The Great Wall of China

China: 9th October

Having woken up from a surprisingly decent nights sleep, considering I was in a cramped triple bunk bed just an arms width away from another, in a carriage with no doors and plenty of people, all while having a dicky tummy. We are in Beijing. The capital of China with over 21 million residents and China's second largest city after Shanghai, home of the section of the Great Wall we are visiting, and my next stop for the next few days. We get off the train and meet Tony our next guide at the gate, well we turn up before him but its only a few minutes, so who’s counting. We load up into a minivan and head to our next hostel just off South Luogu Lane in the Nanluo district; one of Beijings best preserved areas. As such we have to carry our bags and walk for the final part of our journey and although I am carrying everything I am travelling with on my back, I don’t mind it is an amazing area. Surrounded by cafes, restaurants and shops we work our way down the bustling street to get to our hostel. We aren’t actually staying here tonight as we are going to the Great Wall later and staying at a hostel near the part of the Wall we are hiking, but we have a room to use so we can all shower and rest after the night train. After the shower I am ready to go but we are waiting for two more; our little group is growing today with Paulina and Ricardo joining us from Mexico from here until Shanghai. I ask Tony if we can use the time to get me a new SIM card and he says no problem.

So Tony and I head off to a local shop with Tom joining us in search of coffee. We work our way out of the historic district and back onto the main streets of Beijing. It takes a few blocks but we finally find the shop Tony has google mapped. We leave Tom near a supermarket and MacDonalds so he can get his coffee and bits, while I head to the shop with Tony ; they only accept Chinese ID cards and don’t sell pre-paid cards. Just like Shaolin I am left disappointed but Tony is already googling the next shop and we are off, just a block away. It’s a different provider so maybe we will have some luck here. After crossing what might be the busiest street I have come across in China, we reach shop number two. This time I don’t need Tony to explain they can’t do it, I can tell from his interaction with the shopkeeper, even if I can’t understand the language. However, there is hope. Tony tells me the shopkeeper says there is a big shop not too far that will be able to accept my passport as a form of ID. So we are back out on the street Tony says bikes will be quicker, so we get a couple of bikes and off we go. We stop to tell Tom to head back on his own but we can’t find him and it is getting close to 10am, the Paulina and Ricardo’s arrival time. This is becoming more of an adventure than I expected, you don’t even need ID for a pre-paid card in England! Finally we get to the big store but it doesn’t open until 10am, so Tony has to rush back to help Ricardo and Paulina who have been messaging in the chat complaining about their maps not working and being unable to find the hostel. So I am left on my own waiting for the shop to open. Finally, when it does, Tony is back and after about 15/20 minutes I am set up with a SIM with plenty of data.

Once back at the hostel and everyone accounted for, we load into a bus, big backpacks left at the hostel, and head for the Great Wall. Our drive to the wall takes us past many of Beijings tourist and historical highlights such as the both the Bell and Drum Towers as well as the North City Wall Gate. Originally Beijing outer city had been surrounded by nine different gates as grand entrances however, these days the North City Wall Gate is the only one still standing and with most of the wall around it gone. It is a tourist attraction more than a gate these days but, nonetheless, still impressive. We also stop for our first meal as a full group together, we order a wide array of different things including safe bets like dumplings, sweet and sour pork and a local dish black bean noodles you mix the sauce into yourself. Ricardo is a chef back in Mexico so is inclined to be a bit more risky with his order, he gets a local speciality organ soup, which includes intestines, tongue, lung and liver in its broth. I try some of it and have to say it was not pleasant; the texture of tongue is not for me. Inspired by Ricardo’s bravery Tom and I order deep fried intestine with garlic butter which was actually rather nice. The intestine was sliced so thinly in its deep fried batter it may has well been deep fried bread and with the garlic butter it was almost like eating garlic bread.

The wall is not an easy climb with many of the walkways being steep slopes and tiny steps but the views are worth it. The group meet at a peak of the mountain with Paulina, one of our new members, taking a bit longer than the rest of us to make the walk. Once at the top we wait for half an hour so we can watch sunset over the mountains and city below. It was an amazing experience I really would recommend but, having been in the middle of bustling crowds, I recommend the unrestored less touristy sections!

Full and proud of ourselves for trying something new, even if none of us like the soup, we continue on to the Wall. During the summer the group camp by the wall so the area we go to isn’t much of a tourist spot and I have to say all the better for it. We hike for hours along unrestored parts of the Wall the only sign of modern life is the occasional phone line and the distant sight of Beijing city. During the five hours we are hiking we see a total of five other people on the Wall. It is a a beautiful display of the Chinese Empire’s work. The Wall itself was ordered by the same emperor, the first emperor, Emperor Qin Shi Huang who’s mausoleum I visited only a few days ago to see the Terracotta Warriors.

We hurry back to the car park to use the loos before boarding our bus that has been waiting for us and head to our hostel for the night; it is currently too cold at night to camp in the mountains. The hostel is nice and after we drop the bags the group accompany Ricardo and Paulina to a local restaurant where they want to try hotpot, having not been with us when we had ours. Being full from lunch I opt to just have a coke and by the end of the meal it is clear that Paulina and Ricardo were pretty full too, leaving a lot of food on the table. Luckily for them, Erika and the other Tom are happy to polish it off. Tom even ordered a bottle of ‘Chinese Whiskey’ a very sweet liqueur that smelt and tasted like sambuca according to him. After the hotpot and whiskey is through we head to the hostel for a well earned and much needed sleep.