Even before the Sea of Galilee, Mount Tabor rises from the Jezreel Valley: the round, wooded mountain standing alone in the middle of the valley, a church and monastery on its summit. From the air, the winding road to the top looks like a folded ribbon, and all around spread the field-carpets of the valley where modern agricultural settlement began more than a century ago.

The moment you reach the Sea of Galilee from the west is hard to forget: the Arbel cliff opens beneath the helicopter, a vertical rock wall plunging hundreds of meters toward the lake, pocked with caves where Jewish fighters fortified themselves during Herod's campaigns in the Galilee, as recorded by the historian Josephus. And beyond the cliff, the whole lake, all at once.

The Sea of Galilee is the lowest freshwater lake in the world, and only from the air can you see its complete shape, the shape that tradition says gave it its Hebrew name, Kinneret, after the kinor, a lyre. Around the lake, at almost every point, a layer of history: Tiberias, founded in the Roman era some two thousand years ago; Capernaum and the lakeside churches; and Magdala, the ancient town whose excavations, uncovered in recent decades, continue to surprise researchers.

Near the Arbel rises a twin-peaked hill: the Horns of Hattin. Here, in the summer of 1187, Saladin defeated the Crusader army in one of the most famous battles in the country's history, a battle that changed the face of the entire region. From the air, the battlefield unfolds exactly as the commanders saw it: the hill, the dry expanse, and the Sea of Galilee glittering beyond, so close and so far from the thirsty men who fought here.

To the west, Safed shines on its mountaintop, and to the east stretches the Golan Heights, an entirely different world: dark basalt soils, evidence of ancient volcanic activity, fields and vineyards upon them, and on clear days Mount Hermon closing the picture to the north. Between the Golan and the Galilee runs the valley where the Jordan flows into the lake, and to the south open the Jordan Valley and the Jezreel Valley, carpets of farmland.

Ninety minutes, and an entire country passes beneath you.

The North and Sea of Galilee route: about 90 minutes of landscape, water and history.מסלול הצפון והכנרת: כ-90 דקות של נוף, מים והיסטוריה.