On our last full day in Beijing, we had planned to catch a morning
trip to the Great Wall at Badaling which is a touristy section but the closest part of the Great Wall in relation to Beijing. It would be our last chance to visit the wall since we had booked a train already to leave the following morning so we didn’t have time to spent more than a day. And since it’s much easier to book a tour when you have a group going (we had five people), we had pre-booked a tour the night before to leave that next morning with a small deposit.
Stairway to heaven? You can see just how bad the visibility was that day!
However, our driver showed up an hour early to pick us up that morning then told us we had to visit a market first ‘to buy stuff’ before heading out to the wall. That was definitely not what we were told the day before so after we sent the driver away, we headed to the tour agency office. 
After fifteen minutes of arguing with the agent about them lying about the itinerary and changing pricing on us, I managed to get our deposit back but now we had a problem. All tours to the wall leave by 8am and by now, it was 8:30am. There were no other tours leaving for the day so now we either had to convince a cabbie to take us to the wall or scrap our plans altogether. However, I was a bit determined to visit the Great Wall before leaving Beijing seeing as how it might be quite a while before I was back in China. I just wasn’t about to give up that easily. Soon after, we randomly found some lady on the corner that must have known we were wanting to make it to the Great Wall that day as she shouted to us before we had even had a chance to get within twenty feet of her. She ended up arranging a driver for us and after negotiating a bit on the price, we crammed the five of us plus a driver into a small car and headed towards the Great Wall at Badaling, the shortest drive from Beijing which took around an hour.
On top of the Great Wall but standing in a cloud
When we got there it was crowded, which we were expecting but it was
also extremely cloudy. I don’t know if it was a mixture of both smog
and fog but you could barely see from one peak of the wall to the
next. It was a bit disappointing of course as you always have
this image in your head about hiking peak to peak along the wall with
crystal clear skies where you can see the wall extend out in the
distance for miles but it was good to at least walk the wall and experience being there.
Damn! What a let down…We had planned on Striding the entire Great Wall that day!
After paying the entrance fee we headed up toward the first section of
the wall at Badaling. The entire section we hiked had been restored which is mainly due to the popularity of Badaling and the amount of tourists it gets. The stone work had all been redone and there were some sections where handrails were added which, although not original, was probably beneficial for the thousands of tourists running up and down these
steps everyday. And these steps were steep!
OK
The steps were inconsistent
too. Some had a vertical rise of just 12″ while others could be
as high as 20″ or more. As we started up the wall, you could look up
and just see the steps ascending into the clouds. A stairway to heaven? Umm maybe not, just more tourists…
We decided to keep on climbing up until we either reached the peak of
the mountain or when we wouldn’t see any tourists any more but since
we never saw more than a hundred yards in front of us, we never really
knew how long that would take.
Since we were all in a rush to get out to the Great Wall that morning, I grabbed this ‘to go’ thinking I’d eat it on the way. I had no intentions of eating a Sausage McMuffin on the Great Wall of China but I must say, it was quite a hilarious experience… and delicious as well! Of course, I got called out for being the ‘token American’ that would be eating McDonald’s on top of one of the Seven Wonders of the World…
Apparently it took about and hour and
twenty minutes as that’s when we reached the first peak. By then I
think everyone was about ready to head back which was fine. We needed to meet our driver back anyway as we had only about two and half hours. Hiking down though was bit faster… We walked around at the base of the wall for a bit then went off to find our driver. It really was a bit of bad luck to see the wall on such a day
but I’m glad we still made it. It just gives more incentive to return to
China someday and revisit the wall. After spending just over a week here though,
I’ve determined a month in China would be nowhere near enough to see
even half of the country properly.
Looking down after an hour hike straight up. Still not quite the view we were hoping for!
4 Comments... Join the conversation below
omg. the Great Wall…even with the clouds it is fantastic to think they built that thing hundreds of years ago and it is still standing, and as huge and long as it is.
Yeah, it has an interesting history. It was originally started to keep the Mongols out but wasn’t ever used for its intended purpose after the hundreds of years it took to finally finish it.
I wished your day wasn’t so cloudy… The view is amazing which makes the wall even more impressive when you can see it extend hundreds of miles into the background.
Yeah, it was a bit depressing but since we had to leave Beijing the following day, I was glad to at least be there… I’ll go back eventually