We woke early as we have a train to catch to Badaling and the closest section of the G.W.O.C, we metro'd to the train station only to find an hours worth of queue for tickets, it was obvious this want going to happen so after consulting Fodors we hightailed it to the bus depot.
After a slight coffuffle involving the wrong bus we were on the #877 bound for the wall... in about 90 minutes.
The Great Wall of China is older than Jesus over 2000km long and was built over several empires to keep out marauding tribes, it didn't work, but is nevertheless a testimony to the perseverance, hard work and stupidity of the Chinese (admittedly Hadrian built one, but that was only a couple of hundred miles and a little more effective)
Today's marauding tribes attack the wall en-mass armed with fanny pack, New Balance, Nikon and ridiculously large visors, these ones have to pay $7 to do it and 150 million did it last year, so maybe not so stupid after all?
Before you reach the Wall you pass the Great Wall of Tourist Buses, in there hundreds, then comes The 2km Great Wall of Chintz as eager vendors try to sell you everything from the aforementioned oversized visors to crawling army soldiers, roasted Yams, jade trinkets, Mao paraphernalia and they even have bears, in a pit, which you throw apples at...?
Once you reach the Wall itself you can't be anything other than impressed, it winds it's way over mountain, through valley into the horizon and beyond, walking it is a feat in itself with gradients greater than 120 degrees in places.
Ais and I opted to take the road less travelled and walked up whilst the masses took the cable car- it is Chinas stair master and my steel buns are now Iron.
Very little of the original wall remains and the sections that do you cant get to, our section was the 1980's model which kinda ruins the mystique but gives you the visual.
It took us an hour to climb up to the highest watch-tower and run (I know...but we did!) back down to the descent point. As lame as this sounds, it's not my fault I didn't build it...we took a dry bobsleigh ride back down. I'm sure that's not what Emporer Qin envisaged back in 300 something B.C, but I bet he would have enjoyed it...weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
Another 90 minutes had us back in Beijing and some early Dim Sum and for the first time since we left we both had some hard liquor.
Another hostel night, I might brave the shower !
Tomorrow we leave for what the Chinese call the Tibetan Autonamous Region, a train journey that will take us across the breadth of China to Lhasa, it's probably a million or so miles, Google it, cos I can't !!
No comments:
Post a Comment