the great wall, december 9th

We got up before dawn and hopped into the back of a private car - our planning was last-minute so we had to pay a large sum of money for this convenience but it was worth it (you'll see why). We asked the driver to take us to Jinshaling - 110km away - the farthest starting point of the Great Wall that's near Beijing. The duration of the ride via a public bus was quoted at 4 hours; we were told by private car it would be ~ 3 hours. Instead it took 1 hour 50 minutes. How? The trip is slow because the road changes to one lane about halfway there and there are tons of big trucks taking this path. Our driver, however, got many of these trucks and other cars to pull over slightly to the right so that we could easily pass. How? He turned on his police siren! He had several siren sounds blaring almost all the way to the Wall. It was hilarious!

We were told it was always colder at the Great Wall than in Beijing, which at that point was almost hard to imagine. So we each put on 7 layers of clothing - for me it was every clean article left in my backpack above the waist. It turned out to be a gorgeous and crystal clear day with temps probably hitting 10 degrees C, so we ended up taking off 4-5 layers and lugging them around all day.

Jinshaling was a magnificent starting point with endless rugged brown-green vistas in every direction, the serpentine Wall tracing the tops of mountains as the grandest roller coaster in the world and a perfect symbol of advanced and isolationist ancient China. We started a 10km hike on the Wall towards Simatai and one of the great things about this day is that we were virtually alone as there were probably <5 visitors per 1km stretch of the Wall. We were joined at one point by a Mongolian woman who made herself our guide for half the trip (for a payment in the end, of course). She convinced us to avoid dangerous stretches by recounting the time when a European guy broke his leg and had to be carried off by 6 farmers.

Near the end Madh and I sat on a ledge and had lunch, looking up at a tempting monstrous uphill segment of the Wall that we could have tackled for extra credit. We thought better of it, though. We had already passed our first physical challenge and did it on one of the great wonders of the world. That was good enough for us. We found our driver and were back home in 1 hour, 50 minutes. The siren effect is remarkably consistent.