A Walk on The Wild Side of the Wall

This last Sunday, Me and Paul arranged to have some freedom sans Noam, thanks to Ayi Lili flexibility. This is certainly one of the few bonuses of theseMade in China holidays. We decided to join the Beijing Hikers for a little stroll on the Great Wall. 

We had not rushed over there until now, afraid that by the last of our (expected) visitors, we will be bored by its sheer sight. However, a hike on the Wall, specially on its sections not yet restored, sounded like a very interesting and different experience.

We left home early, meeting a group of expatriates at a local Starbucks (yeah, they are here), and hopping on a bus to our destination.  Slowly we left the Beijing's urbanity to enter a more agricultural landscape. Apart from my annoyance with the bus windows dirtiness, I was really excited with the whole idea of the great outdoors, hiking (I can't remember when was the last time) and experiencing the 長城 ChàngChéng, the long city-fortress. We reached our destination, a touristic village near a small lake called Lotus Pond. We got out of the bus and started walking almost immediately.

I have to clarify a few things facts here:

    .  It is the longest man-made structure on earth. With its 6,700 km of construction, it is pretty much the longest continuous construction you can find. 

    .  But it is not one continuous wall.  In fact the Great Wall is rather a series of walls, parallels to each other in some areas, or just crisscrossing the landscape at other strategic location. Have a look here. 

    .  A popular belief says it can be seen from the moon. In fact, with a maximum width of 9 meters in its largest areas, it would be like trying to see a human hair from 2 miles away. In fact if the Wall could be seen from the moon, one ought to be able to see most of the roads in the world as well, given that they are commonly even wider. But this is obviously not the case.

    .  Constructed to prevent the Mongols invasion, it was guarded, at its best times, by over one million persons. 

With some of this in mind, I started walking up, breathing deeply the crisp air. The wall is sitting on top of the ridges of these mountains, snaking its way along the landscape in convoluted swirls and twists, bordering the province of Inner-Mongolia. 

So it was rather quickly that we understood better what our stroll would be. As I raised my head up to see the wall above me, I suddenly remembered what was said by our group leader: a difficulty 4 hike. We were going to climb to the highest point of the Great Wall, at 980 meters above sea level. We were going to go up thousands of really unequal steps, some for giant leaps, some for dwarfs. We were going to go down on portions of the wall that were in disrepair, scrambling down boulders, and stepping on makeshifts stairs made of loose piled up stones. We were going to pass 22 watch towers, some renovated, some half standing. We were going to walk for 5 long hours, going from Lotus Pond Village, on Mutianyu part and Jiankou part of the Great Wall , ending in a village called Xi Zhazi.

And so we did. The sight was wonderful, surprising and really picturesque. Despite some of Pauli's complaints about the unnecessary effort (specially at the point called Ox Horn, where the Wall makes a U-turn-shape detour), we had a wonderful refreshing stroll on the wild side of the Great Wall.

My only regret is that my new camera is currently suffering from an out-of-focus problem, hence the pictures here are rather fussy and do not give you the immensity and beauty of the sight.