On my day off during my visit to Beijing I visited the Great Wall. It really was the most amazing experience – completely breathtaking scenery and a challenging enough route to give me a real sense of accomplishment. I’m still smiling.
I’d undertaken some research about where to go. Most tours seem to go to a couple of the sections quite close to Beijing. Most of these have been significantly renovated, or rather rebuilt to the extent that they are far from authentic – in fact some people refer to these bits as “the Disney Wall”. Also, with car parks and gondolas making it so easy to get to these sections, they are packed with visitors – not ideal for my planned weekend visit.
So I found a tour that was more up my street – a guided viist to Jiankao –an area that is original, remote and quite rugged.
The hike totally exceeded my expectations – not least of all because of the feeling of accomplishment I felt at the end of the hike. My guide asked me on the way up if I preferred a flat section or a more up and down section. I figured that the up and down bits would be more interesting so off we set. When we got there it quickly became apparent that “up and down” translated from the original Chinese means “vertical ascents and descents”. So much of the time on the wall was spent literally scrambling up or down sections of the wall that had crumbled. It wasn’t *quite* rock climbing as the bricks and side walls made for great hand and footholds but it was certainly close. An bearing in mind that the wall was build essentially along a mountain ridge it was a long way down. It was only when I was clinging onto one of the trickier sections that I remembered the guide’s apparently conversational enquiry in the car whether I was scared of heights… Afterwards he told me that he has had to virtually winch some people up on a rope when they were paralysed with previously unencounterd vertigo. Yikes!
The fact that this section really was off the beaten track meant that the whole day we saw only approx a dozen people, all Chinese, and only near the paths from the nearby village. The rest of the time, we were pretty much alone with the wall and the spectacular scenery. The absence of people made it much easier to appreciate the sheer feat of engineering. Some sections that were partially crumbling allow you to see all the brickwork that went into building it. Every single rock had to be carried up a mountain. It’s just mindboggling.
The scenery was breathtaking. Ruggedly corrugated mountains stretch to the horizon on all sides, with the wall snaking along the mountain ridge. I felt like I was standing on the top of the world. I know people say this is one of the wonders of the world – but it takes seeing it up close to appreciate the sheer audacity of building thousands of miles of wall across a seriously inhospitable landscape. I can’t help wondering how the intial orders went down. “Right lads, we’re going to build the biggest wall EVER to keep the Mongols out.” “But the mountains keep the Mongols out. “That right we’ll build it on top of the mountains.” You can only have respect for those folk. Now if only we could get them working on some much easier road projects closer to home…roads nearer to home.
Check out some more of the pictures here.