We took a 3 hours bus to get to a section of the wall that was a bit out of the way and not the usual tourist spot. This spot had not been repaired yet, and some of the sections were downright dangerous - there were moments were I was climbing at a 75 degree incline.
The wall was impressive, I guess. I'm not really one to get impressed by it, and after hiking for 3 hours all good feelings had turned to fatigue and smoldering hatred. It was interesting to think of how it was built though, it was so massive and if climbing it made me so tired I can't imagine building it. In some of the parts where the stones were loose you could pick up a flagstone or two and realize it was not light labor. In addition, people not only had to live up here but do patrols and move military equipment. Thinking about that blew my mind a bit, but since I was racing to be the first to hike from our starting point to our ending point I didn't have time to stand around like an idiot.
I was, of course, the first one to get to our destination. We descended the wall and went into a nearby village where the program had arranged hotels for us. We didn't have to stay in the hotels if we didn't want to, but it did provide a good place to place our bags and hang out until nightfall. Our hotels were the historical Chinese houses that were all the rage a century ago, and the architecture was beautiful. It was cool to see these housing complexes in movies come to life before your eyes. Even cooler was the Mahjong table we had inside our sleeping room. I'm not sure why, but we were the only group with the table in our rooms, and thus we became the social hub. To top it off, the magical Mahjong table was electric, and it sorted all the pieces for you and racked them and wow it blew my mind.
I had videos of the Mahjong table, pictures of the unrestored portions of the wall, and more, but sadly my Camera bugged up and erased all of those pictures. We discovered this when I took out my camera to take pictures before going to bed, and had to take a few panic pictures of the wall before we left in the morning. Sadly this was the restored portion, so you only get a general idea. In addition, due to the lighting most of those pictures turned out crappy, so there's that.
Night at the great wall is cold. Too cold. We were all wearing multiple pairs of socks, pants, shirts, hoodies, and jackets inside of our thermal sleeping bags, and it was still cold. The only thing that kept me excited enough not to freeze to death were the updates of the OU game being texted to me by Sam back in Beijing. (Hook 'Em by the way)
Despite the cold, we did manage to sneak to a darker part of the wall and pee off the wall into the abyss below. It had to be done. It was premeditated. It was awesome.
At about 3 in the morning we all woke up from the sheer cold and discovered that the sky above was just a mass of shooting stars. I had never seen nighttime sky like it before, it was magical.
I think that covers the basic great wall. Figured I'd write something despite my frustration with the internet and the pictures before I forgot everything. Here is a picture of me and my burnt orange sleeping bag, a picture of me on the wall, and then a video of the surroundings of where we slept in the morning.
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