My personal love and sympathy for Israel, it’s landscape and culture are well known. Still there is one thing I hardly can explain – my deepest admiration of the israelian south – from Be’er Sheva through the Negev down to the beginning Sinai peninsula.
I hardly could tell what really triggers my soul so strong. Maybe it is the absence of something, the minimalism? On the other hand the desert only seems minimal if we hesitate to look closer.
Looking down from Mitzpe Ramon to the crater.
Israel’s deserts are truly natural gems. They are all different – from the red stony hills of the Judean Desert east of Jerusalem to the dunes of the Sinai peninsula at the Egyptian border.
My favourite landscape starts quickly south of Be’er Sheva. First a step like vegetation, sorting the beduine villages along the road. These villages seem like a universe in a nutshell. Trailers, busses, containers, tents – some for businesses of all kind, others for living.
Mitzpe Ramon all of a sudden changes everything and you are thrown into a redish, colourful mars-alike landscape. Massive, high rocks guard the road serpents down to the crater.
Heading towards Eilat the view again changes. Now the “real” Negev starts and turns itself step by step into Sinai.
MORE ISRAEL
Israel through the analog lense: Come with me for a photographic trip through Israel
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