Today is the day that I became a man.....according to Mao anyway. He is of the opinion that you are not a real man until you walk the Great Wall. And after today I half agree with him. We were told not to go on a tour as they bring you to a Hollywood version of the wall where the wall is all nicely preserved and there are stalls selling memorabilia every 2 meters.
So, we got a bus to Jinshaning, in Inner Mongolia and decided to hike along the wall to Simati. It was a scorcher of a day and we had decided to walk the length of the wall with 500mls of water each. Stupid? Yes. The walk up to the wall itself is pretty steep and immediately you get a sense of how the Mongolians must have felt as they approached this monstrosity.
Once on top of the wall you are hit by it's enormity and can see it stretching to the horizon in both directions. It really is breath-taking. The heat took it's toll and after 2 hours the pace was down to a crawl. At each watchtower we were given a bit of shade but quickly had to move on because Mongolian farmers try to sell you their life's possessions.
So, we got a bus to Jinshaning, in Inner Mongolia and decided to hike along the wall to Simati. It was a scorcher of a day and we had decided to walk the length of the wall with 500mls of water each. Stupid? Yes. The walk up to the wall itself is pretty steep and immediately you get a sense of how the Mongolians must have felt as they approached this monstrosity.
Once on top of the wall you are hit by it's enormity and can see it stretching to the horizon in both directions. It really is breath-taking. The heat took it's toll and after 2 hours the pace was down to a crawl. At each watchtower we were given a bit of shade but quickly had to move on because Mongolian farmers try to sell you their life's possessions.
The last hour of the wall was the hardest, a 70 degree incline up steps that were falling down around us. We had the option of either walking an extra half an hour to get to the road but me and Fi decided to take the flying fox down which took less than 30 seconds. They tied us together because they said we were too light and if we went on our own we'd get stuck hanging 30 feet up in the air in the middle of the wire. Nice.
Sweaty Betty and sweaty rambo
The trip back to Beijing took forever because the driver decided to pick up his lady on the side along the way, or should I say, way out of our way. She insisted on screeching, the whole way back to Beijing (from my level of Chinese I think she was talking about some bitch in work who was wearing the same nail polish today) while we were wishing we had brought the earplugs.
2 comments:
Hello Derek! Well your travelling seems to be going good! We all miss you over here. This blog is a good idea - I was thinking of starting one myself, but I realised that nobody would really care about how I spent my day...oh well!
Alrite chief, great pics. Said i better check in just to show you we actually read the damn blog! haha. Anyway bud i'm at work so gotta fly (yes some of us actually do work these days! ;) later man, have fun)
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