To the CENTER OF THE WORLD and back

I cherish this trip as it is not common that you get to visit ISRAEL. It is place that was visited by most number of invaders than any place on earth. English ruled India for spices and gold, US invaded Iraq for oil, and many other places were ravaged for its riches or military advantage, fertile land etc. But what brought all these invaders to Jerusalem which had no fertile land, no gold or oil was the first question our guide to Jerusalem asked. My answer was the obvious one that “it was the sacred place of three religions”, but then it could not explain the interest shown by impious like Alexander the great and others.

Thus explains the Traditional Theory:
As it was considered to be a flat world, Israel was considered the center of the world and ruling it was important to rule the world, and to rule the world was one desire that all the invaders had in common.

Just 7.1 million strong Israel has seen many more wars than India. It has left India far behind in development in the same 60 years of independence. It presents visitors a great amalgam of Historic and Modern structures. The extensive use of Jerusalem stone (or limestone like stones) gives most of it cities specially Jerusalem a golden yellow hue. It does look like a place out of history books. I thought India was the most religiously confused place before I saw Jerusalem. Like here the same building contains Tomb of David on ground floor (sacred to Jews), the last supper hall on first floor (sacred to Christianity) and the building itself is a Mosque. Courtesy its conflict stained history and present, security at all places is quite strict often to dismay of tourist but they do compensate by recruiting all beautiful girls :-) . The well timed rains(irony ofcourse ...!) did stop me from enjoying beauties of/on the beaches to full :-(. Definitely the Mall culture has caught up too much with Israel. Food probably due to Arab influence does looks similar to India at places. I tried a different place or a different dish everyday and that most people understood English made it easier to place the order :-) .

And I did find MALLUS even there.

Ref : Internet and wikipedia and "word of mouth" info from friends in Israel