By Laurie Copans

Associated Press writer

updated 2:50 p.m. ET June 11, 2008

MOUNT OF BEATITUDES, Israel - A dirt path begins across the road from a bus-congested holy site on Israel's Sea of Galilee, winding up a hill covered with wild oat and thistle.

Thousands of pilgrims each year visit the stone church at Tabgha and other sanctuaries marking Jesus' miracles. But few venture beyond the crowds to the landscape Jesus walked in Galilee. Those who do find silence and solace on the rocky hills and in the shade of the olive trees that cover the plains.

Now a private Israeli project has set down a 40-mile hiking path through the region where Jesus ministered. The Jesus Trail hopes to bring thousands of tourists to follow in his footsteps to hear the songbirds, smell the wild dill and reflect along the way.

Since the trail is not yet marked, travelers can hire a tour guide, download GPS coordinates from Jesustrail.com or pick up trail maps at tourist sites. The path is meant to be hiked in four days. Pilgrims can sleep near the start of the trail in Nazareth, the town Jesus lived in as a boy, and travel each day to the start of a section. Or they can stay at the occasional guest house offered by kibbutzim and Arab communities or carry tents with them.

The path is an alternative to bus tours that stop only at the known holy sites.

"I think the trail more than anything brings out the human nature of Jesus when the Bible talks about him becoming flesh and living among the people," said David Landis, an American who has helped lay out the trail. "I meet the people and I travel the land and I see the flowers and the wildlife, the real things ... that really come alive for me in the story."

If you go Hiking Israel's Jesus trail: Tour guides: David Landis at 011-972-52-628-4585; Maoz Inon at 011-972-54-432-2352. Other trails, tour guides and operators: Yuval Sharon, 011-972-54-483-7650; Sar-El Tours. GPS Rentals: http://www.north.co.il/, http://www.yehuda-tal.com/. Economy accommodations: Fauzi Azar Inn; Israel Hostels; Israel Youth Hostels Association; Society for Protection of Nature in Israel; (For luxury accommodations, try the Scots Hotel.) Church of the Annunciation: Open Monday-Saturday 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m with limited hours on Sunday. Phone 011-972-4-657-2501. Kana's Wedding Church: Open daily 10 a.m. to noon and 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Phone 011-972-4-651-7011. Mount of Beatitudes: Open daily 8 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. to 4:45 p.m. Phone 011-972-4-679-0978. Tabgha: Open Monday-Saturday 10 a.m. to noon. Phone 011-972-4-667-8100. Additional resources: Visit http://www.inisrael.com/ or http://www.goisrael.com/. An excellent guidebook to ancient sites is "The Holy Land," by Jerome Murphy-O'Connor. Weather: Israel's summers can be very hot, and rain in the winter months can turn the ground into an almost-impassable clay-like mud. But the weather is predictable. The best months to hike in Israel are March and April and September through November.

My hike in April with Landis and the Israeli brain behind the endeavor, entrepreneur Maoz Inon, began before sunup in Nazareth at the Fauzi Azar Inn, a hostel in a 200-year-old Arab mansion that Inon manages in Nazareth's Old City.

I awoke to the sound of the call to prayer from several mosques combined with the lively screeching of swifts as they darted over the brightening sky. Bells soon began to ring at the Church of the Annunciation, calling believers to Sunday worship at the sanctuary where tradition says God told Mary she would give birth to his son.

We alternated between foot and Inon's car since we had to fit the entire trip into one day.

Starting by car, our first stop was the Arab village of Kana, about nine miles into the trail. At the 19th-century Wedding Church commemorating Jesus' miracle here of changing water into wine at a wedding, we met a swarm of tourists from Georgia, Alabama and Ohio.

Dan Balilty / AP Austrian hikers climb the Jesus Trail toward a church on the Mount of Beatitudes in the Galilee in northern Israel.

Standing in the church's cobblestone yard, group leader David Hughes, a pastor, pointed out that the stone structure, like any trail purporting to follow ancient travels, cannot be proven as a place that Jesus actually visited. But even without definitive historic sites, Hughes said he could see why pilgrims would find it meaningful to hike in an area like the Galilee, and soak up the landscape.

"You get the more reflective, meditative, you know, looking-in type aspect of your relationship with Jesus by taking that walk," said Hughes, of Rutledge, Ga. "The more intimate you become with the land, the more the land becomes intimate to you, the smells, the feel, the hills."

Israeli tour guide Yuval Sharon has led Christian groups along a route that differs slightly from the Jesus Trail. But Sharon says that for visitors to the Galilee "it's most important that they walk like Jesus did and don't travel in a car, even if it's not exactly the same path that Jesus followed."

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