Day 249 - The Great Wall of China

How great is this...



So my alarm goes off at 6:30am, I stumble out of bed, throw on about 6 layers of clothes and head bleary eyed to reception where the bus is waiting to take me to the Great Wall of China. The thing about china is that whilst there's LOADS of stuff to do here, there's only a couple of things you really associate with china. The Great Wall, of course. The Terracotta Warriors. Some great cities - Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing. But that's kinda it. Yeah, a trip on the Yangtze River wouldn't go amiss, but I don't think we'll make that on this trip. So really, today was gonna be a highlight for me. If not because its one of the only things I knew about china before coming here, but also because its supposed to be totally amazing. So yeah, I decided to book myself on a 9km hike over the wall from Jongaling to Simatai - two remote, unrestored and crumbling sections of the wall that offer a more unique (aka less touristy) experience than some of the sites nearer to Beijing. Sam (who doesn't hike) has opted for a bus tour, so after a brief farewell in reception, I'm asleep in the back of the minibus with 2 canadian girls heading towards the wall - 2 hours north of the city.



It pretty cold up here - there's a sparse covering of snow and a chill in the air that makes my teeth chatter before i've even stepped out of the minibus. Its bitter, and despite wearing as much as I possibly could, my nose goes numb before the rest of my body slowly turns to ice. A public toilet (contender for most disgusting public toilet ever) has a trough of frozen yellow ice which I add to whilst bouncing around to warm up. But before long, we're walking up the path towards the wall.



I think its not unique to china, but its something I strongly associate with it. Here, the misty, smoggy cloud cover makes the surrounding mountains look awesome - each mountain a different shade of grey, fading to near-white for the furthest peaks. And here, approaching the wall from below, every different shade has the sillouette of watch towers and sections of wall along it as far as you can see. Its amazing. Although its still SO COLD.





Anyway, uphill for 20 minutes takes my breath away so I can't talk, but fills my body with enough heat to be able to concentrate on the impending hike and not question whether I was going to survive. Our female guide is accompanied by 3 woman with bulky bags - obviously prepped to sell us something. One approaches me and in her best english insists that "we walk wall with you. then you buy book. ok?". I laugh, show her my 20 yaun note (just over a quid) and make it pretty clear that its all I have. She seems unphased.



And with that, we take our first steps onto the wall. What can i say - right, its exactly how you would expect it. From photos, documentaries, david copperfield illusions. Exactly. Its about 20ft wide, stepped in places, undulating over the watershed of the mountains. This whole section has been clearly restored for tourists, but we can see that just 2 or 3 watchtowers into the distance the wall starts crumbling and the watchtowers are falling apart. Its exciting. And our guide points at the furthest watchtower we can see, miles away, and states "tower 20. we go 30". And we start walking.



The rest is pretty much history. We walked for about 5 hours, through varying states of the walls condition. At first its like a scene out of Labyrinth, with twisted staircases and crumbling walls. At times, one whole side of the wall has been destroyed and we're picking out footsteps carefully to avoid a slip into the thick bushes just metres below. It can be SO STEEP - so steep that you have to use your hand and feet to clamber up the broken rock surface. And going downhill is more scary than up, because the path is so smooth and steep that just the littlest bit of ice would leave you on your backside. and sliding.





We probably passed about 30 people on the whole hike. which is amazing. For almost all of the time, we were alone on the wall. away from the crowds and those annoying people who insist on standing in the line of your camera lens. it was silent too - no loud americans, no laughing school kids. The sun was shining, and the trek meant we were shedding layers at every watchtower, and the silence made it peaceful. The loudest noise, apart from the regular banter with the two great canadian girls (kim and deanna) I went with, was the sound of rocks scraping under foot.



About 2 hours in, our guide disappears and we're left alone with the 3 women who want to sell us stuff. There're pretty pushy and after 10 minutes of explaining that I only had 20 yuan (just over a quid) left, they eventually took my money in exchange for some postcards and sulked off. I liked their style though - follow us over rough terrain, point out a couple of interesting facts ("here - mongolia. here - china") then corner us and demand money for being faux-guides. They kinda deserved it just for having to walk up the final incline, which was something like 150 steps at a 60degree angle. But I never condone tourist-bullying, so after they left we stopped feeling guilty that they were following and enjoyed the remainder of the hike.





And 3 hours later we came to the end of the hike at Simatai. There's a 1.5km walk back to the car park, or a 3 quid zip line down across a lake, so we opted for the overpriced zip line and bombed down to the car park in less than 30 seconds. And some trail mix and rice crispy cakes later we were asleep in the minibus (again) heading back to Beijing.



I loved the great wall. And i loved that it wasn't overrun by tourists. and I love that at points I was 4km from the nearest road. I love that the rubbish bins stopped after 5 watchtowers, and started again just before the end. I love that we met some lone dude sat with his stuff right in the middle of the trek, and after we passed, he wandered off in the opposite direction. slowly. I loved seeing the wall's watchtowers scattered across the horizon, and stepping over the crumbling remains of once impressive, 3-storied towers. The scale of the wall is immense - in 5 hours we trekked 0.002% of the wall's length. And this thing is massive. And it must have been hard work. There's something about it, right. Something amazing. So yeah - i loved the great wall.