Wild Wall

One of the things we knew we had to do before leaving was return to the Great Wall. When we visited a year ago, our tour included the wall, of course, but it was totally Disneyfied, and we wanted to see the real, unrestored version.






There are a few different sections of wall near Beijing. The closest, Badaling, is also the most touristy and restored. If you remember from the pictures I posted last October, the first part of the wall was jam-packed with tourists, and it took us 20 minutes to get out of the bottleneck to where we could at least go at our own pace. (That was also during one of the biggest holidays of the year, so there were extra tourists, but it's still supposed to be pretty bad all year round.)







Lucky for us, some hostels do tours to the unrestored portions of the wall. We chose to do an 8-kilometer hike from Jinshanling to Simitai, two sections of the wall that are about 3 hours outside of Beijing. At both ends, the wall is fairly restored, especially at Simitai, but in between, it's all wild wall (as they call the overgrown sections of the wall).







It only took us about 3 hours to do the hike. In parts, it was steep and a little tricky because of the rubble, but for the most part it wasn't a hard hike. It was great to get out of the city (even if the sky was still a little hazy), and the wall itself was incredible, obviously! Our pictures don't do it justice.






I highly recommend the hike, which is through the Beijing Downtown Backpackers hostel. Even if you're not much of a hiker, though, I would still recommend Jinshanling over the other sections of the wall. You can take a cable car to the top, and it's not fully restored--it's the real deal. It's well worth the extra effort!