Advertisement
Published: September 9th 2007
Sleep deprived but having a ball
The Jinshanling to Simatai section of the Great Wall. “Lets make plans to live tomorrow. But, alas, the wise lived yesterday"
-some Greek dude from long ago
I don’t quite know why I decided to go backpacking alone, this time no friend or family. I guess I wanted to indulge my sense of adventure a little. For most people, myself included, life revolves around routines. The routine of waking up, getting dressed, going to work, and doing it again the next day. On the other hand, on a backpacking trip, virtually every moment is a new experience, outside of routine. It truly is an adventure. Heck, I don’t know why I didn’t do this before.
Unable to sleep on the airplane or the night after I arrived in Beijing, I ended up wandering around the youth hostel at 6 o'clock in the morning. I think I was a bit delirious, either from the lack of sleep or all the beer I drank to try to put myself to sleep (which doesn't work BTW). Either way, there was a poster on the wall advertising a one-day hiking trip to the great wall. The first step to overcoming jet lag is to pretend that you don't have it. Right?
A marvelous hike
Looking at the wall snaking into the distance and also realizing that there is a long way to go before the end, I couldn’t help but feel a little excited. There is a section of the wall that runs from a village called Jinshanling to another village named Simatai that is not as heavily touristed. It is a three-hour bus ride away from Beijing. The hike is ten kilometers. Almost none of it is flat. The entire trail involved going up and down a sets of stairs in order to get from one hilltop to another. A guard tower marks the top of each hilltop. There are a total of thirty towers and thirty hill tops. I was ready to collapse after walking the entire length. Jet lag may have been catching up to me, but even if that were not the case, I would have still been quite tired after a hike like this. The Great Wall is one of the top tourist destinations in China for good reason. The views from the towers are spectacular and the experience of walking along the Great Wall is something not to be missed. I haven't seen the more heavily touristed Badaling section of the Great Wall yet, but the less touristed Jinshanling to Simatai section is definitely worth being on a bus for six hours.
Speaking of which, the bus
Parts of the wall are in ruins
The wall is very old and shows signs of its age sometimes. ride was an interesting experience in itself. I have gotten a taste of what Chinese traffic was like during the taxi ride from the airport the previous night. Drivers here are aggressive. However, I didn't fully realize how aggressive until the next day. Our bus driver to the Great Wall, Joe, never once hesitated to cut across the center divide into oncoming traffic only several bus lengths away. I couldn't help but chuckle at the fact that we were playing chicken with a semi truck at 60 miles per hour with no seat belts. People in the US often rant about crazy drivers. Well, they haven't seen China. Drivers here do it all: split lanes, ignore traffic lights, honk at everything that moves, cut each other off, drive against traffic, and absolutely do not yield to pedestrians. Crossing the street is like playing dodge ball with cars. Imagine standing on the center divide with cars and buses going both ways with just inches of clearance in front and behind your body. I do not like crossing the street and I'm still working up to nerve to ride a bicycle through this kind of traffic.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.076s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0474s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Ming
non-member comment
the greatwall is pretty overrated in my opinion. you must be a skinny mofo now after all those hikes!