jewish. But the start of the Intifada meant that much international empathy ebbed away from Israel at the same time as inexpensive round-the-world tickets made Koh Samui and Sydney seem more attractive options for a gap year.

Now, for me at least, it’s too late. You need to devote several months and be in your mid-30s or under. But of the 256 kibbutzim nationwide, 32 have developed tourism programmes, so here I was, 90 minutes’ drive from Jerusalem, reminiscing over Goldstar lager under a star-spangled sky and promising to track down U2.

Ein Gedi is a good base from which to explore the Dead Sea region. The Hilton it isn’t, but it offers clean, basic accommodation (units have air-conditioning, TV and en suite bathroom), a chance to mix with holidaying locals, and enjoy salads and fresh vegetables and fruit in the canteen.

The next morning revealed the magnificent towering cliffs that act as Ein Gedi’s backdrop and a reminder how low I had sunk, literally. I hopped on a shuttle bus to the kibbutz’s spa complex five minutes away.

It used to lie on the shoreline but now you board a tractor-shuttle that ferries you past signs showing the retreat of the waters year by year and deposits you at the sea five minutes later, with Jordan shimmering in a heat haze on the other side.

Here you can bob in the buoyant waters, having snaps taken while you read a book on the surface and then do as the Russian tour groups do, liberally rub mineral-rich mud all over each other on the beach.

Ein Gedi is a fine spot, too, for hikers who come from all over Israel to explore the nearby canyons or walk up to the ruins of the fortress at Masada, a 15-minute drive away, where Jewish rebels committed suicide rather than surrender to the Roman forces besieging them in the 1st century AD.

I drove north for several hours, across the West Bank and past Jericho, with the lights of villages in the Jordan valley twinkling across to my right and Amman just 40km away. My destination was Ein Gev, another kibbutz that lies in the shadow of the Golan Heights on the eastern shores of the Sea of Galilee.

Tourism plays a big part in generating revenue here, but the farming side seemed more obvious than Ein Gedi with kibbutzniks raising cattle and chickens, breeding snails for export, growing bananas, avocados, figs and dates, and fishing.

Tourists at the holiday cottages that look directly out on to the Sea of Galilee are housed separately from the volunteers, but there is usually someone who will show you around and give you a brief taste of kibbutz life.

Which is how I met 22-year-old Ben Rose from London, who had spent six months doing a variety of jobs. “Most of my friends in England had never heard of a kibbutz,” he told me as we chatted in the canteen. “I’d explain it to them, but they didn’t really understand — most would rather just go and laze on a beach in Thailand.

I was floundering back in London, but the time I’ve spent here has really helped me. It’s a family and I’ve met great people. It seems like home; in fact, I’m emigrating here next year.”

The next day Ben showed me around and introduced me to other volunteers from South Africa, Korea, the US and Britain (one of whom arrived 38 years ago and never left), before we set out to explore the local area. We stopped for a shawarma at the Bonjour kebab shop in Tiberias.

The town, despite being one of the four holy cities of Judaism, seemed ramshackle and tacky, so we didn’t linger but drove instead to the northern end of the sea.

“The best guide book you can have round here is the Bible,” I was told as we stopped at the Mount of Beatitudes (where Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount) and, by coming towards the end of the day, thereby avoided all the multitude of coach parties.

A short distance onwards is the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, where we had a similarly solitary experience as the sun was starting to slowly /, and so too by the water’s edge at the Church of the Primacy of St Peter, at Capernaum where Jesus recruited his first disciples, and the ruins of the town of Korazim.

Perhaps my stay on the kibbutzim was a bit of a cheat after all those years. Hardly weeks of back-breaking labour, rather just a few days of applying sunscreen and polishing off chicken schnitzel. But still, a stay on a kibbutz does provide an alternative view of Israel, a refreshing change from the rather heavy atmosphere of Jerusalem, and more realistic than the hedonistic bubble of Tel Aviv.

No sign of Bono, though, but seriously Mr U2, if you are reading this over a pint of Guinness, please do get in touch.

Source: Times

Surfing is incredibly popular in Israel by Flickr user naama

The first surfboard was brought to Israel by a Californian doctor in the 1950′s. Now, over fifty years on, Israelis have developed into a country of surfers, and as soon as the waves get good, the beaches become dotted with surfers of all abilities.

That doctor found a Tel Aviv lifeguard to take the first surfboards, and as more and more people saw the boards being used, more and more people took up the sport. Today, Israel has tens of surf schools, all along the Mediterranean coastline, as well as at the Sea of Galilee and in Eilat.

by Flickr user werkunz1

Not only is surfing popular, but all kinds of variations including windsurfing and kitesurfing. Here are some of the country’s most prestigious clubs who offer lessons to people of all abilities.

Surfing in Caesarea

Freegull Sea Sports – Caesarea Beach (in Kibbutz Sdot Yam). Freegul is one of Israel’s most prestigious surfing schools offering surfing, windsurfing, kitesurfing, catamaran sailing, and kayaking. Israel’s first ever Olympic gold medalist passed through this school, winning the Windsurfing Gold in 2004. Tel: 04-636460, Email: freegull@wind.co.il, Website: www.wind.co.il

Surfing in Tel Aviv

Topsea Surfing Center – next to Moriah Plaza hotel. Topsea is Israel’s oldest surfing school, developed by the pioneers of the Israeli surf scene. The club focuses on surfing, and is probably the most famous in the city. Tel: 05-04329001, Email: orian8@gmail.com, Website: www.topsea.co.il

Surfing in Beit Yannay (between Netanya & Caesarea) & Sea of Galilee

Kite Away - Beit Yannay Beach. Kite Away is a surf school with a main focus on kitesurfing , although it still teaches surfing and windsurfing. This is because the club is run by a former World Champion kitesurfer. Tel: 09-8666991, Email: info@kiteaway.com, Website: www.kiteaway.com

Settlement has been taking place around the Sea of Galilee for thousands of years. Ruins of ancient settlements today stand alongside some of the pioneering and oldest communities established in Israel, including some of the oldest kibbutzim.

Tiberias

Whilst Tiberias, the largest city around the Sea of Galilee, and a holy city in Judaism, is nothing special in itself, it is here that you can visit the Tiberias Hot Springs, ancient pools filled with water from 17 natural springs, for some pampering. The springs also have massage and mud treatments and Turkish Baths. From Tiberias, and elsewhere on the lake, it is possible to rent a bike and cycle the perimeter.

Kibbutz Kinneret

The coolest place we know around the Sea of Galilee is Rob Roy’s Canoes. Near Kibbutz Kinneret, and on the banks of the Jordan River south of the lake, this oasis is a relaxing spot. Canoes can be hired for the lake, or you can just sit on a bedouin rug, with Bob Marley music playing in the background, under the shade of a tent, and watch the water flow through a river which is so steeped in and important in the history of the world.

Above the Eastern shores of the lake, Switzerland is a forest and driving trail. Suitable for all cars, this tarmaced road affords fantastic views of the lake. There is a picnic site, but we would recommend the drive to anyone wishing to emerse themselves in the unique atmosphere of the Galilee.

Hamat Gader

About 5 miles east of the lake is Hamat Gader – Hot Springs one of Israel’s most popular attractions. With mineral springs of up to 50 degrees, there have been ancient baths here for almost 2000 years. There is also an alligator and exotic bird reserve!

Beaches

There are lots of open access points to the beaches surrounding the Sea of Galilee, although these are unserviced. If you dont require facilities, the best beach is Tsemach Beach on the eastern shore, where you can also rent basic facilities for a small fee.