Our tour bus picked up a few passengers from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and then straight onto highway 1 towards Massada. Passed the fork for Allenby Bridge (border crossing between Israel and Jordan which we had used just a few days back), and went past Qumran to reach Massada. The topography, the plants (mostly palms) which can thrive in the desert + the green house vegetables that the Israel government is trying to grow (as a surplus to help with winter times in the inland when not much can grow).... the colors looked very much similar to the landscape of Zion National Park, Utah.
The famous fort of Massada, 400 mtrs higher than the dead sea level (so pretty much at the sea level) was built by King Herod. King Herod was very brave yet brutal and shrewd. He wanted to make sure that he was making the roman king (Caesar) happy and yet build him some refuge in difficult times.
Originally the fort was built as a winter home for the king and his friends and had 3 step like structure. Saw multiple artifacts including water ducts and cisterns, roman baths, main square, columbarium(where the doves roosted and were later cooked as main source of meat by the king), the roooms where the dead sea scrolls were found. The scrolls were written in Hebrew which tells us how the language has no barriers of the rulers and how it survived for > 2000 years. The famous tale of mass suicide by the original inhabitants before becoming slaves of Roman empire was quite impressive! We still had the glorious memories of Massada when we arrived at Qumran and stopped over for lunch.
Post lunch we arrived at Kaalia beach to enjoy the dead sea, 470 meters below the sea level (the lowest point on the Earth). Jordan river feeds in water and nothing goes out of the dead sea. The waters are enriched with minerals and salts and are supposed to have medicinal values. It was so hard to believe at first, but indeed you float in the water ... nothing can ever sink in there and nothing can survive. The sea bed is full of sticky mud ... we played in the water + mud for about 2 hours and then it was time to go back to Tel Aviv. One more night to go home and retire early. Tomorrow we leave Israel.
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