A little over a year ago, in June 2021, Amber was serving at Shizafon in the Arava desert. The Coronavirus had waned a little, and I decided that Riva and I should take a trip south, and meet up with her, perhaps in Eilat. That led me to the thought of stopping overnight en route, which reminded me about Kibbutz Ein Gedi.
The Ein Gedi Hotel and spa is not, on paper at least, my normal 'cup of tea'! But I have wanted to stay there for a long time, for reasons that will become clear. So I decided that perhaps we would simply make our stay there, rather than only stopping on the way south, and Amber would travel north to meet us. And that is what we did.
Whilst the spa and pool would be of more interest to Riva and Amber, my interests would be comfortably satisfied by the hotel surroundings, for the hotel and kibbutz are—literally and uniquely—inside a recognised botanical garden. Although the kibbutz sits on a parched cliff above a dry valley in the desiccated Judaean desert, next to the Dead Sea, adjacent to ancient Ein Gedi and its spring, it is an oasis of lush green, flowering and fragrant interest! And what a marvellous time we had!
Long before the idea of a hotel or a botanical garden, the kibbutz was begun as a Nachal settlement, in 1953. It was not at its current site—atop a rocky hill between Wadi Arugot and Wadi David, above ancient Ein Gedi—but was first established near the place where today's Ein Gedi Field School is located.
Above left to right: The original Kibbutz Ein Gedi, on the northern bank of Wadi Arugot; workers clear fields of stones at Kibbutz Ein Gedi; kibbutz workers being taken to clear stones [Source: Willem van de Poll, 1964, Dutch National Archives, Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, via Wikimedia Commons]
The kibbutz only moved up the hill in July 1959 where, initially, a simple garden of trees was planted to give shade, and a lawn as a communal gathering spot for the evenings, and even to sleep on in the summer heat! Gradually it developed.... You can find out more about the kibbutz's story in the film below.
Located on the edge of border separating Israel from the Jordanian-held 'West Bank', the kibbutz was completely isolated in the desert, the nearest Israeli village being several hours away via dirt roads. It was only after the 1967 Six-Day War that the kibbutz's isolation was ended, with the paving of a road from Jericho south, along the shore of the Dead Sea (now part of Route 90). This opened the door to the development of the kibbutz, but the hotel began before that, despite—or many because of—the isolation!
The hotel began in a curious manner: it was started by its guests! In the early 1960s, seven women from Rehovot heard of the unique healing properties of the Dead Sea and decided to holiday there. In those days Ein Gedi was still a small outpost in a barren area with no proper road access or transportation. Every morning, one of the kibbutz members would take them to the beach in a Command Car and they would each dig a ditch by one of the springs and sit in it until the Command Car returned to pick them up. Accounts of this remote spot spread by word of mouth, creating a growing demand for accommodation, and one enthusiastic kibbutz member decided to take two wooden cabins from the old outpost and put them on the hill where Ein Gedi currently stands. He added a concrete structure that served as showers and toilets for all of the guests and thus founded the Ein Gedi Guesthouse. You can read how the hotel developed after that here.
Today the kibbutz makes an economic success not only through agriculture, but also the tourism which those seven women from Rehovot prompted and, since 1997, from the profitable Ein Gedi Mineral Water Company Ltd, which it established for the bottling and marketing of the mineral water from the ancient spring, now Israel's third most popular brand of bottled water, capturing 17% of the market.
The hotel has a main building with a reception, bar and shop, with the restaurant in a separate building, and the bedrooms thinly-spread through the gardens in rows of chalets. As soon as we arrived, I had to get my bare feet into the lush lawn and smell the fragrant plants.
There are huge baobabs, which were planted in 1960, and many other tropical plants from Madagascar, Australia and the Americas, as well as native plants. But it started very differently. When the kibbutzniks moved up onto the hill they found scarce, salty and rocky marlstone soil, though with an abundance of sweet water springs, a warm winter and a very hot, dry summer. But they had youthful enthusiasm, recruiting volunteers and visitors to excavate and to remove stones, to plant grass and to weed, to build terraces and to pave paths. They soon made what was primarily something for themselves: a green, soft, shady place to come together after the back-breaking work in the fields, to talk, to debate, to drink Turkish coffee, to sing and make music, and to keep cooler than inside at night. You can find a slide show of the plants and gardens, as they intertwine amongst the hotel's chalets and the houses of the kibbutzniks, at the end of this blog.
The kibbutz is without roads, apart from one leading along its edge to a car park at the top of the kibbutz and another car park next to the hotel at the bottom. All the residents have electric buggies, and the hotel also provides a taxi service with these vehicles, so we didn’t need to trek uphill through the heat to the dining room, although we did walk back downhill in the evenings, enjoying the gardens in a pleasant post-prandial stroll. As well as the gardens, the hotel is known for its food. Though not aiming at the level of cordon bleu, the food is excellent, homely and extremely copious, being served fresh but buffet-style on a basis of unlimited seconds (and thirds). Eating there feels like being in a kibbutz dining hall, or a 1950s workers’ resort, but physically upgraded and in beautiful surrounds. In fact the restaurant started its life as the kibbutz dining hall, but now the kibbutz has its own separate dining hall. We stayed half board, so we had a huge Israeli buffet-style breakfast, and an evening meal, which was enough for us, although Amber, being younger, supplemented it with pizza and a beer next to the pool at lunchtimes.
The entrance to the hotel restaurant hides the internal round structure of what was the original kibbutz dining hall, shown (right) under construction in 1959
Below is a slide show of some of the plants and gardens, which envelope the hotel's chalets and the houses of the kibbutzniks.
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