Three days in Mitzpe Ramon: a hole in the desert that exists almost nowhere else

Two nights on the rim of the Ramon crater, a day on the floor of it among fossils and volcanic rock, and the Nabataean incense road on the way north.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Mitzpe Ramon
Places
9 across 3 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Mitzpe Ramon is a small town of a few thousand people on the edge of a hole in the desert forty kilometres long and five hundred metres deep. The hole is a makhtesh, an erosion crater that is neither volcanic nor a meteor strike, and the landform is so rare that there are only about seven of them on earth, all of them in this desert or in Sinai.

The town was put here in 1951 as a camp for the men building the road to Eilat, and for forty years there was no reason for anybody else to come. Now there is: a rim walk with the whole crater under it, a floor you can drive and hike, ibex wandering through the streets, and one of the darkest skies in the region.

Two nights is right. One day on the rim and in town, one full day down inside, and a drive north on the third morning past a canyon oasis and a Nabataean city on the old incense road.

Highlights

  • Standing on the rim at sunset with a five hundred metre drop below you and no fence to speak of
  • The Carpentry, a hill of black rock split into hexagonal prisms that look exactly like sawn timber
  • A cliff face on the crater floor studded with ammonite fossils the size of dinner plates
  • Nubian ibex, which come up into the town in the evening and stand in the road looking unimpressed

Where to stay

Mitzpe Ramon, two nights

The whole town looks one way, south, over the edge. Streets end at the cliff, the promenade runs along the top of it, and the view changes completely between morning and evening as the light moves across the crater walls.

Two nights gives a rim afternoon, a full day inside the crater, and a morning for the drive north. Add a third night if you want to walk one of the long trails on the floor.

Day by day

Day 1 in Mitzpe Ramon

The rim, the sculptures and the last light

Arrive in the afternoon and spend it on the edge. The visitor centre at the top explains what you are looking at, which matters here more than at most viewpoints: this is not a meteor crater and not a volcano, and the story of how it formed is genuinely strange.

Then walk the promenade along the cliff, which has sculpture set into it and a cantilevered platform out over the drop, and finish on a hill west of town for the sunset.

  1. 15:30

    Ilan Ramon Visitor Center

    Visit

    Built into the cliff at the edge of town and named for the first Israeli astronaut, who died aboard Columbia in 2003. Half of it explains how a soft rock dome eroded from the inside out over millions of years to leave this hole, and the other half is about him. Twenty minutes here saves you guessing at everything else.

  2. 17:00

    The Albert Promenade

    Visit

    A paved path along the cliff top from the visitor centre, with large sculptures placed along it and a walkway that projects out over the edge. It takes half an hour at a stroll, and the ibex that come up to graze the town's gardens are usually somewhere along it in the late afternoon.

  3. 18:00

    Har Gamal Viewpoint

    Visit

    A low hill at the western edge of town, ten minutes on foot from the hostels, and the place to end the day. The crater wall opposite turns red, then orange, then the temperature drops and everybody goes to dinner.

  4. 19:30

    Dinner in the industrial zone

    Eat

    The old workshops behind the town centre now hold most of the good cooking in Mitzpe Ramon, along with a coffee roaster and a bar. Kitchens close early, so eat by eight thirty.

With more time: After dark, walk five minutes out of town away from the streetlights and look up. This is one of the darkest inhabited places in the country and the Milky Way is plainly visible on a moonless night. Several operators run telescope evenings on the rim, and the university observatory on the ridge outside town is a working research telescope rather than a visitor attraction.

Day 2 in Mitzpe Ramon

Down onto the crater floor

The road drops off the rim in a series of hairpins and puts you on the floor in ten minutes, four hundred metres lower and in a completely different landscape: pale rock, black volcanic hills, dry riverbeds and nothing green at all.

Three stops are signposted off the road and each takes half an hour to an hour, with short walks in from the parking. Do them in order going east, and take the whole day rather than rushing back.

Start early. There is no shade down here, no water, and no phone signal in the wadis.

  1. 08:30

    "The Carpentry" (1)

    Visit

    A low hill of dark rock cracked into neat hexagonal prisms lying in stacks, as though somebody had sawn and piled timber and walked off. The columns formed when sandstone was baked by volcanic activity underneath it and cooled into that shape, and it is the strangest thing in the crater.

  2. 11:30

    Ammonite Wall (4)

    Visit

    A rock face on the northern side of the floor packed with fossil ammonites, some of them the size of a dinner plate, left from the sea that covered all of this. A signed path leads in from the road and it is a ten minute walk. Look, photograph, leave them where they are.

  3. 13:00

    Lunch out of the boot

    Eat

    There is nowhere at all to buy food on the crater floor. Bring lunch, more water than you think, and eat it in the shade of the car, because there is no other shade.

  4. 14:00

    Saharonim Spring and Outpost (3)

    Visit

    The lowest point of the crater, where the water that falls on forty kilometres of desert drains out through a gap in the wall. The spring is usually dry on the surface, and beside it stand the remains of a Nabataean khan that guarded the caravan road through here. It is the far end of the drive and the quietest place in the crater.

With more time: For walkers, the loop from the road to the spring and back through the canyon is thirteen kilometres and takes most of a day at an easy grade, with a dramatic gorge in the middle of it. For the view from above instead, the peak on the eastern rim looks straight down into the crater and is reached by a rough track, and the one on the western edge is the highest ground left from the dome that eroded away.

Day 3 in Mitzpe Ramon

North along the incense road

The drive out of the Negev goes past two of the best sites in the desert, both on Route 40 within half an hour of the town, so the last morning is worth starting early.

The Nabataeans ran incense and spices from Arabia to the Mediterranean along this line, and the cities they built to service the caravans still stand on the ridges above it.

From the last of them it is a straight run back up to the coast or the hills.

  1. 08:30

    Avdat

    Nature

    The largest Nabataean city in the Negev, on a ridge above the road, with a Byzantine church, wine presses cut into the rock and the remains of the terraced farming that made a town possible out here. It was a staging post on the incense route and is on the UNESCO list along with three other cities in this desert.

  2. 11:00

    Ein Avdat

    Nature

    A canyon in the chalk with pools, a waterfall in the wet season and poplars growing where the water surfaces, cut by a stream that only runs after rain. The walk in from the lower gate is flat for twenty minutes and then climbs the cliff on cut steps and ladders to the upper car park, which is the better way round if you have two cars. Ibex on the ledges are close to guaranteed.

  3. 14:00

    Midreshet Ben Gurion

    Other

    The desert campus above the Zin valley where Ben Gurion moved after leaving office to make the point that Israel's future was in the Negev. His hut is preserved as he left it and his grave is on the cliff edge a few minutes away, looking out over the canyon you have just walked.

  4. 16:00

    North to the coast

    Travel

    Two hours to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem on Route 40 and the motorway, or an hour to Beersheba if you are picking up the train.

With more time: Two more Nabataean cities lie off the same road if you have the day rather than the morning: one to the west with Byzantine churches standing to head height in the middle of nowhere, and one to the east that is smaller, better preserved and easier to walk. Driving south instead, the copper mines and rock arches at Timna are an hour and a half towards Eilat.

Before you go

Getting there and around

Mitzpe Ramon sits on Route 40 in the middle of the Negev, about two hours from Tel Aviv, two and a half from Jerusalem and an hour and a half from Eilat. Buses run from Beersheba several times a day and take an hour and a half.

You want a car. The crater floor, the canyon oasis and the Nabataean sites are all on or off Route 40 and none of them is walkable from town. A normal saloon handles the paved road across the crater floor; anything off it wants a four wheel drive or a tour.

The town itself is a grid of a few streets and everything in it is a ten minute walk from everything else.

Heat, cold and water

The town is at eight hundred and sixty metres and the desert nights are cold, sharply so in winter, when the temperature can drop close to freezing while the afternoon was pleasant. Take a fleece in every season.

Summer days on the crater floor pass forty degrees with no shade at all. Hike between October and April, start at first light in any month, and carry three litres of water each rather than the litre that feels sufficient in the car park.

Flash floods after winter rain close trails and sometimes the road across the floor. Check at the visitor centre before setting out on anything.

Where to stay and eat

The old industrial zone on the edge of town has been colonised by hostels, a small design hotel and a few good cafes, which is where most travellers end up. There are desert camps and khan style guesthouses out on the rim road with the view and no light pollution, and a couple of luxury places on the cliff edge.

Eating is limited and closes early: a handful of cafes and restaurants around the centre and the industrial zone, plus a supermarket. Book dinner and do not expect much after nine.

Nothing much runs on Shabbat, so shop on Friday morning if you are here over a weekend.

This is the emptiest place in Israel and the one that feels least like the rest of it. No queues, no tickets to book, no crowd at the viewpoint, and a landform you would have to go to Sinai to see anywhere else.

Two nights above the drop, one day down inside it, and a road north past a canyon full of ibex is about as good as a desert stop gets.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is it a meteor crater?
No, and neither is it volcanic. A dome of soft rock was pushed up, cracked at the top, and then eroded from the inside by water that drained out through one gap in the wall, leaving a closed valley with steep sides. The landform is called a makhtesh and there are only a handful of them, all in this desert and in Sinai.
Do I need a four wheel drive?
Not for the main road across the crater floor, which is paved, or for the signposted stops off it. You do need one, or a guided jeep tour, for the tracks to the rim viewpoints and the far corners of the floor. Most guesthouses will book a tour for you.
Is two nights enough?
Two nights covers the rim, the floor and the drive north. A third night is worth it if you want to walk the long loop on the crater floor, take a night tour with a telescope, or add a day trip south to Timna.
What about the ibex?
Nubian ibex live on the cliffs and come into town in the evenings to eat people's gardens. They are wild, entirely unbothered by cars and not to be fed. You will also see them on the ledges at the canyon oasis, usually within the first ten minutes.
Can I change the days around?
Copy it into the planner and reorder as you like, keeping the crater floor for a day you can start at six and the Nabataean sites for a day you are driving anyway.