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Published: August 25th 2010
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One Saturday a few of us decided to go to a 'wild' (non-restored, non-touristy) section of the great wall known as 'Jian Kou'. The small village at the foot of the mountains near to this section of wall seems to be more of an attraction for urban Chinese than the actual wall. This is a place which one can come to if one wishes to pay to catch a pre-farmed fish on a line and have someone cook it for you... Needless to say, i gave that one a miss.
After around a 3 hour hike, involving the odd bit of rock-climbing and scrambling, we arrived at the over-grown section of the great wall lying in ruins. This is no doubt the condition which the vast majority of the wall is now in; with only a couple of sections having been renovated as tourist traps (see Badaling featured in a previous blog entry). Even compared to Simatai, (which is not so restored, but still more developed) this was a very rustic section of the most well-known construction in the middle kingdom.
At one of the watch towers along the way, we met up with 3 other travellers, who'd hiked
up the day before and spent the night in the woods. We joined together as a larger group and continued upon our way. In the afternoon, the weather turned and sporadic down-pours ensued. This was slightly inconvenient as none of us had wet-weather gear. The climate is very hot and dry in Beijing at this time of year, it's all too easy to forget that the weather can be (usually is) a different story in the mountains.
The wall itself was really something. In this ruined and over-grown condition it really felt it's age and took on a kind of magical quality. There’s something mysterious and romantic about the ruins of ancient civilisation in a spectacular mountainous setting. The weather wasn’t great, ie a bit cloudy and foggy, so we didn’t get great views from the top; but that kind of weather can bring it’s own charm too. I did wander to myself how any invading force would ever have managed to get their army over these mountains, regardless of the presence of a fortified wall. Then again, it is said that the wall served as a communication line and military transport route as much as anything else.
The path was not easy going. In parts there were vertical, laddered sections. The ladders we encountered were of varying degrees of quality. The worst of which would be better described as 'single pole' than 'ladder'. But it was all good fun. In the later stages, a stranger who had clearly walked this section a number of times adopted our ad-hoc walking party as its informal guide, which proved to be quite useful when it came to working out where we could leave the wall and find our way back to modern civilisation.
After we had walked the section of wall, we began to descend the steep and slippy path which lead off of the mountain. We'd been told this should take about 40 mins to walk. The group strung-out, the idea being that the few of us at the front would make travel arrangements for the group to get back to the city and those who were slow walkers could take their time and enjoy themselves. Needless to say it took a good while longer than 40 minutes to get to our destination. Myself and Maning who were basically running down sections of this path still took two
and a half hours to get back to the village. I was pretty surprised when we arrived back in 'fish town' as I'd been expecting to end up somewhere new and didn't realise that we'd taken a circular route. The rain got heavier during the afternoon, and by the time it got dark it was well and truly tipping it.
I became pretty concerned when it got dark and after another two hours, 5 of the others still hadn't arrived in the village; and began to regret that we hadn't stayed as a group. Although we'd only met by chance on the wall a few hours ago, I felt we had the responsibility to make sure they got down off the mountain safely. The path wasn't an easy one; in the dark and the pouring rain it could have proved quite treacherous. After turning-down a free lift back to Beijing, 3 of us made preparations to go back up the mountain and find out what happened. Then by chance, we were told by management of the big fish restaurant that our hiking companions had already checked into a small 'B&B' (of sorts) just 5 minutes walk up the mountain
from the village. The others hadn't realised how close they were to the end of the path, and given the darkness and down-pour had begged a restaurant owner to let them crash in the spare room. So it was, that we all crashed in the big room for the night and went back to the city the next morning.
This was probably one of the more difficult and dangerous hike's that I've done, despite being relatively short. It needn’t have been, but we were all quite under-prepared, carrying only camera's and sandwiches. I was wearing sandals for the entire thing, and only a couple of us were wearing proper foot-wear or carrying appropriate weather gear. Luckily events passed without any serious hitches. Everyone made it back to Beijing, with soar legs, good photos & experience and still in one piece.
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