The Golan Heights, a plateau at an average altitude of 1000m, was covered in snow. We learned that 3 days ago many roads had been impassable due to heavy snowfall. And the road up Mt Hermon was still not open.
We had lunch in the Druze village of Ma’asada (not sure I got the spelling right). Later we saw Nimrod castle in twilight. Unfortunately, it was already closed for visitors for today.
Near the Syrian border we stopped at a car park and wittnessed a special moment. A bus full of students returned from Damascus through the usually closed Syrian-Israeli border. Their families and loads of journalists were waiting for them. We were surprised that Israeli citizens were allowed to study in Syria in the first place. Though the reason probably is that those people were Druze from the Golan, which belonged to Syria until it was occupied by Israel in the Six-Day war in 1967. Internationally the Golan Heights are still not recognized as Israeli territory.
Basically we did a big tour of the Golan today – east to the Syrian border, then north to Mt Hermon, west to the Lebanese border, and returned back to Tiberias for the night.
