Photos of the Great Wall

It’s hard to keep up being a traditional tourist: we gotta do what everyone else does! Forget about all the rubbish of a truly traveller endeavouring the unknown and discovering the real way of life in far destinations. We look for comfort, I admit. We want to be amazed! And surely we will be conned at some point afield. Around-the-world as a package holidaymaker, I guess this is a much truelier description of the way we hit the road. But there’s some « but »s afterwards: we still catch up most of the transportation on our own and we look for the accommodation for ourselves, simply we don’t pass by travel agencies. The rest, we queue like everyone else to see the beauty of the world’s biggest tourist spots.
Going to Beijing rhymes with seeing the Great Wall. So, there we go. Thanks to Jonathan, who speaks an enough amount of Chinese, to organise a trip, we teamed up to fill a minivan heading to the longest wall ever built. We have chosen a « not too touristy spot » to walk backwards to one of the main points for visitors. The walking from Jinshanling to Simatai. And once again I’ve realized how much I’m in need of the tourist facilities:

1. Walking up the hill until the Wall itself: a quick 15-20 minutes walk on a trail through the vegetation. My heart reached the 160 beats per minute! While everyone else was keeping up a good speed and more, enjoying it! At least I had a partner, when I saw my wife and the redness of her face I understood straight off the difficulties weren’t only mine.
2. Climbing the Wall: yes, we should call it climbing the first 50 meters or so. I’ll give you the whole portrait. I did the exercise I normally do in six months on the walk to the wall. Straight ahead I saw a ramp of, let’s say, 15-20 meters high. It was very steep stair with no protection on the sides what made me feel the very characteristic vertigo I feel when I’m in the heights without something to hold on. The rest of the picture is a guy walking up stairs with hands on the floor while the others take pictures of him before passing by without any problem.

3. The touristy part of the walking: that was cool. Once we realized we have walked quite quickly and the 14 km walk was already on its second half we slowed down. This part of the construction is all refurbished and is very easy to go up and down. Time for some beers, pictures and chatting! Everything a tourist like me was wishing for!
Last remark: the Great Wall itself is not so big like we imagined, but walking it up can be really though, specially on the not so touristy spots. Anyway, the views are nice and definitely, all tourists in China are right, we gotta see it.