 Hi guys, welcome back to my youtube channel. This is Daniel Rosell here going for a walk today into the valley of Hald Gehinam valley starting out from the Mount Zion Hotel here. So the Jerusalem trail which is basically I think it's about a 39 kilometer trail around Jerusalem. It actually part of it goes from the bottom of this valley. It might be a bit hard to hear me because you can see it well you can't see the wind but it's very windy today and it's forecast that it's going to start lashing rain again in like an hour or two so I brought along my trusty windproof umbrella. So we're kind of in the intermediate period here between two different storm systems in Israel. We just had snow in the north of the country in the Golan. There was forecast to fall in Jerusalem according to some people never actually happened but we're going to have another storm system coming so tomorrow's top temperature is seven degrees Celsius so it's chilly at the moment. So this is the Mount Zion Hotel now this place sorry we just passed it. It's currently derelict closer renovations but you can see it probably says here exactly what they're doing to the Mount Zion Hotel. This is the cable car museum on Mount Zion. I did a video the last day of the interesting tunnel what's called the Mount Zion Trench and that was kind of a complementary system to the best of my understanding to the better known cable car and you can see that cable car well it'll come into view in a second. Those way those are dark rain clouds over the old city of Jerusalem here. It's forecast to begin raining at about 4 p.m. That's the cable car you can see it just next to the Mount Zion Hotel there and that was lowered every night time when the Jordanians were in the old city. Every single night time they put it down so that it was sorry every single morning so that it would not be detected. So I'm just going to what I'm going to do here we're going to go through Zurich Garden and that's the garden here at the bottom of this it's going to lead through the Hinoam Valley and we're going to get to a recent thing that the so this is a Jerusalem trail marking in fact. See Jerusalem trail it's got a gold blue in the Jerusalem line however for reasons that I haven't figured out yet the actual trail markings are these blue and white and much or this is the trail marking or just part of it we'll definitely get to see them as we go down. Do you know what I'm going to actually start here you can also start here so we're going into now the Hinoam Valley this is the Jerusalem walks national park and where we're going to get to there's actually a place just up here where you can do some rock climbing if that's your thing. We're going in the direction now of Abutor and Silwan. Jabal Batin Hilwa is the neighborhood of Silwan it's going to be coming into view as well very shortly and this is a really really nice national park the Czech Republic recently opened it's sign posted here is Czech House it's not an embassy it's not a consulate it's slightly below that but it was you know heralded by the Israeli government as signs of rapprochement there you can see the cable where it begins and it's running here overhead towards the old city so you can just imagine Jordanian snipers here's the trail marking someone eventually in the comments is going to solve this mystery for me they appear wherever you're on this trail it's a vertical blue stripe next to two white stripes I believe it's the Jerusalem trail because that's where they appear or if not then it is some ancillary trail to the Jerusalem trail anyway we're going down into this big garden where we're going to get to in a few minutes is something slightly controversial the city of David which is a right-wing organization called in Hebrew Elad recently opened what they're describing as a park for biblical agriculture and that's at the end here where the trail goes through so you can't have to go around it because it's there and what this is basically they a link to it in the description it's a whole controversy they apparently sort of confiscated Palestinian land to put this museum here showing how agriculture was done in the bible which I don't know about the Palestinian aspect I don't know the facts of the case I will just say that as a tourist I think it's a pity that what should be open parkland is now closed off and the two times I've tried to get there it's been closed so they say oh it's open all the time but again I've tried to access it both times and it's now you can't access it so we're coming through this park here looks like there's some guys in the municipality this is labeled on the map as Zurich Garden and what we're seeing here so we're now in the valley of Hinom great big expansive park has to be said it's not that used apparently I have seen people here like riding their horses because big spaces like this just weren't that common in Jerusalem the Jerusalem municipality did put on a food truck festival here and I'm going to actually just kind of go through the center of the grain so that's where the cliff is for those who are into rock climbing you can do that up there we're going here through on the right is Abu Tor on the left is Mount Zion so this is the valley between Abu Tor and Mount Zion the Hinom Valley which was the original biblical incarnation of hell on earth where there was child sacrifices to deity where people believed to be a deity so someone did a very good youtube video I forget her name she's a Brazilian youtuber I watched her last night it was really good and she says that you know if you can just picture the sound of screaming children being burned alive this is the tree that went down here and uh drums pretty horrific stuff this actually happened so this was the original valley of hell and you can read about the history of the Hinom Valley on Wikipedia so this actually the Jerusalem trail will lead just to go on a quick tangent actually there are um trail paths leading up to Mount Zion which people can go on and they're used mostly by Palestinian residents of this area you can see these ancient trees here fantastic they're used mostly by local Palestinians and they will go up to um Mount Zion so you can actually walk I might go up there on the way back just for variety in this video so where we're coming to now is the entrance to this new installation it's called in Hebrew the farm in Gai and we can check if the front gate's open but every time I try it as I said it's been closed so this is it if you've ever wondered how far this park continues through the Hinom Valley well it actually goes further and now of course there is this obstacle in the way this road will lead up into Abutor I'm just going to try to intuitively follow the trail it's going to wrap around um Silvan and Abutor before I do that you know I'm going to go up the hill briefly because it is really amazing you see it from when you're going around the city of david you can just see this meandering road going down the mountain I use the word mountain liberally uh there's another project here called by the guy so this is the new this is the entrance to the new installation by the city of david oh it's actually open today that's nice and um they have put up the fence here not sure whether I'll try to go through or anyway I wanted I wanted to show these trails because these are really interesting this one on the right I don't know where it leads the one on the left will take you up the mountain here overlooking the Hinom Valley which is pretty cool so I'm going to go up this for a few minutes it's amazing how I love checking out these localities so just be careful if you're in this area people drive really really fast up these roads so I'm going to cross the road while I have a space between cars so just cross the road this one is apparently like a road for cars you'd want to have a pretty decent vehicle to go on this road but nevertheless you can see there's actually a car driving on it I think this will lead into the village of syrwan if I'm not mistaken I've only taken it a few hundred meters so I don't know that for sure so this is a kind of crazy off-road terrain that exists in East Jerusalem I mean it's effectively another world when you talk about differences in infrastructure this one is just wrapping around there's actually a few of these paths that just kind of so up there is Mount Zion and this Palestinian village in front of us is I believe Jebel Batin Hilwa which means I believe in Arabic the hill Jebel is a hill or a mountain the hill of beautiful houses so that's this crazy road and you can go up a two I'm going to show you the second crazy road this is like a shortcut if you want to go up to Mount Zion cut through the valley you can quite literally cut through the valley and then get up to Abu Tor if you live in the German colony and you want to avoid going around then you can take this like dirt path it's actually not so off-road in averted commas there is a little footpath here I don't think this this one you can do by car you can just see how kind of craggy and everything this is pretty incredible quite steep here we're getting in decent shape doing these videos I did see these random packs of dogs the last time I was around the old city so I have no idea whose dogs they were I already mentioned that because what my vulnerability as a hiker is that I'm a scaredy cat scared of dogs because like almost bitten as a so here's what I mean by there is a path you see are pretty cool I'm going up to the Mount Mount Zion as I said I'm going to go back down because I want to do this walking back before the sun goes down slash the rainstorm starts and this below us is the new farm which I think I'm just going to be able to walk through walk into not sure what to do with the camera but you know what they say better to ask for forgiveness and permission I think it's a public park anyway so technically public property I have my Femi Pam 2 today on the Yulanzi M234 so it was impressive in videos it gives you a little bit of room puts it out for my body a small bit makes a bit easier to record I may be told to stop recording in which case I'll just have to cut and resume from when I got past this new installation but if not we'll keep going so here's the new facility right it's beautiful in here you can hear the waterfall I'm going to just ask the guy if I can go through here before I assume anything so okay so these are the I'm going to do a separate video I wrote these guys an email last night asking if I can come in sometime to have an event going on waiting to hear back from them in the meantime this looks like kind of where it ends and it just continues this is the ancient olive oil press I believe there this is a relatively new thing by the way in terms of this attraction and you can see these are I presume exhibits from ancient methods of extracting olive oil you can see there's a group of guys here on the trail oh look at this some animals whoa and those are sheep this was unexpected there were no if you just leave the heights what you got ah so it's locked off in this direction all right so I'm gonna try maybe that's like an organized tour or something we're showing them showing them the sheep I'm gonna go back because I did this yesterday and I know that if I go back on to the actual road here looks like they're still in the process of building this thing there's rain clouds we're getting darker there's our trail marker this is what I mean about all these roads going up the mountain I can see well two two ascents and a couple of crossroads presumably leading into that part of seal one this is as far as I know part of the Jerusalem trail and we're going to come down or up I'm not really sure figure it out pretty incredible views from this in this point if you see some fellas with their grocery shopping so I guess people use that hill so we're now kind of out of the valley of hell which is always comforting here's another trail marker these are useful just to know I'm a complete rookie to hiking I just bought some uh what did I buy today this will lead down back in to the valley after the fence for the new ancient agricultural so if you want to go down back into the Hinnom valley then you can just take that staircase and it'll descend you down at a place after where the uh agricultural installation exists you can see all the way back there to the old city of Jerusalem those hotels are at the entrance to the old city and this is a path on I'm trying to work on my bearings on the southern side of the Hinnom valley so that's the northern side of the valley and this is southern side I'm just going to continue for only a little bit more depending on how the terrain looks over here because I don't have time today to take this all the way through until it's ending this is by the guy and this looks like the trail continues here I do have an app on my phone for this I might just open that I'm trying to source an actual map for the for the Jerusalem Trail I don't believe it's part of the Israel Trail because it's not marked on maps it's like its own sort of trail so we're still running through the valley here it really kind of runs down and this will basically wrap around Mount Zion which is the hill you're looking at here and it will continue onto the other side and where it was the last day in Asawana it continued there oh wow okay all right all right so there's a guy grazing sheep this was an interesting experience I'm not expecting to encounter a wild pack of sheep now you can see in the distance the security barrier down that way with his sheep and I have to admit this is the point I'm checking out because I cannot see the trail markers anywhere and I haven't been able to get detailed maps yet so I don't really want to go around randomly running into sheep so anyway this is the scraggie wild life here you can see that dude hurting his flock so that's the descent into the actual valley that's where the guy brought his sheep so I think I need to come back and I know a little bit more about hiking because I'm not sure if that means like you're supposed to take a left or right here and the trail continues up here I'm really not sure so anyway didn't get as far as I expected I got to do some more research and bring along a detailed map for the next time I try this let's see how far I got still the decent 20-30 minute walk which isn't bad the signs tell us who we're in the valley of you know I finally got my app working here looks to me so there's it's marked as both the blue map blue line and there is the Jerusalem trail line and the Jerusalem trail line looks like it runs around through the street and just trying to see if I can get down here there's a way out of the valley and onto the street level I guess we'll find out so I thought that guy hurting his goat I thought he was part of the biblical I thought he was I thought that guy was like an actor or whatever but he was just like a real guy hurting his dog because there was like a little tour group before him so I guess he was just a guy like you know hurting so this is the valley after the part that is now part of the biblical thing you can see there's security cameras there so it's still this area is pretty tightly controlled I'm gonna try and make my way down and hope there's a hope there's an exit because those walls are like too high to climb over they're actually pretty pretty tall just jumped there so this land is privately tended land by Palestinians but I think it's still part of the national national park you can see there's a trail running through it I guess it's clearly used for some livestock rearing I can see like tractor marks here in the ground this is kind of how it looks the other trail I was on the other day around the area of Asawanna so we're back now in the valley of Hinom now above the kind of cliff that was where we were previously or where I was previously I'm just looking for an opening here on the left so that I can get up and on to the footpath on that road pretty fascinating that this territory exists just outside the walls of the old city of Jerusalem I see an opening finally that's good so yeah these as far as I know are used by hobbyist rock climbers you can see the pretty steep cliff face and this whole valley is full of these ancient burial caves also so we're going to come out now on to Guy Ben Hinom street so as far as I know I'm like kind of getting back onto the Jerusalem trail I think this is also going to take me into Seal Am but at least I won't be kind of coming into the backyard of somebody's house which is kind of the situation I had going on previously there this continues the Hinom Valley itself see if there's another entrance maybe you can take another look in you can see there is Palestinian houses as I mentioned before you can tell that because both the style of architecture and the fact they're black the the heating they're they're called in Hebrew a dude shamish I don't know the word in Arabic it's what's on the roof there to provide store water basically looks like there's actually a pretty decent footpath running through running through it there I'm using my phone in urgent need of a repair because the screen broke last week I'm using an app in order to try figure out where on earth I am looks to me like I'm actually on the path and it's going to figure it's going to kind of perambulate around so we're going around the walls of the old city now on the path beneath that this is kind of towards the end of the Hinom Valley so this is the end definitely continuation of the trail is marked as being here I can't see where that would continue to you because there's a church here at the end it's going to it looks like there's roadworks here just to add to the general chaos so I'm wondering if the trail actually continues up there on the height the problem with this the problem with this app I'm using is that the resolution just isn't good enough to see these details the scale isn't good enough so yeah I think I'm going to turn around here because there's like construction a traffic jam I'm almost out of battery and I'm not exactly sure where the trail continues again so that lesson learned get either good offline mapping or get detailed paper maps before you try something like this this was interesting anyway just to see what's down here I don't see any way the trail could continue there because there's just like a church but they can come better prepared next time so I'm going to end the video here because I'm just looping back at this point to where it came from it's probably about 30 minutes back in that direction thank you for tuning in watching this video and more videos exploring trails hikes places in Jerusalem will be coming up soon you