As our little group huffed and puffed up the baking mountainside in the semi darkness of pre-dawn, I wondered what I was actually paying for here? Having been whipped into a frenzy of excitement by the hostel guy about this hike and then impulsively spending my entire weeks budget on it, I started to get the feeling that I wasn't going to get what I paid for. 'It's awesome' he promised, 'Mount Masada at sunrise is like nothing you've ever seen before ... it'll literally blow

Duncan was born with a rare condition. His kidneys were underdeveloped and didn't grow as he did. This meant that by the time he was 19, he was terminally ill. His tiny kidneys couldn't process the toxins in his grown mans body and were failing on a chronic scale. He lost an incredible amount of weight, being unable to eat or drink anything without throwing up, he could barely stand and his skin was like paper. When he walked into the A&E department, it was unanimously agreed

'West is best', the guy at the hostel desk told me. 'The sun rises in the East and if you sleep on the East side, you'll start sweating at 5am ... believe me, that sucks!' I had landed in Jerusalem that morning, after a trip riddled with bomb scares and gun toting soldiers. Nearly getting blown up on your travels seemed to be the order of the day here and when a lone rucksack lying innocently in a corner had drawn attention to itself by simply existing, some worried soul had