Well, there was ONE beautiful road in Israel which was not mentioned in any of the articles in my "Riding Israel" series: Road 10.

The reason for that is simple: this road is not open to the general public most of the year. The army only opens it on some of the Jewish holidays.

Road 10 is 181 Km of length, and it runs from the very South of Gaza strip to the Sayarim Junction in the South, which connects it to Road 12 to Eilat. All the road runs in parallel to the Israeli-Egyptian border.

The road is closed most of the year to the general public because of the activity of very violent smuggler gangs in the Egyptian side of the borders, who sometimes open fire on the Israeli army or people in the border to be able to get in and smuggle drugs and arms into Israel. However, during the Jewish holidays of Passover, Sukkot, and the Jewish New Year, the army takes special security measures and opens part of the road for public visitation. And yet, although it is only a small part of the road, it is the most interesting part, with the best views and a stunning geography.

Geography

The following is my Google Timeline from yesterday, when I joined the BMW Motorcycle Club for a visit to Road 10:

The part of Road 10 that is open to the public is marked in a red rectangle. The rest is the 200Km in each direction that I did to get there.

​If you look at this from a closer perspective, this is how it looks like:

I open my eyes and see myself at Ben-Gurion Airport. Trying to understand if it's true. Just yesterday I was marrying my son in Kfar Saba, and now I am here drinking an ice-coffee with Shmil in our way to Germany.

Yes, this is true. This is how things came out. In the afternoon next to the wedding, we were at the airport travelling to Germany, and in our maps and agenda the 100-year commemorative BMW Motorrad Days, and a tour through part of the North of Germany and West Czechia for 12 days.

Introduction

Hello again, my fellow readers and riders.

During the last months we have been talking here in a series of articles that spread the details of riding the different regions of Israel. The regions covered were:

1. The Western Galilee
2. The Upper Galilee
3. The Golan Heights
4. The Lower Galilee
5. Jerusalem Heights and Jerusalem
6. The Dead Sea
7. Eilat, and getting there
8. The return from Eilat to Tel Aviv

With this post we are going to conclude the series "Riding Israel", with some logistics details that would be required when planning a trip to Israel.

After crossing the country from Tel Aviv to the very North of it in Metula, and then South to Eilat, now it is time to take our last itinerary in the country, the one which will take us back from Eilat to Tel Aviv.

Thus, this is our last itinerary article - and I will write one more article after this one talking about logistics details.

Our journey will be only in part the same route that we used to get to Eilat. We will begin through Road 90 until we get to Kibbutz Lotan, where we will take a left to Road 40 to Mitzpe Ramon. From Neot Smadar to Mitzpe Ramon we will be at the same route that we took to the South, just in the opposite direction. After we arrive to Mitzpe Ramon, we will take a completely different path.

We have already covered many parts of Israel (read our previous articles for that), and we finished our last article at Ein Bokek at the Dead Sea.

Today we will continue moving South, in the direction of the Arava Desert and its capital, Eilat.

For regular tourists, travelling in cars, the most straightforward way to get to Eilat from Ein Bokek would be travelling straight down Road 90 until you get there. But this is a straight and boring road. Instead of travelling in the straight way, we are going to pick the beautiful and interesting way.

There are many things to see on the way to Eilat, but since they are not so close one to the other and we want to get to Eilat on a single day, we are going to divide them between our two trips, the trip to Eilat and then the trip back from Eilat to Tel Aviv. So be patient, and we will cover all the possible visit points in this area.

So this is the way we will do today:

The idea is to follow alternate routes to Road 90, finding interesting places to see, interesting roads to ride, and specially arriving to Eilat from the mountains, one of the most beautiful sceneries to see in Israel. Nevertheless, the initial kilometers in our trip will be through road 90, since this road is the road that goes along the red sea.

Well, we have already done the North of Israel, including the Western Galilee, the Upper Galilee, the Golan and the Lower Galilee. We have also visited the Jerusalem Hills, and also taken our time to visit Jerusalem, the end of our previous article.

​Today we are going to visit one of the most visited areas of Israel: The Dead Sea and the desert of Judea.

Hello again!

At this point we have already ridden the Western Galilee, the Upper Galilee, the Golan Heights and the Lower Galilee. I will leave the Tel Aviv and Central area to the end, since they are not really riding, but rather commuting - in most cases you will be riding in cities or main roads.

So today we will ride the Jerusalem heights and Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is 66 Km from Tel Aviv if you take the main highway to get there. However, if you do that, you miss beautiful places and sceneries that you wouldn't want to miss as a riding tourist. So, we will extend our trip to a ride of 98 Km with stops on our way through interesting places, which are worth the visit, travelling through beautiful and twisty roads.

If you have been following this series of articles about riding in Israel, you have probably seen our first 3 articles about the Western Galilee, the Upper Galilee and the Golan Heights.

This will be our last post covering the North of Israel, after which we will go South to the center of Israel and to its South. This post will cover the Lower Galilee.

There is a lot to see in the Lower Galilee, so this could be an itinerary for 1, 2 or 3 days depending on the number of points you decide to visit, and the time spent at each one of these points. The bright point is that most of the places to visit (except the last two or three in this article) are remarkably close to each other, so you won't be spending too much time travelling and you can sleep every night at the same hotel. In my opinion, the optimal tour would be divided into two days, one for Tiberias and the Northwest of the Kinneret Lake, and the second day for the Southwest of the lake, South of the lake, and Nazareth. This is the way in which I will compose this article.

Just press "Read More" to continue.

Since the beginning of this series, we have been exploring the North of Israel. We began with the Western Galilee and continued with Upper Galilee. We have two more items in the North before we continue to the Central Israel and later to the South.

As said above, today we leave for a moment the Galilee, in order to visit the Golan Heights.

In our overview of riding in Israel, and after we have surveyed the Western Galilee in our last article, we will now continue riding the North of the country, this time at the region called the Upper Galilee.

Above is a map of the North of Israel (from Wikipedia), including part of the Upper Galilee. It is incomplete, though, missing a small northern region called "The Galilee Finger", a narrow piece of land that points North, incrusted in Lebanon, and includes the towns of Kiryat Shemona and Metula.