Mitzpe Ramon

Mitzpe Ramon began in 1951 as a camp for the workers building Highway 40, the road from Beersheba towards Eilat, on a rim of the Negev plateau that had been crossed for centuries by caravan and Bedouin routes but never settled. The makhtesh below had long been known to geologists as an unusual landform — an erosion crater, not a meteorite or volcanic one, formed where a hard cap of rock was breached and the softer layers beneath were washed away.

The first permanent residents, young families from elsewhere in Israel, settled in 1956, and the town filled like other development towns of the period with new immigrants directed to the desert, among them many from the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Work came from the road, from quarries and from military installations nearby. When the main highway to Eilat was rerouted through the Arava, the town lost much of its passing trade and went through decades of unemployment and departure, with the young leaving for the coast.

Its revival came from the desert itself. The crater and its surroundings were protected as a nature reserve, a visitor centre opened on the rim, and from the 1990s the town began marketing itself for hiking, cycling, wildlife and dark-sky astronomy. Hotels and lodges were built along the cliff edge, the old industrial zone was taken over by artists and small workshops, and a place once known mainly as a stop on the road to Eilat became a destination in its own right.

For a town of a few thousand people, Mitzpe Ramon holds unusually varied communities side by side. The descendants of the original immigrant settlers form the core; religious families occupy part of the town; and a steady inflow of artists, musicians, desert guides and people seeking quiet has arrived since the 1990s. Bedouin families live and herd in the surrounding highlands.

The desert shapes the local identity more than anything else. Residents talk in terms of the makhtesh, the weather and the night sky, and there is a strong conservation ethos: light pollution, litter, off-road driving and the habituation of the ibex that wander into the streets are all live local concerns. Galleries, studios and craft workshops cluster in the old industrial sheds, and small music and desert-culture gatherings are held through the cooler months.

Manners are informal and directness is normal, as across Israel, but the pace is slower than in the cities. Shabbat is widely observed: shops shut on Friday afternoon, the buses stop, and the rim promenade fills instead with families walking. Visitors are expected to treat the crater as a nature reserve rather than a playground — staying on trails, taking rubbish out, and keeping the darkness intact.

Close to 6,000 people live in Mitzpe Ramon, a small local authority and the most isolated town in the central Negev. Most housing is in low blocks and terraces from the town's first decades, with newer private houses on the edges; the population is young by Israeli standards and turnover is high, as people arrive for a few years of desert life and others leave for work.

Tourism is now the main employer — hotels, lodges, guiding, cafés and the visitor centre — alongside the local council, schools, quarrying, small manufacturing and jobs at nearby military and research installations. Wages are below the national average and the nearest hospital, university and large shops are in Beersheba, an hour and a half away, so the drive north is part of ordinary life.

The day begins early, before the heat, and pauses in the afternoon. Evenings are spent outdoors in the mild months, and the cold, clear nights of winter are when the town's astronomy is at its best. Ibex come down into the streets to graze, which is charming and also a problem for gardens and traffic. Water, the cost of housing driven up by holiday lets, and the balance between growth and the quiet that people come for are the recurring local arguments.

Eating in Mitzpe Ramon is desert cooking rather than city cuisine. Bedouin hospitality sets the tone at the camps and lodges around the town: coffee bitter with cardamom poured from a long-spouted brass pot, sweet tea with sage or wormwood, thin flatbread baked on a domed metal griddle, and rice with lamb or chicken for guests, all eaten seated low on cushions.

The Negev's own produce turns up on local menus. Goat farms along the highway to the north make fresh and aged cheeses, often served with desert herbs; vineyards on the highlands, watered drop by drop, supply boutique wines; and Medjool dates and desert-grown vegetables come from the Arava valley. North African Jewish cooking, brought by the families who settled the development towns, contributes couscous with vegetable broth, chraime — fish in a spicy red pepper and tomato sauce — and sfenj doughnuts at Hanukkah.

In the town centre, the everyday food is the same as anywhere in Israel: hummus with chickpeas and olive oil, falafel in pita with salads and tahini, shawarma, bourekas and pastries from the bakery, and strong coffee. The old industrial zone has a scattering of cafés and a bakery. Supplies come up the road from Beersheba, so choice is limited and self-caterers heading into the desert are advised to buy before they leave town.