Beyond the Old City:
Adrenaline Near Jerusalem

Every visitor knows vertical Jerusalem — the stone, the domes, the layers of the Old City. Almost none discover horizontal Jerusalem: drive west for about half an hour and the city dissolves into the Judean Hills, a green tangle of ridges, pine forest and terraced valleys threaded with some of the best driving roads in the country. Near the village of Nes Harim, those roads become EXR Racing's mountain-driving venue.

The format is simple and slightly addictive: you at the wheel of a real sports car, a certified English-speaking instructor beside you, and a route of climbs, descents and switchbacks that turns driving from transportation back into a craft. It's not about top speed — it's about rhythm, cornering, and the peculiar joy of a machine responding exactly to your hands while the landscape pours past.

This is the lowest-logistics adrenaline in the region — no overnight, no long desert transfer, no gear. A proven shape for the day:

• Morning:coffee in the city, then the short drive out — about 30 minutes and you're in another world.
• Late morning: briefing, then your session in the hills. Formats start around 60 minutes of driving (₪1,000, roughly $270) and scale up from there to ₪8,000 for a full-day experience — see pricing.
• Afternoon: back in Jerusalem in time for the Old City at golden hour — having covered a few centuries and a few hundred corners in a single day.

Traveling with someone who won't drive? They come along for the atmosphere and the views, and since every session includes professional photo and video coverage, both of you leave with the day documented. Couples take this further with a turn-taking format — that variant has its own guide.

Hills reward different virtues than a circuit does, and each car in the EXR fleetanswers differently. The Mitsubishi EVO X — 300 turbocharged horses, four-wheel drive, manual gearbox — is the born corner-carver, gripping through switchbacks like the rally car it descends from. The BMW M240's balanced turbo straight-six makes it the confidence pick for hill first-timers. And the Corvette C6 brings 450 hp of V8 theatre to every straight — less scalpel, more thunder, entirely unforgettable between the pines.

The practical bar is low: a valid license (foreign licenses accepted), closed shoes, and one WhatsApp message to +972-50-661-0451 — booking runs in English from any country, before or during your trip. If your itinerary also heads south, the southern Israel guide shows the desert-circuit counterpart at Arad, and the tourist guide answers the wider visitor questions — licenses, seasons, what to bring. The Old City will still be there at sunset. The hills are for the afternoon.