Well, we didn't die ...

Our "natural hike" on the Great Wall was exactly that ... extremely natural. Think scrubby branches, steep inclines, loose rocks, rugged terrain ... And that was just the first hour.

I'll admit the details were a little minimal. All we knew going in was that it was 180/pax, including the transportation and three to four hours along an unrestored stretch of the Wall. (The last thing we has wanted on this trip was one more Great Wall trip with throngs of people and lines of hawkers.)

I kind of thought we'd reach the Wall with minimal effort. Snap some pics along the brokenness, and relax above the tree line.

In reality we jumped in the back of a small Hyundai, stopped in a small village for a small man in padded pants and jacket with the requisite communist style blue hat of old, then carried on to a scrubby patch of land where the driver told the old comrade, "Jin tian bu mafan, ta men hui Zhong wen." (Today is no problem, they speak Chinese.)

The old man was our guide for the next four hours, the first two of which where extremely grueling. When we reached the rubble of the old wall, we caught our breath, chugged bottled water and took pictures. We gamely scampered up the crumbled stairs of the nearby watch tower, where our guidebook had mentioned they used to send smoke signals using wolf dung. The only smoke now came from the end of the Chinese manufactured cigarette our guide, whom we had learned was 76, was taking drags from - despite a stern no smoking order from a checkpoint along the way. The area north of Beijing is a dry tinderbox, and they are taking drastic measures (a smoking ban in China is a drastic measure!)

After about 10 minutes we indicated we were good ... We'd take a few more pictures and then would be ready to head back down the winding dirt path to our driver.

"Oh, no," our nearly-octogenarian guide communicated, "we still have very far to go."

The second hour was truely grueling: Mostly uphill, with tenacious wind, hot sun, and a precariously narrow and high path of Great Wall rubble.

At times we were literally on hands and knees. Our old guide, sure footed as a mountain goat, kept forging slowly ahead.

"Go slow, and we won't be tired." he said.
"Go slow and be safe"

Not once did he take a sip of water along the route... Simply a cig in the first hour and then steadily, sure-footedly, pressing onward.

The Wall eventually smoothed out. We climbed along a nearly flat surface at times. Some of the wall was in reasonably good condition for being Ming era (about 500 years old.) Other sections had become overgrown with trees or disintegrated so badly that we would slip off to a dirt path and rejoin the wall several hundred meters later.

It took us nearly four hours to return to the car. We dropped our patient old ye ye back off in his village, and returned to the hostel where the shower looked better than before. Our faces were filthy, a fine layer of dust filled the crevices between our fingers, and when we removed our socks and tennis shoes, even our toes were caked in fine dust.

We've cleaned up, and are going to settle down to a big plate of jaozi. Millie will drink a warm shui bi and I'll have a room temperature Yanjing. (Yanjing ... An official sponsor of China's lunar exploration program. And, for the record, you cannot see the great Wall from Space, although The Lonely Planet guide suggests you might be able to smell the bathrooms from there!)


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