First of all, this is not a political blog and I don’t want this post to be political either -something that is difficult to achieve when talking about a piece of land that is either referred to as Palestine, the West Bank or even „disputed territories“. I will call it Palestine in this post, and that’s that. For me, it’s about travelling – and about meeting amazing people. On both sides.

When I planned to go to Israel, I had always contemplated visiting Palestine as well – however, I had wanted to go with a tour, as I did not know that this was easily possibly independently. Palestine is not a war-zone anymore. People live normal lives there. When I received an invite on Couchsurfing to stay with a girl in Ramallah, I was immediately excited and decided to make it my base for exploring Palestine for 2 days.

First, I left Jerusalem for Bethlehem Saturday morning. While no transport is going in Israel during Shabbath, busses to Palestine are operating their usual schedules. The drive was rather quick and could have been even quicker without the separation wall and checkpoints. The tourist information had offered to store my big backpack while I went sightseeing, but when I finally found their office, it was closed to my annoyance. Luckily a nice shop owner offered to keep an eye on my bag while I walked around…

First, I ventured to the Nativity Church to see the place where supposedly Jesus was born. Annoyingly, I had wasted too much time with storing my luggage so that it was very busy inside and I had to queue about 1h to be able to go down the little grotto to see the exact spot of Jesus‘ birth. It was certainly special to see and the experience was only slightly ruined by the massive tour groups and their respect-less guides who started shouting at each other about which group could enter first. Have I ever said I hate tour groups? I hate tour groups!

So I left rather quickly afterwards to see the milk grotto, a place where supposedly a drop of Mary’s breast milk dropped onto the ground. Hmm, was not that special though. I then walked around in the old town a bit which was nice and busy, and continued all the way back to the separation wall to see the cool graffiti on there, Banksy’s Armoured Dove nearby and the Walled Off Hotel. For me, that was actually the coolest part of Bethlehem!

I then took a shared taxi to Ramallah where I met up with Lama, my host, and chilled at her place for the rest of the day. In the evening, we cooked a traditional local dish together, containing pita bread, aubergine, tomatoes, yoghurt and a couple of spices. Simple, but so delicious!

Next day, I took a bus to Nablus, about 2h north of Ramallah. There aren’t any major sights, but the old town and market located in the little alleys – and I fell in love with it!! The locals were sooo friendly and just feeding me all the time. Everyone wanted to say hello, welcome, where are you from, take a picture or just said „come, try“ and gave me a date/chocolate/spices/some bread etc. It was so much fun!

If there is a dedicated attraction in Nablus, then it would probably be Al-Aqsa knafeh shop. The little shop sells the supposedly best knafeh in the Palestine and since this is the origin of knafeh, potentially the best one in the world. I don’t have any comparison yet, but what I ate in Nablus was truly, truly delicious!! Knafeh is a sweet dish that contains melted goat cheese and is best eaten hot. It’s difficult to describe, so you’ll just have to look at my pictures and trust me on this: Do try when in Nablus!

From Nablus, I took a shared taxi to Jericho where in the heat of the day I rented a bicycle to go around the city and see the different sights. Backpacker life! Distances were not too large though and the beautiful desert scenery made up for it. First I cycled to the cable car to get me up to the Monastery of Temptation. The ride was not cheap, but I wasn’t gonna hike up in the scorching midday sun. And it definitely was worth it! The views from the Austrian-built cable car were great already and once at the Monastery there were some really cool viewpoints as well from where you could see the Jericho, the surrounding area as well as some rock caves nearby. Super nice!! The monastery itself was not too special – it was more about the views in my opinion.

Next, I cycled to the excavations of Hisham’s Palace which were a bit better than expected but there’s still lots of work needed here to free the other mosaics and make the sight more appealing to the visitor.

Afterwards, my original plan was to see Wadi Qelt, but due to a misunderstanding I landed myself in the middle of nowhere, having to hitchhike my way back to Ramallah in the end. I did get some very nice views of the area before that, but sadly missed out on the true Wadi Qelt because of that. While I had never planned to hitchhike in the Palestine, it actually worked out pretty well and I made my way back to Ramallah safely. After heading out for some delicious Arab ice cream and a falafel sandwich, I said goodbye to Palestine and Lama early next day to make my way North to Tiberias…