The Great Wall - Part 2 - Room With A View

I still can't believe I am standing on the the Great Wall of China! Kevin and I took a bunch of photos within the first 5 minutes, because everything was just exciting, cool, or amazing.

One of the nice things about coming here after some of our friends have already visited, is that we benefit from their experience. For instance, we were told Mutianyu was less busy and less toursty, and we were told that we should take the cable-car, and not the chair-lift.

The wisdom of that advice becomes quickly evident as soon as you start walking. Here we are looking back at the first tower (where we made our entrance to the wall).

And from the same point looking forward to our journey. You can see that the path is mostly downhill from the cable-car tower. Wow, I can't imagine having to walk up this path from the chair-lift (about a mile away).

The other thing I learned quickly is that you absolutely cannot walk and take pictures at the same time. You can't even walk and look around if you are on the stairs, or you will fall flat on your face. The stairs are like snowflakes, every one is different, each with a different height, and a different width, so you'd better be looking at your feet while you walk.

About every 150m or so, there is a tower in which guards would maintain watch. Some of them are in better repair than others.

It kinda feels like you are in Oz, walking along the Yellow Brick Road.

There are some canons positioned strategically along the way (and they help identify which side of the wall has the "good guys" and which side has the "bad guys".

At one of the towers, you can actually go upstairs and lookout from the top.

In this picture looking back from the tower top, you can actually see the cable-car line (middle/left) and where it docks (count back about 8 towers), to see how far we have walked (mostly downhill, thankfully).

Eventually, we reached the tower where the chair-lift down is located, although you can see, that the wall continues (for what seems like forever), and we could have continued walking, but we had already been at it for almost 2 hours, and my knees were feeling rubbery (the last 1/4 mile is pretty much all uphill).

However, we knew (from good advice) that there was a better way down than by taking the chair-lift, but you'll have to wait for the next post to see it.