Jinshanling
The great wall is a series of fortifications in China. They were built across the historical northern borders of ancient chinese state and Imperial China as protection. The first walls date to the 7th century BC, these were joined together in the Qin dynasty. Successive dynasties expanded the wall, the best-known sections were built by the Ming dinasty (1368–1644). We did som googeling and decided we wished to visit the part of the wall you can acsess from Jinshanling. Its a part of the wall that haven’t been restored, but still safe to walk. It was challenging in parts, but so worth it. You could feel history under your feet and the view was breathtaking. Its also very few tourists here. So you could enjoy the great walls magic undisturbed. And the great wall of China definitely has a magic thats hard to convey into words. One simply has to exeperience it.
We booked an unguided tour that picked us up at our hotel. They had bookes tickets for us and explained where to go. The bus drove us to the main office at Jinshanling.
From the office there were small busses drove us to the startingpoint. The tourbus would pick us up at the East gate after 4 hours. There were a few exit trails along they way if you could make the end in time.
We took cabelcars up to the unrestored part of the wall.
Trond was super brave and was promised this was the last cabel car ride he would ever have to take.
After a short trail from the cabel car to the wall we could finally enjoy the wiew.
When using the cable car you will end up approx 2 km into the walk – but those two km’s are a very restored part of the wall, and its really at the cable car the scenic old original wall starts. We found no reason to walk a newly built wall, and also know that we where going to have an extra hour or so, taking breaks and pictures.
We got an easy to follow map from the guidecompany, Bejing downtown travel service. Higly reccomend them, they were great.
I would say that it is not a -easy- hike, there has to be thousands of steps, uneven, and in some spots there is just a massive incline where you walk on a flat surface – fearing your shoes will slip and send you hurling down.
Actually, on a few of the steep hills, if you have a fear of heights, you will feel it.
what an absolutely magical place. And pretty much no people – it was great to experience this site without endless lines of people.
we walked for 3,5 hours, knees and legs was jelly, impressions was amazing. We just walk along going “wow”.
There where locals selling stuff at the different Towers, water beer magnets. We picked up a magnet at the last tower, and started to move down the hill towards the car. (That was 40 minutes, and probably 1 million more steps) 😀
At the bottom we met up with the rest of the group and had one of the best beers yet. Great collection of people, there where Dutch, Kiwis , English and a very nice American solo travelers that we talked quite a bit with on the ride back.
All inn all – Jinshalinfg👍👍👍👍