Finally! The Great Wall!

This was our fifth time to China, our second visit to the capital of Beijing, and our first time to actually see the Great Wall.

Angela and I maintain a running list of travel goals. A rank ordering of things we want to see and do, and, for which, we will take extra efforts to achieve. When you travel as much as we do, lists, goals, priorities, and the near constant evaluation and re-evaluation of those benchmarks are essential to a planning and preparation process that is sometimes years in its necessary execution.

When, after spending a frenetic month in Kolkata and Western India, the Taj Mahal tumbles from number two to number nine on my list of travel goals, this is completely acceptable and understandable. With India, one must often catch one’s breath before diving back in.

So it was with the Great Wall.

Having missed the opportunity to visit back in the winter of 2018 and treating interim trips to China with the caution and quickness that we felt was necessary for the time, The Great Wall, once holding a years-long, solid second place and moving to the very top of the list after spending my fiftieth birthday in Petra, had found itself relegated to fifth. 

Undeserved, but necessary. China, like India, must be experienced and digested slowly and over the course of years. Otherwise, it overwhelms, bloats, and risks a painful satisfaction to the point of nausea.

Plus, after the conclusion of the pandemic, I found myself needing and prioritizing the awe-inspiring open places of the world. Antarctica, Iguazu Falls, Alaska, and the Amazon called with greater urgency than anything made with human hands could muster.

But list items are created if only to be checked off, and over the course of the last several years, we managed to experience our top four, moving the Great Wall back to its prominence at the summit.

And it didn’t disappoint.

Despite misconceptions, the Great Wall doesn’t exist in its unbroken entirety but is instead contained in segments that have been rebuilt and refurbished to various degrees. Much of the wall is both inaccessible and little more than rubble, snaking its way over remote mountains without names.

We visited the Mutianyu section, less than two hours’ drive outside of Beijing. This is regularly listed as the most popular portion and is notable for being the longest intact section of the Great Wall. Moreover, it has a fully modern cable car that ferries passengers up to a main watchtower, complete with souvenir shops and ice cream vendors.

From there, you can hike on top of the wall itself, choosing either to go left and up the formidable mountainside, or down to the right, the twisting, turning edifice dipping into a lea before climbing to the peak of the next mountain. And, at either distance, fellow tourists crawling like ants, invisibly huffing and silently cursing from the December heat and the beguiling incline.

Take water and sunscreen. And, if you are at all unsteady on your feet, take a hiking pole or two. While the walkway is wide and relatively smooth, there are many uneven steps and, often, scurrying children. The poles will also help on the stairs that, at one point, become more of a stone ladder. So steep are they, in fact, that most people adhere to an unspoken rule of navigating them in single file, one line carefully ascending and the other, even more cautiously, climbing down. For a fall here would take many others with you.

Hard, yes. Worth it, absolutely!

Now I need to find another number one for my travel list.