The sun burned my blistered skin and the desert shimmered like a belly dancer. There was no natural shelter so I lay exhausted in the scant shade of my rucksack. How long had I been there, immobile? I felt faint; I hadn’t drunk for a day, nor eaten for 3. I considered my toiletries, how would the strawberry lip salve taste? My shirt, drenched with sweat, looked appealing. I wrung it out into my parched mouth and wretched. I couldn’t envisage standing up, let alone completing my 350km long walk from Egypt to Jerusalem. The flies sensed my flagging strength and swarmed, the main attraction being the bloody mess that used to be my feet. I could feel but not hear their violent buzzing; my bodily functions were closing down and my ears were useless. I had hoped that such a biblically based journey might bring with it some spiritual satisfaction, or failing that a decent tan, but lying in the desolate wadi Mamshit feeling quite this uncomfortable really hadn’t been part of the original script.

Two weeks earlier I’d walked across the Israeli border and followed the National Hiking Trail into the barren craggy peaks, dry waterfalls and cavernous rose coloured canyons of the Eilat Mountains. I saw a handful of hikers on that first day. They were always friendly and happy despite the fact that they carried more guns than cameras; war’s exciting when it doesn’t kill you. Camped overlooking the hazy red Jordanian mountains and glittering turquoise Gulf of Aqaba the silence was supreme, broken only by the flies. They were destined to be my constant companions, only deserting me when I passed something smellier that I, which, as the weeks without a wash wore on, became an exceedingly rare occurrence.

Day 2 drew to a tiring close; after a 12-hour hike I didn’t need the 200-metre dolomite table mountain that stood between me and my intended campsite in the heart of King Solomon’s legendary copper mines at Timna.

‘Wall climbing is like life,’ I thought as I ascended in near darkness, ‘if you look back half way through you’re bound to feel a little nauseous. Bloody lucky I can’t see a thing.’ My map said I’d arrived, a sign stated ‘Campsite - no overnight stays.’ I bedded down anyway and was hassled periodically by camels, roaring and arrogantly glaring as only camels’ can. ‘This is it.’ I thought. ‘I’m knackered. Tomorrow I quit.’

But you should never make a decision before breakfast. The following morning, after a can of beans, I felt ready to consider Timna cliffs. ‘Ok, I’ll scale this,’ I thought, ‘and after that, I’ll see.’

And see I did. I saw wildlife, lots of it; ibex, gazelle, hyrax and vulture. I saw midday mirages. I saw the perfection that can be experienced only in the world’s wilder places. And, through the tranquillity that acts as a mirror I saw myself. I could then understand why the desert sends more crazy than it kills; the human shadow is tough to face.  

‘You can find water at Shaharut village,’ a few hikers had told me, ‘but the people are strange.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, strange, you know,’ they’d say with a knowing smile. I walked into Shaharut just after dawn, the first guy I saw I asked for water, he took me to his mobile home and introduced me to his wife. They offered everything I could want, water, a hot drink, genuine conversation and food; I offered to pay for the supplies but they wouldn’t accept.

‘What can we do if we can’t help a traveller in need?’ They didn’t even need to lock their door, such was the trust in their small community. If they were ‘strange’, I want to be strange as well.

The trail ran alongside the tarmac road between Shizzafon and Ramon. The scenery was flat desert, the ever present wind fierce and I would’ve been despondent had it not been for the many car drivers who stopped to offer me drinks and a ride.

‘You’re walking to Jerusalem? That’s great! Enjoy it!’  This type of interaction makes walking on tarmac enjoyable for me. As well as exposing myself to the minute possibility of violent madmen, and of course boredom, I leave myself open to frequent, random acts of extreme kindness.

I followed the old Nabatean trade route across the brown, red and purple sands of the immense Ramon Crater, camping halfway and waking suddenly to find white spiders crawling over my face. By morning an open sore had developed over my mouth and I had a fear that one of my midnight guests had laid eggs under my skin; an irrational thought that had me scratching and cringing for days until the wound cleared up.

The trail led me past ancient ruins, the mini grand canyon of En Avedat and on into the wilderness of Zin, which at first was a flat, featureless, burning desert. The fierce wind prevented me from wearing a hat so my skin, undefended against the sun, fried. The sand gave way to hills of razor sharp rock that tore my boot soles apart, and then a succession of dry waterfalls that lead ever upwards. I wriggled through a tiny near vertical tunnel in claustrophobic darkness, dragging my rucksack behind, hoping I wouldn’t encounter any snakes or scorpions. Camping halfway up a rock face under a rock shelf was a risk my tiredness forced me to take; if it rained a little I’d be sheltered, a lot and I’ll be swept away by the flood. I was learning that whilst the Israel Trail wasn’t always fun or easy, it was certainly a huge challenge.

The next day I stood with the vast Gadol Crater on my left and the Zin valley and the mountains of Jordan on my right. My first impression of the crater was that it was reminiscent of Tanzania’s Ngorogoro, the roar of camels drifted up as I rested on the rim. The terrain here was as brutal as it was beautiful, I was to cover just 10kms over the following 30 hours before finding myself exhausted in the wadi Mamshit.

Why, I wondered, when my body said ‘Quit right now!’, did my mind urge me to get up and carry on with the hike? Gazelle ghosted across the wadi sands in silent single file. I reasoned that if evolution had meant for me to blindly follow the herd and take the safe option it would’ve given me hooves. As it is I had restless feet and an insatiable urge to discover both the world and myself. To lie there and fade away whilst I still had breath in my body was not an option, I had no choice but to go on. I stood shakily, willed the feeling of well-being that accompanies keytosis to kick in, and pushed on up the wadi.

I hiked on across a high plateau towards Arad and the Judean wilderness. Days earlier I had been dying of thirst and now I was being pounded by relentless rain; at midday it was so cold I could see my breath. Camels, donkeys and horses stood motionless amongst waist high fields of swaying green grass punctuated with red poppies. Bedu shepherds huddled around fires in tree groves, their sheep bunched nearby. That night the audible refuse of war interrupted my sleep; heavy cannon fire, the ‘put-put’ of small arms, drones of aircraft and chopper blades, and occasionally a deep ground shaking blast. Jerusalem was just a weeks walking away. I could almost smell the gun-smoke and incense.

Iridescent green salt pans and the deep blue Dead Sea framed the mountain fortress of Massada, where in 66 A.D. Jewish rebels committed mass suicide rather than surrender to the occupying Roman army. After eating lunch in the remains of a siege camp I began to follow a wadi to the right of the mountain, hoping that I might find a way to get down to the Dead Sea, 200 metres below. A 100-metre sheer rock face blocked my way, a steel supply pipe leading over the edge was my only hope. I had nothing to secure myself with but turning back seemed inconceivable so I just took a big breath and started to shin down. For 10 minutes this 2 inch wide piece of metal stood between me and a very sore head. I slipped once, luckily onto a rock outcrop a few metres below, and though I was buffeted by a fierce cold wind I sweated profusely, partly from exertion but mainly from fear. At the bottom I collapsed immediately, my chest almost exploding with adrenalin. As my head settled I looked back upon my route, gasped in horror and said, ‘Dave, you’re such an asshole, how could you ever think of doing that?’

Birds nesting in the Acacia tree overhanging my campsite near En Gedi woke me with their singing before dawn. I lay in my sleeping bag and watched the Dead Sea glow yellow as the sun rose over Jordan, slowly taking away the chill of the desert night. As the ball of light became too bright to look at flies spoiled everything, as they did every day, by buzzing around my mouth trying to share my breakfast of chocolate and crackers.

I passed an army roadblock just short of Qumran, the home of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

‘Good afternoon!’ called down a machine gunner from the watchtower, ‘who are you?’ I repeated my story, as I’d done so many times in the previous weeks.

‘When you get to Jerusalem, maybe you will get a reward,’ he pointed at my chest, ‘inside.’ He offered his mobile number, ‘if you get trouble, call me.’ His colleague piped up,

‘D’you want food, or water?’ This was typical of the hospitality I had constantly experienced during my hike. Where were all the stereotypically rude Israelis? Apart from in the minds of the many vindictive and inexperienced foreign journalists I was to meet in Jerusalem, I have no idea.

I sat in an old bombed out hut which had ‘Jericho hotel’ scrawled on its wall. The scent of flowers mixed with the gagging stench of road-kill goats and dogs. My mind reeled with the profusion of contradictions I encountered; bullets, live and dead, shone like jewels in lush grass, brightly coloured bedu clothes hung to dry on lines strung between ramshackle huts made of scrap plastic, iron and cardboard. A young Bedu kid sat by the road. As I passed we shared momentarily the same time and space, the difference between us being that I wanted to be there and he, I believe, did not. His resentment of this situation was evident as he launched a stone at me. There was no pain as it connected, only sorrow and shame; just 15kms away in Jerusalem were all the worlds’ conveniences, yet here people washed clothes in muddy streams and kids played it cattle shit.

I stumbled past the gold Dome of the Rock and into Jerusalem’s old city in a daze. As I limped down the Via Dolorosa I shed tears. My body was broken, I was filthy, but most of all I thought I should be feeling something spiritually intense, yet inside there was nothing. A city map on a hotel wall had the word ‘Jerusalem’ crossed out and ‘Hell’ pencilled in. I found my way through the darkened maze of alleys to the church of the Holy Sepulchre and approached a Catholic priest.

‘You’ve got faith, what’s it supposed to feel like?’ I pleaded.

‘Well son,’ the old Irishman whisphered, ‘sometimes it’s the blood and body of Christ - and sometimes it’s just wine and crackers.’