Ein Gedi: Tours & Tickets

The only thing that you need to know, before booking this tour: You will have to get up VERY early. The tour starts at 3:30 AM local time. If you are not cool with that, chose one of the later options for seeing Masada. There are also tours that start at 9 AM. Other than that, it's absolutely incredible! Walking up to Masada and seeing the sunrise over the Dead Sea is an experience of a lifetime. I did it with my parents and they were absolutely blown away, too. The story of Masada is super interesting (and quite brutal!), so make sure you bring a guidebook so you can read up on it. It dates back to the Roman period and was the biggest showdown between the Jewish people and the Roman empire. To the present day, the place is a central piece of the Jewish identity and hence a must see when visiting Israel. After Masada, the tour visits Ein Gedi, where you will be able to hike up a natural spring and shower under beautiful natural waterfalls. Finally you get to swim in the Dead Sea.

All in all a great tour with a reliable tour guide and a good price-performance ratio. Highlights were of course the sunrise at Masada and Ein Gedi with it's animals and the waterfal. Things to mind: - The climb at Masada is really exhausting. The cable car starts at 8am,, so you have to walk. If your old or not that sporty, it is possible, that you are not in time in Masada for the sunrise. - We don't know why everybody's talking about the dead sea and how wonderful it is. You feel like a dead fish in (too) salty, oily, nearly boiling water. If you make the mistake to put finger in your eyes, you feeling the pains of your life and after 30 minutes lying at the "beach" (more like mud desert) you sweating like hell. You can say, that you were at the lowest point at the earth, maybe that's the experience. But, like I said: The tour was all in all a great adventure!

I was reading the other reviews about this hard hike and sweating and I totally knew what I am going to do, but when I actually were doing it, it was sooooo hard, like I wanted to stop the hike up to the hill, but I wanted to see sunrise as well, so the conclusion is - you will sweat a lot, but it will be worth it. National park with waterfalls was nothing really special, just being in nature was nice. In hot weather would not recommend. And finally - dead sea - I loved it, floating in the water was fun and new experience, we were there for one and half hours and it was totally enough, because you cannot be very long time in salty water. We made these mud full-body masks as well and pictures were really nice haha. p.s. I would recommend doing afternoon tour with cable ride up there.

The tour was beautiful and Masada, Ein Gedi and the Dead Sea are amazing to visit! But the organisation was very bad! We lost 1-2 hours because drove right throught Jerusalem to get in our Guide. And his English was very bad!! We almost did not understand anything. The Lunch was late (at 3 pm). And we wish to have more time at Ein Gedi. At the end the Guide and the Drover came back 30 minutes to late. But all in one - the places we have seen were amazing and i would like to go there again!

If you want to do a lot of breathtaking things in a short period of time, this is just right for you! Climbing Masada was exhausting, but the view absolutely fantastic! The stay in En Gedi was a bit too short and entrance fees too high for that. Would have also loved to spend more time floating in the Dead Sea. But all in all it was an amazing experience!!