Future Projects
Behind these mountains, looking north from the Sinai Desert to the Negev Desert, lies a vast gently sloping plain – a wadi, to be precise. Wadi Ovda is the size of Greater Manchester, and is surrounded on all sides by majestic mountains, such as these. The now diminishing Bedouin camel traders still pass by this area, en route from the base of the Sinai Peninsula in the Red Sea, up to the markets of Beersheba and Jerusalem.
Wadi Ovda is for most of the year barren and inactive, but of course nature can be violent and extreme when the rain storms suddenly flood the wadi – returning it to its natural feature as a huge collection area for this valuable resource. An ideal place to build a military airbase!
While ecology was not a major consideration, virtually all of Israel’s seventy jets for this airbase, would be placed in underground concrete shelters and sanded over – leaving only the runways above ground. Eventually economic necessity prevailed, and the airbase was expanded commercially as Eilat International Airport until 2019.
I had the good fortune to be employed as a survey engineer on the initial airbase construction, when the desert was an unspoilt expanse of serene beauty and fiery mountains, as you see above. I became in effect a well paid resident tourist, unwittingly part of Middle East history.
My fifth book ‘OVDA’ is now underway. A light-hearted account of work, comradeship and travel in the Holy Lands of Israel and Palestine – before the hard borders.