Our first trip to the Wall was definitely a memorable one. We left Beijing on a Saturday afternoon, slept under the stars (and rain) at Jinshanling, woke before dawn, and hiked atop the Wall 10 km to Simatai, where we found a zipline waiting to take us across the reservoir. Yeah. Terrif.
It rained pretty much the entire three-hour drive out to Jinshanling, and all through our seemingly endless dinner. (Oh, more dumplings? Ok.) We'd had the option to sleep in a hotel at the base of the wall, but our group pretty much had its heart set on sleeping up on the ol' Pile o' Bricks, as it's sometimes called. By me. Just as we finished our meal, the rain stopped, the clouds parted (we assumed; it was dark), and we made our way up to the watchtower, where we finished off a few beers and told a few stories before nestling into our sleeping bags. Oh, and there was a giant, menacingly-ugly spider that was trying to kill me. I know this, because first, it dropped down from the roof to dangle a few inches above Valerie's head. Then, it webbed me. That's right: it shot me with its menacingly-sticky menacingness from at least ten feet away. If I hadn't bravely shrieked like a girl and run around to the other side of the tower, I would surely have been devoured, Arachnaphobia-style. Terrifying. Lucky for us, all my shrieking and flailing and running around knees-bent-style confused the spider, leaving it no other option but to crawl back into its dark hiding place.
Once I--ahem, all of us--calmed down, we laid out our sleeping bags and tried to sleep: half the group inside the watchtower, the other half of us under the stars. And rain. Yeah. At first it was just that sort of one-drop-every-so-often stuff. That stuff that with enough stubborn self-convincing, you can just about fall asleep in. And get about ten solid, consecutive minutes of sleep in. Until like a drop lands right in the corner of your eye, waking you up and sending you into a mild panic that the spider is back, that it was in fact just waiting for you to fall asleep so that it could ambush you, or at least crawl into your hair and lay eggs in your scalp. That one-drop stuff changed to a subtle sprinkle at about 1:30, though. Not enough to really get wet, but enough to make sleep impossible. Not wanting to wake the others inside the watchtower, six of us bravely braved the treacherous stone steps in the dark, clambered down to the first level of the tower, and set up camp. And slept.
BATS! Although I comforted myself with the knowledge that bats eat spiders (I don't think they do, but it was how I comforted myself that night), the unmistakable leather flapping sound of bats flying in and out of the tower, most likely just inches from our faces, made for a fitful few hours of sleep. Eventually, though, even the bats settled down. Probably right around 4 am. I know it was 4 am, because this was when the troop of Chinese sunrise-photographers (loudly) tromped through the tower on their way to the top of the rise a half a kilometer on. I don't know if I was more startled by the pre-dawn, full-voiced shouting of a group of Chinese photogs; or if they were more startled by the half-naked white guy who sprang out of his sleeping bag with what I'm sure could only be described as a ridiculous head of hair.
At this point, the sun was starting to announce its approach, so I gave up on sleep, grabbed my camera, and headed out for a stroll. Another hour, and the rest of the group was up. Quick breakfast of bread, jam, bananas, coffee, and we started our journey.
The Jinshanling to Simatai section of the wall is less well-preserved and -maintained than other, more heavily-touristed parts, so, for most of the walk, we had the wall to ourselves. Yep, just us and the local women who scaled the hills on which the Wall is perched to sell us "t-shirt!" "photo-book!" "water!"
The following pics tell the rest.
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