Wild ride in the Golan Heights

Har Bental is the strategic mountain fortress of the Golan.  From its peak, everything below looks smooth, serene and gentle.  From an ATV in the valley below, everything is different.  Thank you, Ariele, for arranging our wild ride in the Golan!

The rich volcanic soil is certainly good material, but the rocks, the brambles and the parched summers make faithful farming necessary.  The drama is very different in the valley.  There, one sees the traces of the Syrian army, the ruined city of Kuneitra which had been that army's base in the Golan.  

We visited the ruins of the Syrian Officers' training school, so well constructed that the Israeli bombs that crashed through its roof barely reached the second floor.  In the corridor of the school, we saw a fig wood doorpost, unvarnished or finished, that contained enough life in it to sprout once again from the leaky roof--a testimony to how things tend to go on living even under the harshest of conditions.  

Our ATV tour guide, a young Druze from a local village, drove ahead of us, sometimes racing at great speed.  This was a challenge to those of us who only know paved roads... From the valley, we looked up to the two mountains, Avital and (Har) Bental.  Once, they had been part of the same volcano.  Now separated, Avi (father) of Tal (Dew), is the older.  The younger, Ben (son) Tal, stands at his side. Our trip continued north....