Bikepacking Holyland Challenge in Israel and The Jordan Trail - Part 1

Hey guys, I'm Ilija and I'm Miriam. We come from Freiburg, Germany and we invite you to join us on our adventure. Bikepacking through two countries. The Holy Land Challenge in Israel and the Jordan Trail. We found the inspiration for this trip on Bikepacking.com website. Initially we wanted to bike only in Israel, but we found a second trail crossing Jordan and made a plan to combine them. The plan is, fly to Tel Aviv, follow the Holy Land Challenge until Nazareth and go directly north, join again the HLC Trail to King Hussein border crossing, follow the Jordan Trail to Aqaba in the south and join the Holy Land Challenge until Jerusalem. With little sleep before a big journey, we take our bikeboxes to Basel, Switzerland, the closest airport to Freiburg, and we take a direct flight to Tel Aviv, so there is no way to lose our bikes during a transfer. We are experienced in flying our bikes, so unboxing and assembling them in front of the airport is a routine. But this time we tried something new. As you may know, Ben Gurion airport is pretty far from Tel Aviv, so finding bikeboxes for the return flight would take time and we should take a taxi to the airport because the boxes are bulky. So we came up with a solution. We folded the cardboard boxes and the tools in black bags and we hid them in the bushes near the airport. If you want to try this, make sure that the airport security doesn't think you're a terrorist. Ok, let's talk about the setup now. The Holy Land Challenge is too rocky for a gravel bike, so we decided to use our hardtails. They are two customly built Santa Cruz Chameleon model. Mine has 1x11 Shimano drivetrain with the rather small 11-46 cassette and Shimano XT brakes. Miri's bike comes with SRAM XX1 1x12 and Shigura 4-piston brakes. We are carrying all our luggage for one month trip in three different sort of bags. A front bag mounted on Salsa Anything Cradle handlebar system, an Ortlieb frame bag and a rear rack with two Ortlieb gravel bags. We paid for all this equipment ourselves and I will review this bikepacking setup in a separate video. We biked from the airport directly to the HRC trail towards Netanya, where we exchanged around 1000 euros to cover for buying food for one month. Our first impression is that the infrastructure in Israel is not designed for biking. Crossing a bigger street is normally done through a small tunnel below. Our problem is that most of them are either flooded or completely closed on one side. We are heading next towards Nazareth and we are happy to leave the towns behind, because biking in the mountains is more interesting for us than being close to the sea. The best time to visit Israel is in spring, between February to April, because it will not be either too hot or rainy. It is February now and it rained a few days ago, so we are covered in mud every now and then. But these mud holes are made by our competitors. People are using everywhere in Israel UTVs for a recreational riding on the same trails with the bikers. But we try not to be annoyed. So we shake the mud off and we try to see the positive side. And help is always just around the corner if you need it. Does that help? No, I'm trying my best. It's really stiff from all the dirt. So we decided also to have breakfast in Harish. And since it's Friday, we need to stock up with food, because tomorrow we will find nothing open basically. And also in the afternoon they will shut down already, because it's Shabbat. We just met Tony, a really nice guy that rode with us a few trails around Bat Shlomo. Tony moved from South America to Israel and gave us insights on the life quality here, but we also talked about the secrets of a long-lasting marriage and how traditions are being challenged by secular society. He is like a bike guru on Telegram and he offered us further assistance in our journey through Israel. And now we are again on our own and we are heading towards Daliat al-Karmel. Exactly. Good morning guys. We have two and a half days of biking already on the trail. We covered almost 200 kilometers. We slept last night somewhere on the hills after Daliat al-Karmel. We are heading now towards Nazareth. Probably we will edit a bit the trail to take us into the city. Then we will go up north towards Lake Nazareth and then we will see how the trail takes us up to Magdal Shams. Yesterday it was pretty trail-y. We covered a lot of single trails, we met a lot of bikers and we are still meeting a lot of bikers. Sometimes it is of course challenging uphill, especially that we had to reverse the tour towards north. We will have to see if we continue like this. The trails are really beautiful at times but also very challenging and of course it slows us down so we have to see how we balance because we have a schedule of making at least 80 kilometers a day. So we have to adjust a bit and see if this will really be possible in the long run because every day 80 kilometers is quite, with those kind of trails it is quite challenging. What we can say about Israel right now is that first of all it is more expensive than some countries like Germany. It's really crazily expensive. It's almost like Switzerland, only the groceries. We don't know much about accommodation yet. There is a bit of cultural shock I would say. Sometimes in little towns we are, let's say, stared at. But we are curious towards each other and often we interact. I think people are very friendly, it's in general a very safe country. And if you approach them they are always ready to help you. We finished packing and now we will go down to the valley. A little treat comes as a reward in the valley for both our bikes and our bellies. We climb next to the hills before Nazareth and we are happy to reach the city in the afternoon so we can spend a few hours here. Today is Sunday, 19th of February. We left Nazareth behind yesterday and this morning we've been through Tiberias. We are heading now towards the mountains and you can see the trail behind us is closed. You have to be aware that we had quite a few moments of those in Israel so far. Sometimes because there are so many people doing motocross and the people owning the land, the farmers are closing slowly their properties and they are also closing basically the biking trails. And sometimes the trails are just too hard so you are almost like walking speed pushing your bike over huge stones. Sometimes we consider taking bigger roads just because otherwise we wouldn't make our kilometer goal for the day. Just like now we kind of have to go back, find a road because the trail is just, there are two signs saying no entry so we cannot deal with authorities. Yesterday my bike broke and we were really lucky to go through mainly Muslim communities and they were really really friendly and like... Yeah but lucky they were Muslim because all the shops would have been closed in Jewish communities. Exactly, yes. Yesterday was Saturday so the shops would have been closed otherwise. We had a really sweet encounter, like a little tour guide. He took us to the closest bike shop where I got basically all my chainring screws mounted for some reason and I'm a bike mechanic myself. From 8 screws I lost 7. I don't know how, don't ask me, normally this is less likely to happen. So we are heading now towards the mountains, we have to go back to the main road and then follow the trail in a little while. We have many journeys to share with you. Next year for example we will take our bikes and travel with them around the world starting from our home and heading east until Canada and USA. This journey will show a huge insight on countless different landscapes, cultures and struggles. To help us on our way you can support us on Patreon where we also offer exclusive content and the opportunity to vote for which countries we should cross. By supporting us on Patreon you will also help us put a project into action that we will describe at the end of this video. To join us in our adventures you don't have to do much, just press like, subscribe and turn on the notifications. You can share this video with your friends and leave a comment sharing your opinion or ideas about our experiences and choices. And if you want to be on top of what is happening, when is happening, follow us on Instagram. Good morning guys. This is our 6th day in Israel without a shower. We had really freezing temperatures last night, it was way below zero. So we are really glad about our down jackets and about thick sleeping bags. We left behind yesterday evening Jish. Today we are heading really north towards the big mountain. The big mountain. Macht das schon. Ja. We are hoping to get a clean river today to get a shower or to get some accommodation. The problem is the accommodation costs minimum 150 Euro per night. Ja. Let's do some more paddling. Our stuff are already washed. It's really crazy how the temperature rises between 7 to 9 o'clock with like 15 degrees. Yeah. At least. Yeah. We still have some technical problems. One thing slowing us down is too many trails being closed. The other thing is not having a detailed map of Israel on our Garmin 1030 device. We just have basically a line and we have to sometimes guess which of the many little trails we have to take. So basically we have just the trail but we have no reference so sometimes at the crossing we don't know if we should turn first left or second left or which is the precise direction. We need to install Garmin Express I think but so far we just have an iPhone and a tablet so. So and also we would have to buy it for each Israel plus Jordan. We actually cannot want to. If we will manage to get a computer with Windows or if we get a Mac we will for sure install it. So if you come be aware of that and maybe install it in advance. So finally we made it to Mag Tal Shams the beginning of the official Holy Land challenge trail. We left our Komoot custom trail which connected us and brought us to this place. Now we will follow the official trail for the next couple of days near the border with Syria until we cross the border with Jordan. The car drivers were really safe and really helpful. Several police cars were stopping to check on us if we are fine or if we need anything and we found that really sweet. Many other people tried to approach us to encourage us to honk on us like hey good job guys especially on the climbs. On the trails of course sometimes we had to make detours because the roads were closed just as usual. On dry conditions it's pretty rideable. It tends to be very stony. Nights get very cold. Yeah. Especially up north. Yeah last night was really freezing. Probably we had minus 5 degrees. Jackals. The jackals are the sweetest beings ever. We tried to leave them a bit of food because they are anyway curious and they are coming around the tent. They are really shy. They seem to be very gentle and very lovable. Yeah. Lily wants to take one home. Yeah but I think they are fine as they are but they are really really sweet. I love them. We've seen wild boars and deers. We haven't seen any hyenas so far. But the wildlife seems to be more and more affected by urbanization basically. Motocross. Yeah and a lot of motocross trails and people riding. Their favorite activity to do in the weekends. Coffee time. We are now in Merom Golan. A very sweet Kibur community where people seem to be way way more open than in the center. And very kind. They approach us, they try to talk to us, everybody speaks English. There was one hour ago a lady traveling to Tel Aviv and she offered us to live in her house while she's away. So yeah, pretty nice. People seem to be interested in our journey and supportive. They live here in a Kibur, that's a small community the way we understand. I mean you know better I think what a Kibur is. It's basically an agriculture based community. And what is really important, if you are coming biking around, there are two lakes with thermal water so this is really a thing you should not miss out. It was highly recommended to us. Exactly. Yeah. Those communities are also very good for stocking up on supplies. It feels like a bigger family. We will cross the border to Jordan this evening so stay tuned for the next videos for an Arab biking experience. At the end of this video we invite you to help us change a tiny piece of the world together. We've spent all our savings purchasing a beautiful place in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania, a place where we would like to bring people together, people like you. We found a dreamy place, 16 hectares of raw nature in the mountains of Romania that we decided to buy. It is located in Bukovina, an area rich in folklore, traditions and heartwarming people. Building up on 1000 meters without access to civilization will be a challenging and costly project, but the view and the sound of silence will make up for that. You can support this channel and help us build a great resort there. It will work as an organic farm, a place of spiritual healing since it's located in the heart of famous Romanian monasteries, a psychosomatic practice where Miriam will be able to treat people and, the land being crossed by Via Transilvanica, we want to provide the hikers shelter and food if they need it. We can only face the future as a strong community, so please join us, let's build it together. Thank you for watching and see you in the next video.