After a terrible nights sleep in the watchtower, I was determined to wake up for the sunrise.... I didn't know what time that would be at so I woke up way too early, and dragged Amy along with me and she was not impressed!! And the sunrise wasn't even impressive because we were down too low... oh well, it's not like I was sleeping well anyways!
After packing up our gear we hiked down and off the Jiankou section and down to a little village below where we ate breakfast. I do NOT like the Chinese version of breakfast, it's pretty much the same as lunch or dinner. No fruit or toast or things like that! They had these weird fried things that were kinda good... but other than that, not appealing in the morning! After breakfast we drove another 2 hours to the Jinshanling section of the wall. It's a restored section and really neat! There aren't as many trees and high mountains as our first day, so you could see even more of the wall spread out. I felt a little stressed out for time, because we needed to get back in time to make our night train, so I didn't let myself enjoy it as much as I should have...
We hiked right off the end of the Jinshanling section and down to another little house for lunch. It was so delicious I wish I could have eaten more, but we still had half a day of hiking to do so I didn't want to feel sick, because man was it hot out! We had to hike around a part of the wall that was an active military zone, then back up on to the Gubeikou section. It isn't a restored section, and probably my least favourite of the three we saw. The landscape seemed a lot drier with scragglier foliage, but I did love the hike up with a really cool old abandoned house and terraced fields and an ancient grindstone! And the hike down from that section was really cool too, with some trees with gorgeous smelling blossoms on them and a little stream and animals. All in all it was an amazing experience and I'm so glad we did it! The drive back was uneventful and we made our train to Xi'an, there were two other guys from our group on the same train and I have to say we saved their bacon - they almost went to the wrong train station! It was really lucky we were there to set them straight!
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| So many stairs! Uneven stairs, broken stairs, missing stairs... |
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I was sick with a cold the entire trip! If you can't read the sign it says
"Beware of catching a cold when hiking in the mountain" |
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| At the start of the Jinshanling Section |
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| Nice, even restored wall to walk on! |
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| Tent picture before we tore it down - morning of day 2 |
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| The moon on it's way to bed |
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| Amy was not impressed with the cold temperatures and lack of sunrise! |
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| This section is called the Beijing Knot (I think?!) and its super steep down and up cliffs! No wonder lots of people died making the wall! This was on the hike down to our breakfast. |
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| Neat abandoned old house! |
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| Amy was determined to have an asian pear while we were in Asia! |
Next stop? XI'AN for the Terracotta Warriors and Mt. Huashan aka the mountain of death...
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