One thing I did not even remotely expect was the sheer beauty of Israel. Heading up to the NW tip of Israel to the Golan Heights meant we started to see everything from huge sprawling plains and incredible waterfalls like above. We followed the Jordan River from it’s start, past some ancient mills, before ending at the ruins Caesarea Philippi. A once great city, that now is now nothing more than a collection of ruins.

This place used to be pretty crazy with a huge amount of spiritual rituals, prostitutes, drunkedness and beastiality all happening in the name of the Greek God Pan. The half goat, half man, God of nature, panic and fertility. Pretty interesting that this was the first place Jesus was recognised as God.

“When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” “Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.” Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah,the Son of the living God.” — Matthew 16:13

We then moved on to the edges of Israel, past the 1949 Armistice Line, into the DMZ and finally right up to the 1974 ceasfire lines between Israel and Syria. If you don’t know much about the political history of Israel, it’s worth looking into when it was declared an independent State in 1948, the Arab-Israeli war in 1949 and the 6 day war in 1974. The last of which led to around 25,000 Arabs & 1,000 Israeli’s being killed.

The above photo looks over Syria through barbed wire from the 6 day war (Israel ends where the fields stop). And the village you can see in the distance is run by a group of militants closely related to Al-qaeda. This was an incredibly moving moment, mainly due to all the conflict currently happening in Syria, but also the huge amount of death that happened in this very area only 40 years ago.

The UN still have a presence in the area, maintaining the DMZ and observing Syria from a distance. The outposts on the other side of the border have been abandoned since a number of UN Peacekeepers were captured in 2014.

Being able to walk around these areas and seeing active conflict zones from only a few miles away was a huge wakeup call to the super safe, privilidged lives we live in the UK.