Great Wall

Visiting the Great Wall in China has always been on my to-do list.  My main reason for arriving so I'd have the weekend was to be able to fit in a trip to the Great Wall.  A friend of mine from work was also in Beijing and hadn't been before so we booked ourselves a tour and off we went.

We chose to go to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall.  It is a little bit further away from Beijing (about an hour drive) so there would be less crowds.  I had read this in a guidebook and my friend had heard it from a few people that had been to the Badaling section.  Apparently it can be pretty tough to even see the Wall because there are so many people.

As you can tell from the picture above, it was quite smoggy and foggy the day I was there.  I was still able to see some long stretches of the Wall but I couldn't get any great pictures of it.  They are in my head though and I'm thrilled that I was able to hike on the Great Wall of China!!!

The Mutianyu section was built during the Ming Dynasty.  There are quite of few guard towers to see:

I cannot imagine living as a guard in one of these towers...especially during a winter season.  We had a nice breeze and it was mid-June...I'm sure it got pretty darn cold in there when it was snowy and in the middle of winter.

This is probably the best picture that I got of the winding section of Wall that I was on.  It was so amazing to see in person I bet it is just gorgeous when there is blue sky and no smog/fog.

Once you hike across all of that and through the guard towers you come upon this:

See the hill in the background?  It looks kind of steep, doesn't it? Well...I can confirm that it is.  Here is the view from the bottom:

And here is the view from the top looking back down:

I would make you guess how many steps there were but if you've looked at my Flickr site you'll already know the answer.  There are 454.  I counted all of them because I wanted to know.  I counted them on the way down because on the way up I was too busy trying to remember to breathe.  Everybody that I saw hiking up them would stop every few minutes to take a break.  It was a lot of work but it was totally worth it.

We hung out up on the top for a little bit since we worked so hard to get up there.  In the span of maybe 10 or 15 minutes the view turned into this:

Mother Nature just didn't want to cooperate from a photography point of view.  Oh well...now I just have to go back.

If you ever are in China and have a free day please, please, please go and visit the Great Wall.  It is totally worth it!