This is our last day in Peking. It is time for the Chinese Wall!
Consequently, we take the journey to JINSHANKING. The distance is about 150 km. We rented a car and driver. He will take us to a starting point and later pick us up from where we are hiking to.
Departure time is 6:30 a.m. – at home, it would now be shortly after midnight. We leave Peking, drive through the mountains on an Autostrada. It has been built in the Italian fashion, except it is in far better condition than most Italian motorways,
We learn that this motorway has been built for the Peking Olympics in order to take the guests to “THE BIG WALL”. This morning, the motorway is empty and has lots of tunnels and long bridges. After a little more than 90 minutes on the road, our driver drops as at JINSHANKING around 9.00 hours.
The weather is quite agreeable. So far, there is not much going on at the Big Wall. The way up is steep. We hike around four kilometres of the official path – and then, based on insider information, continue for some time through a stretch that is not officially open to the public.
It is a rather impressive experience – between peaks, you will sometimes go more and sometimes less steeply down and then up again. Of course, there are places where the wall looks a little rustic.
I get the impression that I have never before covered so many metres of altitude in such a short time, especially when I go up or down the extremely steep stretches. As I said before: it is always up and down – with long views into the valleys.
We frequently see peddlers. They carry their heavy bags and noisily (too obtrusively) offer their products – water, Coca&Cola, lemonade, coffee (in cans), small bottles and t-shirts that identify the wearer as a climber of the “GREAT WALL”.
Since all is still quiet around the place, we are occasionally the only victims of those traders. We bravely decline all offers – until we arrive at the highest building of the wall where we give in and buy four new t-shirts. All of them together cost 80 Yuan, including the transportation up – that equals around 10 €.
Our impressions are great. We take many pictures
Unfortunately, the visibility is not very good. Neither does the sun really find its way through. We are not quite sure about the reason.
I believe it might be due to smog.
After all, a considerable part of the electricity for the Mega City of Peking is produced by coal-driven power stations. It seems that quite a bit of pollution just sticks to the atmosphere. They say that in the old GDR there were also regions where the sun was hardly ever seen. But then, perhaps it is a natural phenomenon.
We were a lot faster than we had planned. Consequently, we met our driver shortly after 13:00 hours at the destination and arrived back at the hotel quite exhausted around 15:00.
Regardless, we used the rest of the day for quite some more journeying through Peking to say “Good-Bye”. Because tomorrow we are going to GUILIN, which lies in the south of China.
Now we come closer and closer to the highlight of our trip: the wedding.
RMD
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