Jordan River Blog

We’re leaving the Middle East today to return to Washington, D.C. We’ll be traveling by bus for 30 minutes from the kibbutz in Israel to the border crossing, entering Jordan at Aqaba on foot, catching a taxi on the other side, and driving over three hours to the airport in Amman. From there, we will

It is so dry here. I drink water constantly but always my throat feels scratchy. My eyes feel as dry as the barren riverbeds of the region, and it seems no amount of eye drops can remedy the situation. Water is scarce in the desert. This shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone. The problem is, it is

For this blog, I simply want to allow the inspiring, generous, and courageous students of The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, located on Kibbutz Ketura in Southern Israel, to speak for themselves. In a region torn by conflict, the Arava Institute brings together Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians,

Hindus call Varanasi, which was our first stop on this Expedition, their holiest city. Muslims, Jews, and Christians name Jerusalem, where we are today, one of their holiest cities. Both places contend that they are the oldest continuously inhabited cities on Earth, and you can feel their timeworn auras.

A concrete wall eight meters high divides the landscape. On one side, Israel. On the other, the West Bank. The barrier is decorated with graffiti in Arabic and English reading, “Imagine war is over,” and “Welcome to wall of tears.” A painting shows a dove with a blindfold and its wings tied behind its

After the intensity of our travels around the Jordan River Basin over the past week, today’s relatively mellow pace was a gift. The team stayed the night on a moonlit hillside overlooking the Dead Sea at a quiet hostel with no internet access. I must admit, that actually served as a welcome buffer between

In a region where terrorist bombings make headlines every few weeks, barbed wire fences and concrete walls sever the landscape like scars, and soldiers poke their heads out from checkpoints every few dozen kilometers, water lies at the heart of peace and conflict. I had imagined that I might be frightened

We arrived late last night to a youth hostel north of the Sea of Galilee, and laughed when we found Jos and Duff editing blissfully away in the common room as hordes of club-going teenagers wandered by. The pounding music kept us up til 2am. Middle Easterners can seriously party; there’s been a raging

It takes a minimum of two hours and four buses, each of which travels approximately the length of a tennis court, to cross the border between Jordan and Israel at the southern tip of the Sea of Galilee. We just learned that through experience. The two countries enjoy an uneasy peace. Jordan lies

Othman Mizra grew up swimming, catching fish, hunting birds, and setting his family’s water buffaloes out to pasture in an oasis. Literally. It was not some fantasy world you read about in storybooks, but an actual living, breathing wetland on the northeastern edge of the dusty, barren expanse of desert

We lost an hour last night. No, we didn’t leave it behind on the plane or accidentally toss it in the laundry. It was daylight savings here in the Middle East, and we had to set our clocks back. Which was especially tough given that we were scheduled for a sunrise departure anyway. Still, the team

We arrived at the kibbutz in Israel at 2am last night, after 21 hours of travel from Cape Town. Africa is an enormous continent! Flying two hours from Cape Town to Johannesburg, followed by another nine hours direct to Tel Aviv really put things in perspective. But our exhaustion quickly transformed