Pt1 - 17: MASADA & EIN GEDI

Business sometimes took us a fifteen minute walk up the Jaffa Road to the high-rise limestone heart of the new city. It could be any modern metropolis but for the side-locked, black-clad ultra-orthodox Hasidim in perpetual, self-absorbed motion – they always look like they’re forging into a stiff breeze – the yarmulkas, or skull caps, worn by almost every male, and the high-profile military presence so much a part of everyday Israeli life. Chic young things stroll the plazas arm in arm and drape themselves at tables along the cappuccino and pizza bar strip around Ben Yehuda Mall. Less chic young things hang out at the McDonalds on Shamai. The orderly traffic is heavy, except of course on a Saturday when absolutely nothing moves and the city feels as though it’s been abandoned. There are no hustlers, drunks or beggars here, no drifts of litter or derelict buildings. New Jerusalem is a city of high achievers with a sense of purpose and it is easy for an outsider to forget that Israel has been at war since its inception in 1948.

There is no danger the Jews will ever forget, or let others forget, the legacy of their persecution. The Yad Vashem, or Shrine to the Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes, stands in a shady grove of cedars on the slopes of Mount Herzl. It is an extensive, graphic and gruelling collection of grainy photographs, memorabilia and pathetic minutiae that evokes a maelstrom of emotions from anger and shame to pity and, strangely, admiration. You do not go to the Yad Vashem to be entertained, unless you find the idiotic, self-opinionated drivel of some of the less sensitive tour guides amusing. The Yad Vashem speaks eloquently for itself.

On our next-to-last day in Jerusalem a Mr and Mrs Cox of Austin, Texas boarded a state-of-the-art roadliner at the upmarket hotel across from the Jaffa Gate for a tour down the western coast of the Dead Sea to the spectacular fortress of Masada and the Ein Gedi Spa. As the bus came down out of the Judean Hills onto the Dead Sea plain opposite Mt Nebo, where we had stood just a week ago, our genial host reeled off a list of obscure facts like this one: The 400 meters of atmosphere between sea level and the Dead Sea (and it really is dead) provides an extra shield against solar radiation available nowhere else on the planet. This is a bonus for sufferers of skin diseases like Psoriasis (think The Singing Detective) who, if they can afford it, come to the Dead Sea for treatment. Their conditions generally clear up within a week and remission lasts up to eight months. Paul Eddington of Yes Minister is a regular visitor.

Here’s another weird fact: The date palms which fringe the Dead Sea produce the sweetest fruit in the world. Why? Apparently it's a mystery, but put simply the saltier the soil and water, the sweeter the dates.

We ascended the 400 meters – yes, back up to sea level again – to the Masada plateau in a cable car. The fortress cum Herodian palace is yet another monument to Jewish tragedy. After the Romans torched Jerusalem in AD70 they focussed their attention on a community of Jewish rebels holed up here. The Tenth Legion under Flavius Silva laid siege to Masada for three years until they finally managed to construct a ramp high enough to haul their siege engines up and breach the walls.

On the eve of inevitable defeat the men of Masada devised a plan which ensured the Roman victory would be an empty one. Each man went home, killed his family and returned to the meeting place. Here they drew lots for ten men to murder the others. The last ten drew lots again. The man with the short straw killed the other nine then committed suicide. When the Roman legionaries stormed through the breach the next morning they found 960 bodies and seven survivors – two old women and five children who’d escaped the ordeal in hiding. It was from their testimonies the historian Josephus was able to cobble together the account of the siege of Masada. Josephus was an interesting character in his own right, but you’ll have to look him up if you want to know more because this isn’t the place to tell his story.

To the east the shrinking Dead Sea lay like a puddle of sky in the middle of the barren, extra-terrestrial landscape. The salt works, once on the shoreline, are now several kilometres from the water. The distant hills of Jordan shimmered in a listless haze; down there on the plain the climate is perpetually balmy, tropical, up here it was bright and steamy. To the west are the broken brown mesas of the shattered plateau, their collapsed sides spilling away into the deep valleys like an intricate continental relief map.

From this height the remains of the eight Roman siege camps spaced around Masada look like a child’s pebble patterns in the dirt; it’s only when you see them at close quarters you realise those pebbles are boulders and the labour involved in moving and placing them must have been herculean. The mighty siege ramp is still in place – imagine a solid earth ramp rising several hundred meters and you get an idea of how badly the Romans wanted these guys.

Ever since our visit to the Jordanian resort we’d been eagerly anticipating the opportunity to smear ourselves with gooey black mud, and at Ein Gedi spa we had it. This is a slick tourist operation; comparing it to the Jordanian facility is like comparing the Nikko to Al Fairoz. Instead of a lonely earthenware pot of viscous mud, the visitor to Ein Gedi finds two containers each holding about two cubic meters of the slime. And they need it. In a scene that looks like the Black and White Minstrel Show from hell the half acre set aside for the purpose is crowded with overweight European and American tourists caking themselves in the vain quest for eternal youth.

It took a few minutes for the delicious novelty of squishing it through our fingers to wear off but then we applied the ooze to each other’s bodies with gusto. In the photo taken for us by a kindly Danish woman we look like creatures from the Black Lagoon.

It took about fifteen minutes for the mudpack to congeal and dry, during which it pinched and puckered us in occasionally thrilling fashion. By the time it began to crack, our skins were the colour and texture of elephant hides. A rinse under the cold showers and a ten minute soak in the hot sulphur pool completed the beauty treatment which we’d been assured would take five years off our lives. In my case it was a conspicuous failure, although my wallet was much the lighter for the experience.

The bus detoured through Jericho on the way back to Jerusalem. The town didn’t look any better in blazing sun than it had in pelting rain. Our guide reeled off a few interesting facts about the place though. Archaeologists have uncovered twenty three layers of settlement going back 10,000 years, making it second only to Damascus as the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. It is also built at the foot of the mountain where “Jesus was tempted for forty days and forty nights without succeeded (sic)”. Jesus obviously wasn’t paying the rent we were paying at the Hashimi.

Speaking of the Hashimi, we returned around six to find the entire Russian soccer team had moved into our floor. It was more good luck than good management that they were to play tomorrow and were therefore subdued – had this been tomorrow night we’d have been entertained by Russki footy songs until the wee small hours. In the morning, however, we were bound for Tiberias.

Next up: Tiberias and the north...