Eleven days of cycling on a wooden bike straight through Israel and Palestine. 450 kilometres: Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Dead Sea and the West Bank. With my friend Pim.

More info on the wooden bikes? Boughbikes: Be Moved by Nature!

Route:

When I got home I did some ‘backward engineering’ and I think this is the route we have travelled.

Our visit to Israel started with an hour of interrogations, because they didn’t like it much that we didn’t had a clue what we were going to do/see in Israel.

Our first sandwich in Tel Aviv. We told the guys that we were fan of Ajax. Ofcourse we knew that’the fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax are ‘brothers’ so we ended up by getting the scarf as a gift. Nice people!!

Picking up our first wooden bicycle at the Dutch embassy in Tel Aviv. First some maintenance at the first scooter shop we saw.

Our transport for the next days!

The same evening we picked up our second bicycle, which was possessed by a Dutch lawyer who worked in Tel Aviv.

Departure!

When eating at a restaurant we get invited to sleep at a backyard in a Kibbutz, because they didn’t want us to sleep in a tent.

Part of the deal was to walk the dogs at 06:30!

Our hostess.

On our way to Jerusalem.

With our one-gear-bike, this steep road was killing us… Nice views though!

Finally, the holy city!

View from our hostel in the old city on the Jaffa gate.

Bazar.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre (De Heilige Grafkerk) where the Christians believe Jesus himself is burried.

Orthodox Jews near the Western Wall (Klaagmuur).

Joduh!

Walking near the walls of the old city.

In the most remote places you tend to feel that this is a special city.

Fridaynight. Almost Shabbat (resting day). Everywhere dining families.

The boys! In the middle the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Descending to the Dead Sea!

Camels and a nice little fella when we reach sea level.

Camping at the shore of the Dead Sea.

Earth’s lowest point, 427 metres below sea level.

Super weird to float on water!

Drying up which leaves a trail of salt, not very pleasant.

Back North we come across Jack!

We liked to talked with the (mostly woman) soldiers at the gates of all the Kibbutz. Big gun for a girl though…

Road 90 north.

Very nice Palestinians on the way.

Our sleepingplace for the night. Artist village Brosh, nice people.

Free fruit 🙂

Back at the sea, a little more north this time..

Last two days putting up our tent at the beach

On the outskirts of Tel Aviv.

Because our flight was on a saturday, Shabbat, we forgot that the trains were not functioning. We ended up by driving 20 kilometers on our bike to the airport. This was our entrance at the airport 😉

Very sincere controles at the airport. We were lucky that we arrived early at the airport: 3,5 hours of checking our luggage and interrogation. Even the bicycles had to go through the x-ray and since they were to big for that we had to disassemble them and put them back together afterwards.

Back in Istanbul for one day! We left the bikes at Sabiha Gökcen Airport for one night.

Flying the next morning back to the Netherlands. After 5 months back in Holland.

Nice ‘Welcome home’ surprise (in Turkish, because I just came from my Erasmus period in Istanbul).