What I Saw In The Holy Land 4.1
The portions of the pilgrimage that take place outside of Jerusalem are unquestionably the most visually satisfying because so little of the land is cultivated. Cables of various kinds dot the hills, the roads are paved, and the Bedouins are in modern dress and sometimes have traded their traditional tents in for cargo containers, but those are the only readily visible concessions to the 21st century. You'll drive for a time without seeing any sign of life, then suddenly stumble onto a Bedouin enclave, and the hills will be absolutely covered with goats or sheep with a few camels, dogs or donkeys to boot.
As we scooted by on our bus (bring your dramamine if you've any tendency to motion sickness, because the road is through the mountains and the drivers race), besides being amazed at the rock mountains in the background, I was thinking about Christ walking pretty much this same road on foot. Or in caravan. The journey from Nazareth to Jerusalem on foot takes about a week they say, so that means the Passover feast took the Holy Family about a month to celebrate --two weeks travel, and about two weeks in Jerusalem for the feast.
As we passed a once famous, now abandoned, inn called "The Good Samaritan," our guide remarked: "In Christ's time, thieves came out here to the hills to rob the caravans going up and down to and from Jerusalem. Now all the thieves are in Jerusalem."
