Thursday, 26 December 2013 13:13

"Walking Through History and Ancient Landscapes"

When you travel to this sensitive part of the world, the first thing you feel is some sort of unease as you go through the passport control at the airport in Tel Aviv, in Israel. It might be the consequence of all we read about it in our western papers and of all the news we get from this part of the world, usually worrying and somehow obscure, but the reality that awaits you just a few kilometers away, once you leave the airport and start your journey traveling to Nablus, in the West Bank, is much more exciting, positive and enjoyable than what you expect.

It is a fact that we are in a very sensitive part of the planet, if not the most sensitive one in terms of politics, religious tension and social differences, but it is also true that more people smile at you when they see you than in any European country. You feel very welcome in the West Bank, no matter whether you are in a small village or in a bigger town.

Then you have the history, all the history that is somehow compressed in this tiny little land of Palestine. And when you realize the importance of it, how almost everything we have learned since we were little kids about Jesus, the Prophets, Moses and the rest of the biblical stories 'happened' here, then is when you really need a minute to take a deep breath and prepared yourself for the journey.

Ours started in Nablus, with a visit to the ruins of Sebastiya, where we visited Herod’s palace and the remains of a crusaders church, and a unique day getting to learn the particularities of life in a refugee camp and how they engage all problems with energy and hope. Hope for peace.But this is a walking tour, and even though we loved the history and the echoes of past times, we were the ones smiling a lot once we started following the path that will take us all the way down to Bethlehem and Jerusalem on foot. It took us through some olive trees fields to a small village called Awarta on this first day, where we stayed with a local family that treated us as one of their own.

It was great to have the chance to spend and evening chatting and sharing and above all, learning from this humble people that have very little but share it all with you.

Last modified on Wednesday, 24 January 2018 09:33

Leave a comment

Make sure you enter all the required information, indicated by an asterisk (*). HTML code is not allowed.