One of the best things about Israeli hostels is their free breakfasts! And not to mention free wifi coverage in the whole hostel as well as really meticulously clean rooms, bathrooms and kitchen areas. I love the fact that I don’t have to worry about breakfast. It can really make a huge difference to the rest of your day, especially if you’re a backpacker on a shoestring budget! Before coming, I expected the ‘free breakfast’ to be really basic – toast, butter, jam, coffee and tea. But to my delight, they also provided three huge baskets of red capsicums, zucchinis and tomatoes as well as hard boiled eggs (or uncooked eggs if you’d like to make your own scrambled or fried eggs).

It’s seriously one of the best things a hostel can provide, because often when you are away in a new place, you don’t want to have to worry about hunting for places to get vegetables and fruits. And Israel seems to lack big supermarkets like Coles and Safeway where you can get cheap food to cook for yourself. So for me, it’s really nice to be able to have a good, healthy breakfast to start off the day – since I wake up at around five thirty in the morning! But that only happens when I’m backpacking! ;)

If you are going to do this whole backpacking thing in Israel, make sure you look for the hostels that provide free breakfasts and free wifi (so you can use Messenger or Whatsapp to contact friends and family instead of using your phone’s international roaming or buying a local SIM card). These two things can be a lifesaver, because some places can be really far from local markets or mini-marts. And especially because on Shabbat everything closes, you’ll be stuck in a hostel with an empty stomach.

So far, I’m really, really glad that I decided to backpack in Israel! It is an awesome place to do it because they have an extensive bus network and a reliable train system too. The buses are pretty on time and very frequent, especially in the city areas. Also, most people speak pretty good English, so you can ask for directions or buy things without much drama. Another flipping awesome thing about travelling here is the blessed fact that you can drink tap water anywhere. Yes, yes, yes! You don’t have to buy water or boil water like you would have to in many other Asian or Middle Eastern countries. I filled up my bottle today at various rest stops while on the way through the Beer Sheva pass and the Arava desert today – and all is well so far!

So yes, there are many, many reasons why Israel is the place to go – especially in summer (well, simply because I love summer weather), but even probably all year round. I’m looking forward to discovering more and more good things about Israel as I backpack on!