Hiking the Great Wall

The Great Wall of China!!!

I am now back in London finishing this blog up after a very busy past few months.  I began this post on the way back from Beijing so the next paragraph is the intro I wrote at that time.  Had to update the intro but I didnt want to erase it so...yeah, here we go...

I am skipping over the last chapter of India FOR NOW due to a few reasons.  For one, I am in China now and two, way to much has happened this last weekend and I want to write about it right now.  To add a little context, I am living in Shanghai for school and took a week long trip to Beijing with my friend Alex.  Alex is also a student at Hult International Business School and really instigated the plan for this trip.  *Thanks Alex*.  Beijing as a whole has been one hell of an adventure but I am going to focus this blog on the Great Wall mainly so that I can attempt to make it shorter and get it published in a decent time. (*attempt was the key word here).  So as I sit on a bullet train waiting to head back from Beijing to Shanghai I begin writing this blog in an attempt to recall all that has happened while it is still a fresh memory.       

          Our journey began on Tuesday morning with a 5 hour bullet train ride from Shanghai to Beijing.  We had a few ideas of things to do and see while in the city: see the Forbidden City, try the exotic food market, see some ancient temples etc...but perhaps the highlight of our plan, we were determined to walk the great wall.  Now just walking on the wall is no exotic feet.  In fact when we arrived we instantly were bombarded with options for how this could be possible.  The hotel had a menu of tours available for different touristy sections of it and when we walked into the city it seemed every hour a different tour guide would approach us with a business card and price for a “private” tour. 

          However, we wanted something more.  We decided to opt out of all of the above and instead organize our own tour.  Because every great story begins with “we ditched the organized professionals decided to do it ourselves”. 

          There were, however, quite a few benefits that led to this decision.  For one, it was about 60rmb in transport and 85 in wall tolls as opposed to the 800rmb average that was being charged by a guide for a 9 hour trip, and two, we had the freedom of doing a much longer than 9 hour trip  that involved an overnight!

            We definitely wanted to do the overnight so now all we had to figure out was how.  Perhaps we would just knock on a door in a local town and try to find a place to stay, or maybe we stay in a hotel in a nearby town.  But finally we settled on sleeping on the wall itself, because why not...

          It took two buses to get to our starting point where we were planning our journey walking east from Gebeku to Samatie.  We only found our bus route by digging through blogs so I thought it only right that I pass it on. We first took the 980 out of Shanghai to get to Miyun, and then the 25 from Miyun to the small wall town of Gebeku.  The first bus took about an hour and a half and got us to Miyun by about 10am.  Miyun is a decent sized city that I am guessing has at least a million inhabitants…so relatively small on Chinese standards.  We found our second bus stop about 500 meters south and attempted to confirm the arrival time with a group of locals.  Unfortunately these locals spoke no English and it seemed they were trying to tell us the next bus was not until 1:30, or 4 or something along those lines.  We gave up on the attempted conversation and decided to assume we were reading the schedule correctly and the train was actually supposed to arrive at 11am. 

          This left us with about 30 minutes so we went up the road for some supplies. We walked up the street and found a Wu Mart, which is basically a Chinese Walmart.  After grabbing some necessities, water, snacks, candles etc, we bolted back to the station and got there just as it was turning 11, and just in time to wait in line for another 10 minutes for the bus that actually was arriving around that time. 

          We rode for about an hour and a half down surprisingly modern and smooth roads that led deeper and deeper into the mountains.  After much anticipation the bus stopped in the middle of what appeared to be a one road town in a small valley. Either side of the village had mountains towering above it and on the left we saw two large towers popping out of the mountain side.  Is this it?  I thought.  We kept walking and finally we got our first glimpse.  Running along the ridge high on the mountain we could see the great wall looming over the town.  

          Of course, first objective before any long trip is to get a full stomach.  We found a small restaurant on the other side of the street and sat down to read the menu.  The restaurant was easy to find however finding what we wanted was not so much. The menu was at least 20 pages long and everything was in Chinese!  After 10 minutes of asking what is good and being pointed to the most expensive items, the staff walked over and grabbed an English menu, which had apparently been available the entire time.  It also had prices adjusted for foreigners.  We each got different dishes and shared by using the revolving circular table.  I got pork tripe, which was really good, and Alex got meatballs with some unknown mystery meat used to make them.  Ok so I decided against eating cat or dog at the food markets but whatever was served to us in those meatballs was definitely not beef, pork, or chicken. 

    

          So we begin our journey with a good sized meal of tripe and mystery meat.  While we were eating we observed that the wall appeared to cross right over the road on the map so we decided to walk straight down the road until we found it.

          We walked north for 10 minutes before realizing the wall crossing was nowhere in sight.  We could see the wall west of the road was coming down from a large and pointy mountain but could not see where it connected to the east wall.  We asked a few people and got some alarming responses.  I tried to talk to a truck driver who understood my broken Chinese enough to think we were crazy and acted as if it was not even possible by making motions of climbing with his hands and then laughing as he shook his head.  We also talked to a local who seemed to not understand why we would want to climb it at all!  Finally we found an old farmer lady that motioned for us to continue down a small dirt road and turn right, then smiled and went back to her work. 

            We continued down the road passing small farms and country houses but with no sight of the wall.  Finally  we could see a fragment of what could have been a wall on a ridgeline opposite us.  We had passed a small trail a few minutes before leading in that direction so with some reserve we turned back for the path.    

            The trail was little more than a deer path leading steeply up the mountain through wild brush and thorns.  It did not seem it had been walked on all too often.  I now understood the truck driver’s motions.  We clawed our way to the top of the ridge and it was there that we finally met the Great Wall…or at least the remnants of a once great wall.  There were a few bricks left but it was mostly mud at first.  Some of it stood 15 or more feet tall while other parts were worn straight down to the ground.  We could not really walk on top of it at this point because it was hardly a half meter thick and covered in thorny bushes and weeds.  The trail we originally were walking on is apparently an actual entrance trail to the wall and not just a deer trail.  It continued along the wall as an intended “safe” walking route.  Sometimes it went on top of the wall in sections that still had flat points, while most of the time it ran beside it.  There was one point in which it appeared to go both ways so naturally I had to choose the most challenging option of going on top of the wall… 10 minutes later I merged back with Alex on the safe trail covered in thorn scratches and bloody legs.  Lesson learned the tough route may offer some great views but you gotta expect some scratches.

  

          We continued along the wall and watched as it slowly transformed from a brickless pile of mud, to a brick wall barely wide enough to walk on, to eventually a structure that actually looked like a full man made wall.  We climbed our way up a steep narrow part of the wall and found our way to the first of the guard towers.  I could see the centuries worn into the wall with every step I took.  Even in the rare places where the wall was whole it seemed there was a garden of weeds growing on top.  The jungle had began to take back the mountain ridge many centuries ago.  It was, however,  a nice surprise when we found apricot trees growing both beside and on the wall!  I found a couple that were ripe enough to eat but most were not ripe yet.

           The first of the guard towers had a steep set of stairs that felt like a ladder.  We walked under an arch doorway but not into a room.  The room that had once been there had long since collapsed, leaving nothing more than a wide platform with a pile of ancient bricks.  This did offer us a great view of the wall ahead of us though and from this point it looked pretty solid!

          We were both surprised when we also spotted from our perch a second group of hikers coming up a much tamer trail further up ahead!  Perhaps this was the trail we were suppose to have taken to get up, but I liked our more adventures path anyway.  They had just walked up the path to see a couple towers and had no such plan to hike very far, but they wished us luck and we were back on our way.

          We continued up some crumbled stairs and over the over grown wall for a while until we eventually found a tower that was boarded up with a warning that said military zone.  We had heard that this may be a problem somewhere along our walk but we didnt think it would be so well blocked off!  We tried climbing around but there was barb wire surrounding the tower and a steep drop off that prevented us from going around....
          We had no choice but to follow another path down the mountain side and away from the wall.  We winded through the forest going further down the hillside until eventually we reached a narrow valley.  We were surprised when we found an old abandon hut lost in the thick trees!  It looked like it had not been used in a century but still had many old wooden farming tools laying about covered in dust.  We kept going and were shocked again to find a narrow field growing full of corn!  It seemed like the most unlikely place, but on the steep mountainside and narrow valley there were corn fields being kept that were at times only 4 or 5 plants wide and must have been near impossible to collect the harvest from....


         Eventually we did leave the corn fields and the wall came back into view.  We climbed back up the mountain, zigzagging a few hundred feet up in elevation until we once again were on a ridge.  Unfortunately the trail still did not reconnect with the wall.  We could see that we were close to it but there was no direct access in sight and the trail led back down the mountain again.  We debated on trying to climb back onto the wall in this location since it appeared to have some low spots but ultimately decided we should stick to the trail for now and see where we ended up.  So again we climbed down the mountain into a deep green valley.  At the bottom we came across a small farm with a few goats outside and more cornfields, as well as a sign on the house that offered hotel rooms to stay in, but at this point we were determined to find a place on the wall...so we walked right on back up the mountain.


          After an exhausting steep climb we finally were back in contact with the wall.  Not on top of it...but beside it walking along looking for a way to be on top.  We also noticed that the wall had changed to a newer and fresher appearance than what we had been walking on...We had officially reached the refurbished wall.  The tourism segment...

         Unfortunately, the tourism segment apparently closes...I am not sure when but sometime earlier than when we reached it.  So here we are, Alex and I, stuck in the middle of a jungle on the wrong side of a supposedly impenetrable wall, with nowhere to sleep except for a hotel, and nothing in our backpacks but some food, water, and candles for light.  The sun was about an hour from setting so we had to make some tough decisions on what to do...

         So of course...we went for the only logical solution that we could think of...we were going to climb the great wall of China!



          We decided to hastily rush back to the other side of the hill where we had seen a low point in the wall before the hotel, and see if it was actually low enough to climb up!  We rushed down the mountain at a near sprint, passed by the hotel so fast the dogs hardly had time to bark, and scrambled back up the other side just as the sky began to grow orange in the west.  And then we hit a metaphorical wall in our plan to climb the wall...

          The "low" point we had seen was hidden behind a small hill and was actually just as high as the rest of it...However the Mongols managed to defeat this wall so we would too... All we had to do was find a way up this 20 foot vertical wall and we would have a place to sleep!

          We split up and eventually came across a plausible if possible option.  There was a single section hidden behind some bushes that had the perfect assortment of missing/or crumbled bricks which left just enough room for a small handhold and foot placement in the side of the wall.  We saw the sun setting, debated the possibility of this and decided...Why the hell not, lets climb this thing!!  So just like climbing the vertical rock walls in a gym we carefully worked our way up the wall one hand after another.

          The climb was definitely not the easiest feat but after a couple of tries we managed to get a decent route down that allowed us to scale the top and then we even managed a pulley system with our shoelaces to lift our bags up to join us.

          And alas...we had really made it... sitting atop an ancient structure, surrounded by dense forest and mountains, with a slowly setting sun disappearing over the Chinese landscape.  Life is good.  What a beautiful world this is, is all that came to mind.

       
          Well that, and it was getting cold so we needed a watch tower to sleep in.  We began our search and walked first to the left of where we started and checked two towers which neither of which had a roof anymore, and then turned the other way in hopes of better luck.  Finally just as the sun was setting we settled on a tower to call home for the night.  It still had no roof but it had two windows that had just enough of an overhang to shelter us from the wind.  The center of our tower was so overgrown with weeds that it even had a tree in it! Not an apricot tree, but oh well, you cant win them all.  It did have all four walls though so...good enough.

We looked at the fading sunlight and jumped into action.  We had brought 8 candles to keep our tower lit for the night and after some maneuvering we managed to prop them up in the corners of our individual windows so that we could keep them out of the wind.  We swept the dirt floor out of the windows the best we could, and pulled the food out to begin a true backpackers feast.  Cookies, chips, dried fruit, and water but it felt like gourmet after the long hike we had had that day.

Once it got dark the tower felt very bare, empty and cold.  Sitting isolated on top of a mountain ridge in North China with nothing but the wind blowing over the wall to listen to and the light from the candle to see with.  We thought of building a fire but didnt want to draw any unwanted attention so decided against it.  Oh well atleast we found a place to sleep....of course that would have been to easy of a way to end the night.  So only natural that that is about when we heard the thunder.


The rain didnt set in until about 3am but since it was freezing on top of the wall we were awake playing cards until around then.  Its amazing how handy a pack of cards can be when you're traveling.  We each retreated to our own windows and tried to sleep and avoid the rain the best we could.

It was a cold, wet, and uncomfortable nights sleep, but in the end we made it through a night sleeping on the wild great wall of china and it was worth every second.

That morning we took our time getting ready to go since we had to wait for the tourist part of the wall to open the gate before we could continue our hike.  We went ahead and built a small fire to keep warm and sat around just enjoying the scenery.  It was a couple of kilometers to the tourist section so we set out still fairly early.  We walked around the wild wall a bit more and realized that there was a tower with a ceiling only two towers past where we had stopped the night before...oh well to late to help now.

As we left our tower that morning I took this final picture to remember our not so cozy home for the night.  

Eventually we hiked down off the wild wall and into tourist territory.  The wall here was renovated but amazing in an entirely new way.  Here it felt like we were getting a sense of what the great wall was when it really was the GREAT wall.


The towers here were all in amazing condition came with complete roofs and the wall was not crumbling in most places like the wild wall.  The route was still tough since the wall does go straight up the mountains like the spine of a dragon.  Some of the ascents even felt like I was climbing on my hands and knees to get up.  Looking over the edges felt like looking over a cliff!  It really makes you think, How and why in the world would the mongols climb over this with an army in the first place!  Of course, the towers at the peaks offered views that made it all worth it.





Standing atop the highest of these towers, I felt the cool breeze blowing over the mountain and looked out over the mountain ridges imagining what it must have been like for the generals and soldiers hundreds of years before to stand guard over their empire from such a remarkable perch.



    
So that is the story of how my friend and I designed our own route along the great wild wall, scaled the side of it for a place to sleep, survived a rain storm in a guard tower, and walked 20k to our finish line a day later.

*Quick shout out to my friend Alex for being a major part of the planning and orchestration of this entire adventure and of course for putting up with the sleep deprivation and long night that came with it.  Also he has his own travel blog that you can find the link to below:

http://alexandrepilat.info/myrotation2015/My_Rotation_2015


As always thank you for reading and until next time world stay awesome!