Hiking in the desert of hermits

Due to the unprecedented success of previous trips to the desert of the Holy City – that is, Judea – and its pearl the monastery of Mar Saba and the mount Azazel, I again declare the draft of the brave and courageous, who are willing to overcome themselves and the 20 km of the desert. While the forecasts are magical and the Mar Saba is embraced by cumulus clouds, it is not too hot, not too cold, and all the hermits of the world recommend the 20-kilometer trek. So I invite everyone to join one of the most incredible and memorable journey through the most beautiful desert in Israel, and visit places that you definitely will tell about to your children and grandchildren!

Have you ever been flogged for eating apples? Have anyone brought to your feet in a silver casket the relics of one of the most famous and the great hermit monks? Have you fallen at least once in your life in a bubbling stream of the gutter? Have you heard anything about talking donkeys and mysterious bottom cells, where you only go with a candle? Do you know where the scapegoat was taken and from where the image of Satan appeared in Judaism? If the answers to any of these questions are ‘no’, you simply have to visit one of the most difficult to reach, and certainly the most beautiful monastery in the Judean desert – Mar Saba – and climb the mountain Azazel (a.k.a Muntar).

I guess I’ll never stop to admire its beauty and grandeur, which is not able to be shown by any picture of the world. However, enough praises.
The Mar Saba, being as I have said, the most beautiful monastery, continues to lead the ranking of the trash institutions in Israel. Only here, in the middle of the Judean desert, on the slope of Kidron, you can hear chilling stories about the secret life of the monks, miracles, extraordinary events, and listen to some modern music CDs.

Mar Saba is not just some hick monastery, which has about a dozen of some renegade monks. Mar Saba is the ideology, the last bastion of faith, style, prestige and a long waiting list for perspective residents. For centuries, the monks managed to preserve not only the ascetic way of life, but also the special status of the monastery. This is due, in part, to difficulties in access to its gates, which makes Mar Saba almost the only truly reclusive monastery of Israel, and secondly, with the careful selection of the “guests”. Sometimes church leaders spend years waiting for permission to enter the walls of the monastery and consider the receipt of one for the great honor and trust of the Patriarchate. And this is what the monks of the monastery write about the life of Sava: “The meeting with the angels for St. Sava was apparently an usual phenomenon for him” Indeed, for a long life as a monk in the Holy Land, Sava managed to come across not only the angels, but also with talking donkeys, tempting apples and the magic date palms.