Great Wall of China: Part 1

We befriended our Welsh roommate, Daniel, who recommended that we went to the Great Wall together the next day. We booked the same hike he had booked earlier, not knowing, until it was too late, that it was going to be a 10km 4-hour hike.

The hike is a HIKE. Its a grueling 10km hike from Jinshanling to Simatai. Technically, it is 19km with all the slopes you have to climb up and down, up and down, up and down.

Jinshanling is a section of Great Wall in another province (Luangping county) and Simatai is in the same province as Beijing (Minyun county). I had actually wanted to opt for the more touristy (and restored) Badaling section of the Great Wall - just take a bus, get down, take pictures, hop on again and move on to the next section...

But no... we HAD to take the less touristy and more scenic one! All 10 friggin km!!!

The whole trip costed us 350RMB. It includes the travelling, lunch, the 40RMB entrance fee for the Jinshanling section and 50RMB entrance fee for the Simatai section.

The bus journey took almost 4 hours. We had to wake up really early so it was okay that we got to sleep during the bus ride.

We had an English-speaking tour guide who sounded really weird like one of those computer translation thingy and the voice would translate and pronounce word by word and the emphasis is all over the place?

She warned us about locals... but we didn't know that they would be THAT irritating. She didn't join us for the hike but instead gave us 'directions', "remember to turn left at the so-and-so tower, otherwise you will get lost". Gee, thanks.

The map, not drawn to scale obviously, the wall is way longer than that. Try 32 watch towers...:

Here's a tip: If you are Chinese, do not let the locals know you can speak Chinese. Speak English, pretend to be ABCs or pretend you are Hongkies who speak only Canto.

Bottomline is, DO NOT befriend the locals and speak to them. Ignore them. Pretend you don't understand.

Why? Because they will stick with you during the beginning of the hike and irritate the hell out of you despite you telling them to buzz off. They will try to 'help' you out - take pictures, 'guide' you etc.... All this because, you know, they want you to buy souvenirs from them. It was so irritating then, I was really pissed off. But now, I have to admit, I do think they are really quite pitiful, having to climb the precarious walls every single day to ply their trade...

And me brushing them aside was really kind of mean... Hmmm...

Pestered by the locals from the very beginning. You can hear them telling other locals along the way who were their 'targets'.

Could finally see the Great Wall!:

We were such in a hurry to shake the locals off (unsuccessfully, of course), we were running up the beginning of the hike from the foot on the hill to the wall itself. We were almost out of breath. But of course, we couldn't shake off the locals. They were stuck to us like glue and every single one of us had a 'parasite'.

Finally on the wall!:

Half the people you see there are the 'parasitic' locals:

I was a bit annoyed because the locals were somehow always in my frame... They even offered to help us take our pictures, which we declined (cause we were more irritated than anything else).

Locals in the frame again:

Emo shot:

The initial parts of Jinshanling has been carefully restored like those in the Badaling section. Watch towers with tiled roofs can be found only in the 'restored' sections.


The locals again. Sticking to us like glue:

First of many many flights of stairs going up. No sweat...:

See this picture? The people of the right are the locals...:

Still can cam-whore... Its only been 3 watch towers. 29 more to go:

Nice:

Emo again:

Still a long long way to go, the towers are spaced 50 to 100m apart, depending on the need.

This is where the restored areas end and the 'original' ruins begin:

Yup, they were this bad:

"Damn you Mongolians!!!" - South Park

We were already getting dehyrated and tired:

And this section of the wall was getting more and more precarious. We managed to outrun the locals when after we 'merged' with a Caucasian group after us, we quickly flanked around the group and managed to outrun them without the locals realising. LOL. Who says NS isn't useful?

But only one had to follow us still and that is because Pam is too nice of a person to be ignoring her.

Pam and her 'bodyguard':

Still. Have. Energy. To. Cam-whore.

Pam and her 'Guardian Angel':

Pam and her 'God-ma' now:

The following section of the wall was getting more and more almost impossible to climb and walk on:

ARGH!!! Where are the steps???:

WDF???:

We were seriously on our hands and knees crawling up this particular impossibly steep flight of stairs:


Don't be fooled. The steps are so steep, you are always thinking it would be a drop-off:

Going down is just as hard as climbing up!:

See Part 2 for more pictures!