There are typically two types of people who visit Jerusalem; history fanatics, and religious pilgrims. I was neither. Yet in the Winter of 2022 I found myself hurtling down a motorway aboard a coach bound for the Holy City, skimming along the outskirts of West Bank just a stone’s throw from the Israeli separation wall.

Israel had never been a country particularly high on my list of places to visit, but a serious case of Why not? had somehow led me here.

Ben and I have spent the past 6 years travelling together, but also living and sometimes working together. We’d never been apart in all that time for more than a few days. The concept was alien to us. But Ben had received an offer for the opportunity of a lifetime- four weeks catering at the Olympics in Beijing- that he couldn’t turn down. At least, not after some gentle encouragement from me. He was pushing himself way out of his comfort zone, flying to the other side of the world to work with a team of people he didn’t know, but was I going to sit here pining and waiting for his return? No way. I needed to do something equally cool.

But whereas Ben had been on solo backpacking adventures before, I had never been travelling on my own. I wanted to set myself a challenge, something that would allow me to push my boundaries a little, and help me do some soul searching as an individual instead of a unit for a change.

Initially I contemplated Wales. I’d never been to Pembrokeshire, and quite fancied a bit of car camping, even if it was January. But when I got a message from a friend in Israel, who hinted that she’d love to see me again, everything kind of fell into place.

I wondered how cheaply I could get there and back. I managed to find a flight from London to Tel Aviv for as little as £12; in the end I paid £56 for the return journey, which involved a total of three layovers in various countries across Europe, and was bookended by tediously long coach journeys.

Let me tell you now: never again will I take an overnight layover in Vienna airport, sleeping on a thin air mattress under fluorescent lights and being woken by a security guard to ask me what I was doing, to save a few quid. But it was an experience I wouldn’t soon forget.

I arrived in Tel Aviv exhausted, dehydrated and anxious that the Israeli Ministry of Health website had officially denied me entry based on the COVID documents I’d submitted, despite meeting all of the requirements. My sleep-deprived brain spun me images of being pulled to one side, interrogated and ultimately deported, but the entry process was as simple as scanning my passport and having a swab shoved up my nose. I was in.

*After a 37 hour journey, I finally landed in Tel Aviv.*

The only problem was, I’d arrived in Israel on shabbat, the holy day of rest when no public transport operates and most shops are closed, and I had to somehow get to the North of the country. I managed to track down and haggle with a sherut driver, Israel’s unofficial minibus service which operates on no timetable and leaves simply when it’s full, and by haggle I mean agree to pay a clearly extortionate price than was more than all the money I’d budgeted for the week. I was too tired to wait until the evening to take a train so I agreed, on the promise that my friend would meet me at the other end and pay the rest of my fare.

I marvelled at the views from the tinted bus windows, feasting with fresh and eager eyes on the swathes of palm and cactus, the skyscrapers of Tel Aviv on the coastline and the roadsigns written in Hebrew and Arabic. It was espresso for the soul, my heart soaring with the newness and otherness of it all. I realised then how much I’d craved the adrenaline of adventure these past months.

The driver dropped me off at a random fuel station on a motorway junction. I handed him all of the shekels in my purse, but I was still 100 short, and my friend was nowhere in sight.

I searched sheepishly for an ATM but found nothing, and after a few agonising minutes of keeping the driver waiting he growled “This isn’t fair” at me in English and drove off in a huff.

To be fair, I thought, he was definitely trying to rip me off.

For a few minutes I stood on the dusty pavement watching queues of traffic filter by, taking in the chaos on the warm breeze and feeling a little vulnerable in a strange country alone for the first time ever. Women in burqas and men with kippahs atop their heads queued up at the kiosk for chocolates and cold drinks, and families bent down on their knees and prayed to Mecca beside the open doors of their cars, as if they’d pulled off the motorway in a hurry not to miss the morning prayer. It was beginning to sink in that I was really here in the Middle East, and I’d got myself here entirely by my own doing. It was a proud feeling.

Finally my friend River arrived to meet me, and together we took a taxi into the beautiful town of Daliyat-al-Karmel.

The next day we arrived in Jerusalem, full on a breakfast of Turkish coffee flavoured with cardamom and pita druze (bread dripping in olive oil and za’atar) which would quickly become my favourite. We walked the backstreets from the new city to the old, her asking every other person we encountered for directions and me snapping photographs with the excitement of an A-Level student who’d just got her first camera. Every street was so beautiful- sun-bleached stone houses with heavy wooden shutters covered in tangles of plants and unique street art at every other turn.

*Pita druze and Turkish coffee with cardamom- heaven in breakfast form.*

We eventually arrived at the Wailing Wall, and I was struck by just how vast and sprawling this city was; in every corner you looked you could find a meeting point for the modern and the old. Young lads played football in a bitumen court between ancient crumbling walls. Commuters scanned their QR codes to pay for buses which wound their way through a network of centuries-old passageways and tunnels. Jerusalem was a symbiosis of time through the ages.

We passed our bags through a scanner and walked through a metal detector, then washed our hands and faces with holy water before descending to the infamous Wailing Wall.

Scores of women were gathered around the wall, some reading bibles or scriptures, others praying quietly, some pressing their heads and hands against the stone and others weeping hysterically. Over on the men’s side there was music and loud recitals of prayers.

The religious fervour was almost palpable in the air, in a way I’d never seen or experienced before. I scrawled a short prayer on a piece of paper as River had instructed me to do, squeezed myself between the crush of bodies to stuff it into a crack in the wall, then slowly and carefully waked backwards, doing my best not to trip over legs and prams as I went. Walking backwards away from the Wall was a sign of religious respect, but it was also bloody difficult.

We took a bus to a quiet suburb of Jerusalem to meet a group of River’s friends who would be hosting us for the night. Their apartment was wonderfully bohemian, with mandalas handpainted on the walls and a green and orange 70’s kitchen that screamed student flat. I loved it. We sat on floor cushions arranged into a lounge and spent the evening drinking sage tea, eating bourekas with tahini and painting murals on a stranger’s cupboard whose name I still don’t know. I woke up in another stranger’s bed who was rather amusingly called Ben, who appeared in the doorway after a night shift at work and politely asked if he could have his bedroom back.

Winter in Israel was as hot as summer back in Cornwall, and although the cloud had settled in overnight I’d still managed to convince River and her friend to take me to a spring for a swim. Breakfast was as heavenly as every other dish I’d tried so far here; fresh falafels in pita with lashings of tahini and sweet, tangy gherkins.

We caught a bus to another part of the city then hopped down a dusty bank and before I knew it we were in the woods, taking a steep downhill hike into a valley that was completely shrouded from the sprawling city around us. On the hill opposite an unmistakable brutalist structure snaked its way across the border between Israel and Palestine, topped with barbed wire.

We arrived at a large if not slightly murky spring, just as a busload of tourists were leaving. We stripped off to bathe, peacefully alone among the cactus and bare trees, but the shadow of privilege did not escape me, and I knew that the people on the other side of that wall were not afforded the same freedoms as we were.

My time in Jerusalem was wrapped up with a plate of injera at an Ethiopian restaurant named Luci and a tour around the Mahane Yehuda market. No place enraptured my sense of wanderlust so much as the market; it was a bustling, thriving display of colour and smell. It was like every photograph I’d ever seen of the Middle East, with huge sacks of spices filling the air with their mingling scents, sellers calling out from stands filled with baklava and Turkish delight or freshly baked bread, fruits both fresh and dried spilling out from vendor’s stalls. All of this but with a distinctly Jewish twist; I stopped to buy Ben a kippah embroidered with the Star of David from a stall, which cost a fraction of the price of the kilo of halva I purchased just after.

In fact this would have been the perfect summary of my trip to Israel, had I not witnessed what I saw next. Walking down the main street back toward the bus station a van approached blaring loud music. It was brightly painted, with enormous speakers strapped to its roof and an image of a rabbi on its door. The van screeched to a halt at a red light and two young Orthodox Jews jumped out and started dancing around in the traffic to music which sounded something like klezmer meets techno, much to the bemusement of passersby. Just as quickly as they arrived the lights turned green and the two lads jumped back into their van and sped away, barely managing to slide the door closed and disappearing into the sunset with a hail of pounding bass. Behind them the blue light of a police car lit up, but they were already long gone. If I’d been asked to conjure up a mental image of Israel while on some kind of acid trip, no doubt that scene is what my brain would’ve created. We were laughing all the way back to the bus.

I spent most of the remainder of my time in and around the town of Daliyat-Al-Karmel, unique in Israel for having a majority Druze population, a distinct ethnic group and religion which developed out of Ismaili Islam. Although the Druze are Arabic in both language and culture, they do not identify as Muslims. The name Daliyat-al-Karmel translates to “Vineyards of Carmel”, and the Carmel mountains were where we’d spend most of our days walking, as well as the nearby kibbutz and woodland surrounding Kiryat Tiv’on.

It was here that I learned how to forage wild plants such as mallow leaves and, remarkably, wild asparagus. Around a foot long and thin like spaghetti, it tasted mild and sweet like garden peas. My hosts prepared a delicious meal of mallow leaf hash browns, foraged salad and smokey tofu with chopped up asparagus. To think I’d never liked asparagus before that day.

On my penultimate day in Israel the sun was fine and warm, and we ventured across fields of long wavy grass to reach a small stone hut that at first glance I’d assumed was some kind of water utility building. But inside was a clear and refreshingly cold spring, and a silver chalice used by devout Jews to perform their ablutions before shabbat. It made for a wonderful plunge pool, and we sat and dried off in the breeze with a croaking cacophony of frog calls all around us.

It was a fitting end to my time in this country, a place that had conjured images of strict religious enforcement and turbulent politics in the eyes of my friends and family, but had surprised me by being wholly and pleasantly the opposite. What I took from Israel was a distinctly laidback Mediterranean, even bohemian vibe, and a culture and cuisine brimming with all the things I loved most about travel. It was clear the younger generation I’d met were in favour of peace and freedom for all, which only enhanced my view that a country’s politics and its people are so often two separate entities. While it would be immoral to ignore the situation entirely when visiting, it is important to me always to be able to peel apart the layers, and see beyond the headlines.

Shalom, Israel, at least for now.

אני אוהב את ישראל

Ben’s Winter Olympics Beijing diary

19th January

Left Cornwall on the train to London, said goodbye to Lucy. Foot swollen the day before leaving. Pre-travel PCR test came back positive! By this time I was already in London. Hobbled around the city trying to find a pharmacy to take a Lateral Flow Test- negative. If I don’t have a negative PCR they won’t let me into China.

22nd January

PCR test finally came back negative! The night before my flight the hotel fire alarm went off and my drunken neighbours were banging doors into the early hours; I return that gesture at 6am the next morning.

Get to Heathrow Express and no service is running due to maintenance. Bugger. First one isn’t until 7:40, gets me to Heathrow with three hours to spare, then it’s a 15 minute walk from the train to terminal 2. 1½ hours waiting to check my luggage in, a further 20 minutes at security followed by another 15 minute walk to gate 42.

Shit- my Chinese customs declaration form. The app is down and the website equivalent is in Chinese. I somehow manage to get it authorised with 5 minutes left to board. No time to buy smokes, no time for breakfast.

That’s fine, I reassured myself. There will be a nice meal on the plane. Wrong. Fish or chicken. I take a pot noodle from them, then another because it’s not remotely filling. I’m also vegetarian. Breakfast 9 hours into the 13 hour flight is either chicken sausage or you guessed it- prawn noodles. I cave and take more noodles, picking out the prawns. I can’t wait to get to the hotel. Just another 6 hour flight and 5 hour drive to go. Thankfully I packed myself a treat for arrival. Oh fuck, another pot noodle.

23rd January (I think)

I arrive in Beijing to snow and am greeted by a wall of hazmat-clad officials. We were the only flight in and the entire international airport was empty bar our tired tribe. Then comes the most invasive PCR test I’ve ever had. It made me feel sick. We’re shimmied through various stations, up flights of stairs and down in lifts. Many QR codes and passport checks later and we board a bus. A 5 hour drive into the snowy mountains begins.

I see entire towns and cities purpose built for the Olympics, but hardly any civilians anywhere to be seen. Lots of checkpoints, brand new fuel stations with all the lights on but no customers and empty shelves inside. There are miles and miles of imported trees being held up in position by wooden props.

Finally arrive at the hotel after 26 hours of travel. I check in and wait in my hotel room for my PCR results. They don’t come so I sleep.

24th January

The next day I get my results- all clear. I head to the Chinese restaurant for breakfast, am met with very strange food items. The veggie noodles taste like fish so I stick to cold strange-tasting hash browns and fruit.

I go to get the bus to work, and end up getting in shit for my chef’s knives and I’m ferried around various people who don’t speak any English to get them cleared. For a country that’s so incredibly mechanical and industrious, there’s a surprising amount of confusion everywhere. The bus to the venue takes 45 minutes through snowy mountains, police checkpoints and Olympic checkpoints. My knives got through but somehow everyone else got in trouble.

No water on site so all we could do was unpack and stand around in the bitter cold.

26th January

Up all night shitting, later found out my spicy noodles had whale bone broth in them. Two hours of sleep ended up not being a problem. Still no water in the kitchen so not looking promising for the morning.

If nothing else, by the end of February I’ll have had a huge learning experience, hopefully not upset too many people and probably have eaten way more rancid meals than I care to think about again.

*Some delights from the local supermarket. Virtually everything was out of date.*

27th January

It kind of feels like I’m playing an old Xbox game, before games were open mapped, where every landscape other than the road you’re driving on is strategically fenced off and you’re unable to venture off the pre-approved route.

For a country of one billion, there seems to be very little civilian activity anywhere. None actually. It was -18ºC this morning and my eyelids were freezing on the walk to the bus. My wet hair also froze and nearly snapped. Won’t be washing it in the morning again.

Today the government have decided that to prevent the spread of COVID-19 they can no longer heat the buses. So we were quite literally freezing on the way in to work (a 45 minute commute).

They’ve also introduced anal COVID test swabbing.

29th January

Our hotel is like Fawlty towers. All the hot food is cold, the plates are freezing cold nobody understands us. Someone just asked for milk in his coffee and now he doesn’t have a coffee. Someone asked for a double espresso so they got two coffees instead.

They’ve got cereal but no milk.

All the pepper shakers had salt in them so my egg was salty and inedible.

When you enter several people rush over to ask you to sign in, then someone films you on a small camera while you use the buffet.

3rd February

Day before the Olympics opening ceremony. It’s -29ºC but there’s no snow at the Winter Olympics so they’ve created fake snow which falls from engineered clouds which are just over our small compound and the ski slopes.

8th February

Our bus tried to undertake a coach and some police also tried at the same time, nearly causing an accident. On the way home it tried to overtake three coaches and a minibus on a blind corner but obviously it ended badly and we nearly crashed.

Saw a car wrapped around a lamppost with a man beside it on the way to work. When we came back 12 hours later he was still there.

A few of us after work decided to take a bus to a random Olympic media centre. I got a newspaper with what seemed like pro-government and anti-West propaganda, then took a bus to another huge complex, got totally pissed as a fart and just about worked out how to get home.

9th February

Went down for breakfast, came back to room and my newspapers have vanished! Our group went to watch the training at the ski jump which was incredible! Felt truly privileged to be there. Freezing cold so stayed for half an hour or so. Went back to get more newspapers, this time I’ll hide them better!

Temperature reached -38ºC today. It’s so cold it’s scary.

Badly translated inspirational Chinese quotes: a series.

20th February

Became too busy to keep up with journal but the days all rolled in to one and flew by.

I leave the hotel one final time with a certificate of permanent residency and a cuddly toy in hand.

My journey ends at Beijing International Airport which is completely empty bar thirty or so event workers all eagerly waiting to get home. I’ll miss lots of the funny things about my time here and the great team I worked with. I won’t miss the cold hash browns and dodgy stomachs.

All the local people I was lucky enough to meet were genuinely lovely (if not fearful of their overseers) and I think China has a lot more to offer to tourists in the future. That is of course if you can ignore their government’s appalling human rights record, horrendous impact on the global climate, developing countries and their own Uyghur population.

Goodbye, China. At least for now.

再见，中国