Wadi Qilt

Two Saturdays ago my friend Rodney and I were in the YMCA and noticed a new picture in the display case. It showed my friend Shahar, who works at the Y and occasionally pummels without mercy in squash, and beneath the picture was a page of text in Arabic. We soon noticed this picture and text all over the Y and something about the display seemed creepy. We thought it might be an announcement that Shahar had left the Y...or worse!


Fortunately, we were wrong. In fact, the text announced that on the following Wednesday Shahar was leading a hike through the Wadi Qilt, which is a water channel that cuts through the Judean desert from Jerusalem to Jericho. It sounded like a great opportunity, especially going with a group of Palestinians, since most of the trail is in the West Bank. The next Tuesday Shahar was lifeguarding when I went to do my laps, so I asked if it'd be all right if Rodney and I came. He said, "No. Why not?" This response really stumped me, so I said, "It's OK." And he said, "Yes. It's OK." We were set!

We met at the Y the next morning at 6:30 am and rode in Shahar's car to Ma'ale Adummim, which is just outside Jerusalem. After parking at a gas station, we made the short walk to the trail which would lead us down to the wadi.


Here's the beginning of the wadi, which looked and felt a little like an abandoned Dharma Initiative station:
It is strange to be hiking through the desert and then come upon running water like this:
Here is part of our rag-tag team. Yours truly in the bottom left and above me is Shahar. Beside him is an older man everyone called Hajj. "Hajj" is an honorific title given to someone who has completed a pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca, which is one of the five pillars of Islam. Hajj wasn't particularly well suited for the hike, and Shahar told me later that he had tried to dissuade him from coming. But he made it all right. I'm not sure who the guy in the bottom right corner is.

Here is Shahar managing one of the many wadi crosses we had to make. Unlike the barren surrounding desert, the wadi is jam-packed with vegetation, making the trail impassable in places. Thus we had to switch sides often to keep going. The wadis also get very narrow sometimes, making flash floods a dangerous possibility. But today there was nothing but blue skies all around.
Here is a shot of Rodney as we wait for our turn to cross the wadi:
And here is a photo of some of our group:
And here is another group photo. Hajj (second from right) was sporting a T-shirt that said "Kuala Lupur, Malaysia." Between this shirt and his dark sock/sneaker combo, I felt a real fashion kinship with him. I cannot say the same for the guy on the far right.

Here's a shot of me before the same water fall. Yes, I was the only one who wore khaki pants for the hike. If you look at their cuffs, you can see where I slipped in the wadi during a crossing. By the end of the hike, my shoes smelled pretty much like raw sewage.

Here is a shot of Hajj negotiating this ladder down to the wadi. The joker with the stick was smacking him on the butt the whole way down, which everyone found funny (except maybe Hajj).

Along the way we encountered two flocks that had been brought down to the wadi for water. This was the first:

Soon the natural wadi was channeled into an aqueduct that flows all the way into Jericho, so it was the best trailguide for the rest of the hike. There has been an aqueduct through this wadi at least since the time just before Jesus:

There were a few houses along the aqueduct, mostly Bedouin homes. Here is one boy who came out to watch us pass through:

Definitely, the low point of the day came when we stopped for a rest and one of the guys hands me a water bottle. "Thank you," I said and took a big gulp. To my unfortunate surprise the bottle was full of milk, not water. Not fresh milk. Not cold milk. But nasty, warm, sour milk. It was disgusting, but I passed it to Rodney anyway and made him have a sip, too. For the rest of the guys, it was no problem -- they were drinking away.

Here is just one of the milk bottles being passed around during the break (though not the one I drank from). Even after I had sucked down three Wuther's butterscotch candies, I kept burping up that sour milk taste. It was horrible!
Here is a shot of us crossing the wadi once again. This time the only way across was to use the aqueduct as a bridge. Some took of their shoes and walked through the water, but others of us walked along the rims.

One of the highlights of the walk is the St. George of Koziba monastery. It dates back to Byzantine time and is still run by Greek Orthodox monks:

At last we got our first look at Jericho. It was a beautiful sight after such a long walk!

On our way from the trail to the main road, where we caught a taxi back to the cars in Ma'ale Adummim, we stopped at this roadside mosque, where the rest of the troop prayed. Rodney and I sat in the shade in front of the mosque and talked at length about how disgusting the sour milk was.