The Dead Sea surface is about 430 m below sea level and falls a metre a year. Its salinity of around 34 percent supports no fish and no plants, only microorganisms, and makes the water dense enough that a person floats without effort. It sits in the Jordan Rift Valley with Jordan on the far shore.
Floating
Twenty minutes is enough. Do not shave that day, keep your head out of the water, and rinse immediately if it reaches your eyes. Every beach has freshwater showers. The mineral mud is smeared on, dried and rinsed off, and there is a substantial cosmetics industry built on it. Ein Bokek is the main resort strip with free public beach and lifeguards.
Masada
A plateau 450 m above the shore, fortified by Herod the Great with two palaces, cisterns and storerooms. In 73 or 74 CE, after the fall of Jerusalem, the last Jewish rebels held it against the Tenth Legion, which built a siege ramp still visible on the western side. Josephus records that the 960 defenders killed themselves rather than surrender, an account historians treat with care. The site is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Take the cable car, or climb the Snake Path in an hour before dawn to reach the top for sunrise over the Moab mountains; the path closes when the heat rises.
Ein Gedi
A freshwater oasis on the western shore, with waterfalls in a desert canyon, ibex that come down to the paths and rock hyrax on the rocks. Two canyons, Nahal David and Nahal Arugot, have marked trails of one to four hours. It is the contrast that makes it: green water in a landscape with almost no rainfall.
Qumran
Where a Bedouin shepherd found the first Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 in a cave, eventually yielding about 900 manuscripts including the oldest known copies of Hebrew Bible texts, a thousand years older than any previously available. The settlement ruins and the caves are visible from the site.
The shrinking
The lake has lost about a third of its surface since 1960 because the Jordan River is almost entirely diverted and minerals are extracted from evaporation ponds. Thousands of sinkholes have opened along the shore, closing roads and beaches. Some resorts now pump water to reach guests.
Getting there
Ein Bokek is about 90 minutes from Jerusalem and two and a half hours from Tel Aviv, on a road that descends below sea level with markers showing the altitude. Buses run to the beaches and to Masada. Summer temperatures exceed 40 degrees and the low altitude makes the air feel heavy, so most visitors come between October and April.