Thursday, October 18, 2007

 

Hiking Trip

Five hours of hiking through the mountains around Ramallah was a great activity last sunday. With a group of Palestinians and Foreigners we started at 5.30 am and took a service to get to our starting point. When we started walking, we could watch the sun rising.

The harshness of the land with hardly any trees and not much green in general has a certain beauty! Furthermore, I was very happy to get some exercise. Although that was stopped quickly for a long breakfast, everybody had brought something to share with the others. While we were eating among olive trees, the farmer was harvesting. Then we went on and were challenged by a step and long descent. The views were marvelous!

As I am in Palestine, politics can never be evaded. The trip was awesome and there was some kind of peacefulness, being away from the city and its noises. But instead of reaching the starting point in ten minutes via the direct road, we had to pass by some villages, because the main road is open to Jewish only and secured by several checkpoints. During the hike, we could see two settlements and the new extension of one. These settlements or not only illeagel in international law, the land they use is never even bought. Furthermore, our second break on some beautiful rocks was acompanied by the soft humming of war planes invisible to us in the sky.

I was amazed, that although the land looks rather dry, most of the hills show terraces, built by farmers. Some are not farmed, but probably have been used for centuries or even millenia by the peoples in the holy land and the variuos rulers of the region.


# posted by Anonymous @ 3:11 PM
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