Day 3 – great wall tour (sort of)
By mnbadmin. Filed in Travel |
Up early to depart at 6:45 am for a 3 hour bus ride to the start point. The tour is an 8K hike of a part of the wall that has not been restored. After 2 hours on the bus we finaly see the mountains that one associates with the great wall. Another hour later we arive at our destination where we at given 3 ticket’s & a postcard each and informed not to loose them as they will be needed along the way. This was advertised as having no shopping.. What a farce, we get off the bus and there are vendors. Why would I even consider packing this stuff 8K. We walk about 200 meters and produce ticket 1 and after another 200 meters we round the corner to start up the stair to the wall and there they are the sellers… at the time I hand idea they would tag along for the trip – BUT THEY DID well half way – So we both do our best to ignore them. We start up the stairs and after about 150 meters of a 300 meter vertical incline I think I’m going to die. Reach the wall an think well this was worth it I’m on the Great Wall of China. Climbed a short distance to the first of 30 towers and look at the wall ahead an think sh$& what was I thinking but off we go. Things seem to be going well after three towers of mostly up hill walking when the group of heavy smokers pass by as I’m wheezzing away.
To say the first half of this hike is hard is an understatement. After about 1 and half hours we get to an extremely steap climb to tower 15 the halfway point and I’m not sure I can climb this one but alas I survive to write about it. When we get to tower 15 it’s time for our two tagalongs to go to work. Mind you I can barely walk and these two folks that are at least my age if not older are barely breathing hard. Realizing this person has hiked along with me and helped with the most difficult climbing parts of the hike I succumb to the book offered without to much bargaining. We exit the tower and have some lunch sharing some of our food with two nice men nearby. Get on our way and realize these nice men are our new tagalongs for the second half of our walk. After a couple of short inclines it was mostly downhill. Near the end bets started having internal issues that made for some interesting moments. We reached the check point for the finale trek and quickly bargin for two shirts and directions to a bush toilet. Our tagalongs say no problem and say this way. We produce the second of or tickets and bets get detected to a set of stairs off the wall.
After a short relief stop we decend a devilish flight of steep steal stairs to the rope bridge that cross’s the river. After crossing the river on the bridge we are required to produce ticket 3, sure glad I kept track of those tickets. We climb a few rock steps go through an archway and loo
k up the last flight of stairs & think what did I do to deserve this. This is the absolute worst climb I’ve ever done. Get to top with wobley knees & decide to take the zip line down to the departure point, what a great finish to a great day.
This is a from a cool web sit called wordle where I pasted in the text from this post and it created this graphic. Click on it to go to the site and see the full size image.