The Negev.
For a thousand reasons, I wanted to go into the Negev. The DNA test which shows I have links to the Bedouins, my love of deserts, the beauty, the emptiness, the ability to see and be in a place that has been important to human civilization for thousands of years. The crossroads for Abraham...Isaac....the Nabataens....the Egyptians...Phoenicians...Bedouin....Moabites....names from history and the Bible all mixed up together in this sand.
And yet I was disappointed....not by the desert but by my time there.
Hub and I rose early and watched the sun rise. From our balcony, we could see little specks of people dutifully head out to the Dead Sea and start bobbing in the water. Our guide was there in the lobby, right on time, and off we went into the desert.
But the van/car arrangements had me sitting in the back seat and feeling more like a kid looking into a candy shop. The vastness of the desert and the distance we needed to cross meant there were stops....but really only pauses in the desert....not time enough to let this particular experience really settle into your soul.
It's one thing to BE in the desert and another thing to drive through the desert on a divided two lane highway. I knew beforehand we would be taking regular roads....but still sometimes I just felt my heart sink as I saw and off-road track...or thought of camping or sitting quietly for hours.
The Negev is a beautiful desert...it has more texture than the parts of the soft Sahara I traveled through....it also has more industry...more military ...more human presence than the desert in Niger.
I knew all that too...from studying Google maps....and reading tourist blogs about southern Israel.....yet when the reality was out my window....I still felt a bit disappointed. I was hemmed in....and not free. But...that was the price of seeing the desert....time constraints...political constraints...safety...all made this a passing through the desert for a trek into the desert.
I had hoped to find some mysterious connection to the Negev....but I didn't...in fact....it made me wonder if my DNA tests were wrong...not about the desert and the Bedouins...but if I had the wrong desert and Bedouins...for as soon as I saw the Red Mountains of Jordan....I felt my heart leap.
Yes....that's illogical....perhaps I'm just drawn to certain desert landscapes...and those landscapes contain sand and jagged rocks....which is how the Red Mountains appeared in the distance from my backseat view and exactly how the Air Mountains felt in Niger.
In the end....I slightly chickened-out in the Negev...I had read on my Ipad the night before we headed into the desert.... that someone had loped a couple missiles from the Sinai into the part of the Negev we were driving in. Our guide asked if I wanted to take the road along the Egyptian border to Eilat or the regular highway. Surprisingly I didn't tell him to drive along the Egyptian border...I told him to take the highway...which seemed to disappoint him and certainly disappointed me.
But I had no desire for the type of adventure that involves missiles ...I did not want to feel fear of the desert. So we traveled the more civilized path. Perhaps at that point, I knew I couldn't get into the desert physically or mentally so why push it?
I'm glad I went through the Negev....I'm glad I saw it.
And then we were suddenly surrounded by hotels and condos and businesses....we were at the end of the highway.....and in the resort town of Eilat...which hugs the shores of the Red Sea.
