A guard tower at left, the Wall snaking endlessly over mountains to the right (click on images to enlarge)
On Wednesday we traveled about 2 hours north of the city of Beijing to visit the Great Wall. We hiked a spectacular section of the Wall, called Jinshanling, on a beautiful, sunny day. In all directions we enjoyed views of mountains, walls, and watchtowers as far as the eye could see.
An unrestored section of Ming Dynasty-era Wall
Several sections of the Wall have become so clogged with tour buses, gift shops, and visitors that one’s enjoyment of the Wall may be a bit compromised. Jinshanling, however, is a less heavily visited section, and our hike was both challenging and rewarding, and we often had long stretches of the Wall to ourselves. We even hiked up to the Wall in darkness early Thursday morning, in hopes of catching a spectacular sunrise over the Wall.
The Wall at sunrise - about 4:50 a.m.
Clouds prevented us from seeing a truly memorable sunrise that morning, but it was peaceful and beautiful to watch the emergence of the morning light gradually change the colors of the landscape, both natural and constructed. The Walls in this section date to the mid-Ming Dynasty period, about 450 years ago, and were intended to repel Mongol raiders from the north.
BU conquers the Great Wall of China
