During my latest travel to China, one of our biggest stops was the Great Wall. Built during the Ming Dynasty to safeguard the Chinese from invading barbarians, it’s a behemoth that stretches over thousands of miles, over mountains and across deserts. In the modern world of today, it’s a relic of the past, yet its beauty and grandeur and scale are undeniable.

We chose to ascent the wall at the Mutianyu section near Beijing. Mutianyu is a major tourist spot when in season. Even off season in the winter there were quite a few tourists walking around up top. Once we got to the top of the wall, we started heading north east, towards the Jiankou section of the wall. On a previous hike we did the Jiankou to Mutianyu hike but the ascent from Jiankou is fairly rigorous and I was sick this time. So I elected to do a easier hike with the Gondola helping us up halfway. Mutianyu is fully restored for the tourists, and much of the bricks used is new. After a while we came to the end of the restored section with a sign that said danger ahead, and passing prohibited. There was no guard there so we chose to ignore the sign and kept on going.

From the beginning of Mutianyu to the end of where we were headed is still a climb, but a much more gentler one on a paved surface. Once we got to the unrestored section of the wall, most of the other tourists have dropped off. Soon we were on the wall by ourselves. The wind was pretty strong that day, the temperature started around freezing and slowly dropped off as we got higher. On the unrestored section of the wall one can truely feel the age of the ancient structure. Looking at its dilapidation and ruin, you really feel that you are walking on a part of an ancient history. The overall hike took us about 5 hours to complete, with stops in the middle to hide from the wind and to take photographs. Inbetween Mutianyu and Jiankou lies a section called the oxhorn, its a steep section that goes up and then down in equally steep fashion, on the way back we elected to take a shortcut to circumvent this area and hiked through the woods instead. We got to Zhengbeilou on the Jiankou section and chose to stay there, without venturing too much into the dangerous area of the Jiankou wall. We sat there for a while admiring the view and turned around and headed back to Mutianyu. This is  the second time I’ve been to this section of the wall. Next time I will try the Jinshangling to Simatai section instead.