Ein Gedi Nature Reserve

Ein Gedi Nature Reserve tickets and tours: which one to book

Ein Gedi is the oasis on the western shore of the Dead Sea, an hour and a half from Jerusalem and two and a half from Tel Aviv, and nearly every visitor arrives on the same day tour, sold in group and private versions from both cities: Masada in the morning, by cable car or, on the sunrise departures that leave at three, on foot up the Snake Path; then Ein Gedi for an hour's walk up Nahal David to the first waterfalls; then a float in the Dead Sea and its mud at one of the beaches or spas, and home by evening. It is an efficient way of seeing three famous places and gives the reserve about an hour, which reaches the lower pools and not the best of it. The hiking versions allow longer.

Independent visitors, by rental car or the Egged buses that run down Route 90 from Jerusalem, pay the Israel Nature and Parks Authority's entrance fee at the Nahal David gate, which also covers Nahal Arugot and the ancient synagogue on the same day, or use the multi-site pass; at peak times a reserved entry slot is required. The longer trails must be started by late morning, and the rangers close the gates to the upper routes early. Bring at least three litres of water a head in the warm months, a hat and shoes that can get wet; food may not be taken onto the trails, because of the ibex and the hyrax. The kibbutz next door has a hotel and a botanical garden.

Visiting Ein Gedi Nature Reserve: what you will see

The reserve was declared in 1971 and covers about fourteen square kilometres of the Judean desert escarpment where it drops to the Dead Sea, from 200 metres above sea level to more than 420 below, the lowest land on earth; its name means the spring of the kid. Four springs fed by rain that falls on the Judean hills to the west emerge here and send two permanent streams down desert canyons, Nahal David and Nahal Arugot, making a strip of tropical vegetation, reeds, giant cane, Sodom apple, acacia and jujube trees, in a landscape of bare rock with fifty millimetres of rain a year. The Nahal David trail climbs past a series of pools and cascades, where wading is allowed, to David's waterfall, a thin fall over a cliff hung with maidenhair fern, in forty minutes; the continuation climbs steeply out of the canyon to the Shulamit spring, Dodim's cave above the fall and the ruins of a Chalcolithic temple of about 3500 BC on a terrace with a view across the sea to the mountains of Moab.

Nahal Arugot, the quieter and longer canyon to the south, leads in an hour and a half to the Hidden waterfall and the upper pools. Nubian ibex, a herd of several hundred, walk the paths and the car park with indifference, rock hyraxes sun themselves on the boulders, Tristram's starlings whistle from the cliffs, and leopards lived here until the early 2000s. In the Bible David hid from Saul in the strongholds of Ein Gedi, and the Song of Songs praises its vineyards; the town's ancient wealth was balsam, the perfume plant, and the mosaic floor of its sixth-century synagogue carries a curse on anyone who reveals the town's secret. The Dead Sea has fallen by more than a metre a year for decades, and sinkholes have swallowed the old public beach and the date groves by the road.

Ein Gedi Nature Reserve: best time to go, seasons and hours

The reserve is open daily from 8 am to 4 pm in winter and 5 pm in summer, closing an hour earlier on Fridays and holiday eves, with last entry to the long trails much earlier. October to April is the season, with warm days when Jerusalem is cold, and the desert briefly green in February and March; from May to September the temperature passes 40 degrees, and only the shaded lower pools in the first hours of the morning are sensible.

Rain in the hills, even under a clear sky at the Dead Sea, sends flash floods down the canyons, and the reserve closes on flood warnings. Israeli school holidays and Saturdays are crowded. Allow two hours for Nahal David, a full day with Nahal Arugot. Masada is fifteen minutes south, Qumran half an hour north, and the Ein Bokek hotels and beaches half an hour south.