09 - Walking Israel - Luke Baptiste

Part 1 - The idea:

I have always been keen for adventure. My parents recall even from a young age I was obsessed with dressing up like Indiana Jones and running around the house using my dad’s belt as a lasso. I guess that’s what happens when the only films in the house are Indiana Jones and Space Jam; and I found out pretty early on that I wasn’t going to become a professional basketball player (I’m 5’4”, on a tall day). By 18, I’d had a slight taste of adventure, from hiking the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, to travelling South America, and now I wanted more. I aspired to join the military and live a life off the beaten track.

The adventures of former Paratrooper and British explorer, Levison Wood, have always fascinated me. Wood had previously walked the entire length of Central America, which inspired my first solo trip in 2017, where I travelled from Mexico to Panama.

The Middle East has always interested me; perhaps because I have grown up during a time where we often see the region in the news. The political turmoil and wars, combined with its immense history and beautiful, yet alien landscape, made the Middle East seem fascinating to me. It’s for these reasons that I wanted to travel there.

Israel is a country I’m no stranger to. In May 2018, I travelled there to learn Krav Maga (Israeli martial art) and visit old friends. I happened to be in Jerusalem when Donald Trump declared the American Embassy was to be moved there, and I witnessed Israel’s Independence Day – known as ‘Nakba Day’ to the Palestinians, meaning ‘Day of the Catastrophe’. Needless to say, it was a very turbulent time, which only made me want to return and see more, not just through the lens of a tourist.

Within days of being home in June 2018, I was bored of London, so got the train up to Scotland to meet a good friend, Gideon. Spontaneously, we bought train tickets to a place called Knoydart – a peninsular off Scotland’s western coast, impenetrable by vehicle. We hitched a ride on a boat taking supplies there from the mainland. It was here in the mountains that I decided I wanted to return to Israel once more to walk its entirety. 

Part 2 – The walk:

Starting from the Red Sea in the south I would venture through the Negev Desert, through parts of Palestine in the West Bank, and finally up to the north on the borders with Lebanon and Syria. 

In early February 2019, I flew to Tel Aviv and then travelled to the south by bus. With the Red Sea behind me, Egypt to my west and Jordan to my east, I began walking north. The journey took me over 60 days, covering around 1200km, typically walking 20-45 km per day. 

Some days were completely flat; others I had to climb a mountain or cross rivers. I began to realise how precious the simple things were, like light. Every day I would be in a race against the sun, pushing to reach my day’s goal before sunset. It’s handy to have light when you’re walking through mountains, and more importantly, after dark is when dangerous things come out, like wolves, hyenas, wild dogs, snakes and scorpions.

The changing terrain was incredible. First you had the harsh mountainous desert of the south. Water is so scarce that you must decide whether you are willing to carry extra weight or risk running out. At times, I trekked 7 days without any known water sources or food resupply points. Fortunately, a friend put me in contact with a local guide, who I paid to dig holes to cache my water along my route and send me the GPS coordinates to find it. Soon, this unforgiving desert gave way to scrubby patches of grass, which then became the farm fields, towns and cities of the centre of the country. And finally, came the green, often wet, vibrant north, where I would find myself hiking past Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. 

I learnt all sorts of tricks along the way to help me adapt to my surroundings. Like washing my pan with sand and dirt to not sacrifice my water. I’d take any opportunity to wash myself and my clothes, from a pool of stagnant water to a petrol station toilet. I also got into the habit of stopping every few hours to air my feet, resting them on my backpack so the blood would drain back into my body (albeit never for more than 5 minutes to avoid the vultures circling above mistaking me as dead). Not every trick worked; it often came down to trial and error.

One of the hardest moments was being attacked by a pack of wild dogs when I unknowingly strolling into their territory. I was walking down a path, with an overgrown forest on one side and barbed wire on the other, when two dogs appeared in front of me. I paused, debating whether to run in the other direction or attempt to push through them. I decided to firm it; there were only two of them, and I’d encountered wild dogs before, living to tell the tale so far. I immediately regretted this decision when six more dogs appeared on the other side of the fence. The two directly in front of me started barking and growling viciously, frothing from the mouth, covered in scars and showing open wounds. I started launching rocks on the ground in front to fend them off but then, one by one, the other six snuck through a hole they’d found under the fence…  

It took an exhausting half an hour to fight them off, jabbing with my hiking poles, smashing rocks down and shouting at the top of my lungs. Eventually, I got past the fence line, though not unscathed. One dog had flanked me, managing to sink its teeth into the back of my hand. Luckily, I was reaching down to grab a rock as it bit me, preventing its teeth from tearing the whole way through. It could have been so much worse if it had dragged me down, leaving me at the mercy of the pack. How on earth I managed this, I don’t know. 

Though shaken up, I was still in the middle of nowhere and needed to find help. It took me some hours until I reached a small Arabic town as light was fading. Thankfully, from there I was driven to a clinic by some very kind women, where my hand was treated with strong antibiotic cream and I crashed for the night. 

Though less dramatic, I had some memorable moments with Bedouins, nomadic Arabs who have inhabited the deserts for thousands of years. Although they can often be viewed negatively in Israel, all my experiences with them were warm and positive. A few times they invited me into their shacks to drink tea with them. They rarely spoke a word of English, but we could get by with gestures and lots of facial expressions. There were several times when I’d be approaching an Arab village or Bedouin camp, and would be greeted by a pack of angry dogs defending the village. Just as I thought I was done for, a villager would shout and halt the attack, for which I was very grateful.  

I had some less pleasant moments involving milk – typical, since I’ve always hated the stuff... One time an old man drove past me – in a car that looked even older than him – only to return with a plastic bag filled with goats milk, which I can only assume was fresh since it was still warm and had hairs in it… Another time, after having stayed in a small village in the desert for a few nights, I was asked to help on their farm in exchange for their hospitality. Since I’m not the biggest of guys, the farmer took one look at me and gave me the ‘special task’ of unclogging their cheese tank (essentially a vat which churns milk into cheese). Without wanting to offend, I grabbed a torch, climbed inside and got on with it.

Other memories include nearly falling into a pit of dead decaying animals, sleeping in a bomb shelter inside a children’s nursery when Hamas were firing rockets into Israel, and meeting a man in Bethlehem who grew up in Luton and promised he would return and visit me in the UK to have a proper cup of tea.

In the north, I would go to sleep with the unnerving sound of wolves, jackals and hyenas howling their hearts out, with only the thin outer of the tent to protect me. I was charged by a wild boar, which appeared out of nowhere through some overgrown grass, but managed to escape by diving over a barbed wire fence. I was left so scared that my hands were shaking uncontrollably. 

[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHAjMDSqH-Q&w=854&h=480]

I was able to travel to the still contested Golan Heights region, and decided to walk the length of it too. Depending on who you ask, this is a part of Syria that is occupied by the Israeli military. I hadn’t been able to travel there during my previous visit because Iran had fired a stream of rockets into the area, provoking a retaliation by Israel. 

While there, I hitched a ride in a UN patrol vehicle. Due to the heaviest rainfall in fifteen years, creating loose, muddy ground, land mines had slid down hills and onto paths. Unfortunately, two cows hadn’t been so lucky, as they were blown up just a few days before. Hiking there was like a battlefield tour. Everywhere you looked were the remnants of war: blown out tanks, shell casings, old machine guns, and bunkers peppered with bullet holes. 

This heavy rainfall also created a constant risk of flash floods, particularly in the south where I had no choice but to walk through many deep, narrow canyons. I later learnt that ten young school children had lost their lives in 2018 doing the same thing, when they were caught in a flash flood and couldn’t escape the canyon in time.

Part 3 – My reflections:

It may sound like my walk was very eventful; but the reality is it was often repetitive. The hardest part was having the discipline to wake up early every morning, put on my stinking boots, yesterdays’ inside-out pants, and socks so filthy they’d become stiff. On the odd occasion, there would be extreme excitement, which would charge the adrenaline. 

Now more than ever, being stuck indoors during a global pandemic, writing this is particularly hard. Reminiscing great times, from the four walls of my bedroom in south London, where the wildest thing that happens here is going for my one-hour daily walk.  

 I miss the peacefulness and freedom of being completely isolated, not in my room, but the emptiness of the desert where the only things I could hear were my own footsteps, the vultures circling above, and the fly constantly buzzing in my ear. 

I miss the simplicity, the simplicity of making my own choices. Only having to worry about the basic necessities of staying alive, without relying on anyone else: food, water, shelter, sleep. You almost feel like you’re going back to being a caveman. There is something so fulfilling about knowing you, and you alone, were able to achieve and accomplish something you’ve set out to do. There were days when I had to walk around 45km. The sense of achievement when you can look back over the mountains and say to yourself, ‘I did that’, is something I can’t describe. When you strip life back to its bare bones, it’s the small things that really matter. I think this is where it becomes addictive. For me, I don’t think it’s the crazy moments I crave, but the rawness of the challenge.

I miss the disconnect. I don’t consider myself an adrenaline junkie by any means. There are people doing some insane things, way more exciting than anything I’ve done. But in a world where we can’t go a few minutes without looking at our phones, or worrying about how many people are going to like an Instagram post, I think it is so important to go back to basics and just have to worry about surviving.

It’s insane how complicated life has become. Of course, not everyone has the means of going and walking across a country for a few months. However, I think we can’t lose sight of the fundamental things that make us human and keep us alive: challenging ourselves and getting outside our comfort zones. This means something different for everyone. It may be something as simple as leaving your phone at home and going for a walk, or testing your grit by getting up early before work to go on a run. I quickly realised on the trail that motivation wasn’t going to get me very far. No one is motivated to crawl out of their sleeping bag at 6am to put on stinking clothes, pack away a wet tent, and start walking up a mountain.

It boiled down to discipline, habit, and accountability. These are values that we could all benefit from, myself included. Motivation on its own will always fail you, but building a strong discipline and resilient mind won’t. And resilience isn’t found inside your comfort zone. As the author and ex-Navy SEAL Jocko Willink says: ‘discipline equals freedom’.