Today we hiked along the Great Wall of China. No big deal. And popped open a Pineapple Beer to celebrate.
We hiked along a section called Jiankou, which is about 80 km from Beijing, not heavily visited by tourists, and very much in a state of disrepair. It's not actually open to the public, so I'm not sure what strings Hutong School had to pull. You can read more about it here: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiankou. This section was built during the Ming dynasty.
We started out by getting lost, so it took about 3 hours to get to the site. It was a pretty challenging climb, but the views were amazing. I've got a few days worth of pictures so don't be surprised if you see a few blog posts on this one!
You usually hear that the was was built to keep out the Huns, but in fact I've heard that it was more of a symbol of Chinese strength than for any actual practical purpose. \and they kept the Huns from attacking through bribery. They'd gift each of the Hun tribes silks, horses, women etc every year, and in this way prevent them from attacking the Chinese and also lure them into a trading relationship. This jibes with our trip, because we actually approached from the North (the Hun side) and scaled The Wall using a simple ladder!
In June I've signed up for another wall trip, this time with http://wildwall.com. This includes guided hikes along remote sections of the wall. I'll be doing this towards the end of my trip, just before I return home to Canada.
Well done ! These are great pictures of the Great Wall! Which reminds me... I should go through my India pictures and post some. Having read this I thought it was rather informative. I appreciate you finding the time and energy to put this article together. I once again find myself personally spending a significant amount of time both reading and leaving comments. But so what, it was still worth it! In return, I also found a great blog of Jinshanling travel tips, I'd love to share it here with you and for future travelers. http://www.wildgreatwall.com/how-difficult-is-it-to-do-great-wall-one-day-hike-from-jinshanling-to-simatai-west/
ReplyDelete