The Allon Road: An Accidental Journey through the West Bank

Stark. Remote. Beautiful. A little scary.

These are only a few of the ways one can describe the Allon Road – a high mountain passageway meandering like a sheep trail through the Samarian and Judean Hills in the West Bank. Yes, that West Bank, the one in Israel. Not the West Bank located on the other side of the river in New Orleans. The road served as a portal back to a time when shepherds with their herds of sheep were more common than cars, and Bedouins decided to settle down.

Our trip on Allon Road was an adventure and an accidental one at that. But I am a wanderer and wonderer, so I loved every minute of the drive.

One cannot fully appreciate the accidental nature of the journey without knowing about the rental car Kimberly, and I picked up at the Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv the day before. Calling our rented Kia Picanto a compact car would give you the wrong idea. My Honda Civic, a modern “compact,” would dwarf this car. At 5 feet wide and 11 feet long, tiny is the only way to describe the Picanto. The sub-compact model is classified as a “city car” designed to navigate the traffic and parking challenges of a big modern city rather than the open road. But the price was right, so we rented it and took it on a road trip.

We rose early that morning and set off on a trip to Caesarea Maritima on the coast of Israel and then to Galilee to see Capernaum and Magdala. We enjoyed all our stops (our destinations) and glimpses of Megiddo and Mount Tabor along the way. It was in the parking lot at Magdala that our journey took a turn South toward Allon Road.

Using the Waze app the rental company suggested, I searched for directions back to our Guest House halfway across Israel. The route would take us down to Jericho, up to Jerusalem, and on the Neve Shalom. That sounded like a fun way to end our trip rather than simply backtracking the way we came.

However, the Waze app has a unique approach to navigation. Waze attempts to find the best route and constantly re-routes the driver to avoid bad pockets of traffic. I believe that’s how we wound up on the Allon Road – somewhere between Magdala and the Allon Road turn, Waze decided to skip Jericho and send us through the mountains of the West Bank.

Now to be clear, both roads run through the West Bank. Highway 90, which follows the Jordan River from the Sea of Galilee through Jericho to the Dead Sea, passes through the West Bank. In fact, any trip to the Dead Sea, Masada, or the Herodium/Herodion takes the traveler on a brief foray into the West Bank “Area C.” Area C is controlled by the Israelis. Large red warning signs mark Area A (Palestinian control) and Area B (Palestinian villages). Area A is entirely off-limits for Israelis (and our rental car per the contract we signed). The Allon Road stays in Area C – though we saw a number of those red warning signs along the way. At one point, we noticed a large dirt berm just to the right of the highway – a security measure to separate Area C and the areas under Palestinian control.

The Allon Road rises and falls with the contour of the land, but there were far more rises than falls. Deep valleys border the path, which often followed mountain ridges or hugged the side of even taller mountains. We passed by the make-shift compounds of Bedouin families with their telltale tarps and shade cloth stretched over simple wooden structures. While technically movable, these camps have not moved in many, many years. Flocks of sheep and goats grazed on the sparely vegetated landscape under the watchful eyes of their shepherds and donkeys.

At times the little Picanto struggled to climb – its 1.0-liter 3-cylinder engine simply was not made for this terrain. Though traffic was light – a mixture of cars with the yellow and black Israeli tags and the white and green tags of Palestine – several cars passed us, including a small Suzuki car that was even more ridiculous than our Picanto.

Just a tiny dot on a ribbon of highway in the vast sky, we felt the enormity of creation as we snaked through the mountains ringed by deep valleys. We felt so small. Up high, we could see directly into the vivid blue sky above the mountains. Below the blue layer was a wispy brown layer of dust blowing up from the Judean Wilderness. We were in awe of the haunting beauty that was too big and unique to capture with a camera.

While the ups and downs and switchbacks along Allon Road made our drive seem longer than 54 miles, the peace of the road was broken all too soon. As we reached the outskirts of Jerusalem, impatient drivers were free with their horns, and traffic snarled to a plodding pace. We immediately felt the loss of what we had experienced. We immediately missed the quiet stretches and stark beauty of Allon Road. Our own secret mountain highway – our portal into a simpler time — was only a memory.