The Great Wall of China has been built centuries ago. Initially in small pieces. Each king built a wall around his own empire against barbarians to protect. Only when all these countries had become a great emperor, there was the possibility to build the walls together. The story goes that the wall, despite every effort, never really worked. The weak link in the chain of stones were very hard because the gates, especially the gatekeepers. They were apparently easy to buy by barbarians and they offered, all blood and tears of the wall in spite of an apple and an egg access to the rich.
Today we walked the wall, between Jinshanling and Simatai, a walk of 10 kilometers. In the early morning, 10 over 6 to be precise, we were picked up by a coach and drove towards Jinshanling. Around 10 am we arrived. With a group of about 30 people we started the walk. The cable car up, that we should have saved quite a climb, was not operational. And to make matters worse was the expected sunny weather, warm 18 degrees, also failed to materialize. Instead, there was a very thick fog around the wall.
The first half hour of the walk were simply abandoned. Contrary to the pictures in brochures suggest, finds the wall for the most part in an extremely poor condition. Much erosion has taken place and farmers also have many of the stones and earth for their own purposes used. It was therefore scrambling blown. On many pieces missing tilt, paving and steps. We searched our way through debris and fog. Unfortunately, we enjoyed not really.
Not until the afternoon we arrived near Simatai and started again as both the wall visibly improve. The scramble was again climbing and even walking. The ride was also more downhill and through the fog slowly cleared we finally got a picture of this wonderful place. Behind us we saw the wall, meandering ridges. In that neighborhood also an English couple we met at that, just before their retirement, in their neat garb the wall in the opposite direction would restrain. I advised them to make rechtsomkeerts. They looked at me funny, but really, they went to meet their doom.
There was a part of the wall at that was so steep, that was so bad that I was glad that a "sherpa" (actually a farmer from the neighborhood who tried to earn some with) tipped us that there was a shortcut . Admittedly, the route of a high survival levels, but he was not nearly as steep and slippery.
The end of the trip was marked with a long suspension bridge (Indiana Jones style) and a cable car (type strum) along the last mile you could cut down. Judica was brave enough, I stayed behind to take pictures and the footpath down to inspect. Somebody's got to do it ...
