The Great Wall’ker

It’s my birthday today. I was planning on celebrating it by walking the Great Wall. But because of a bad forecast some days ago that since has changed for the better, I will be celebrating in Datong. Will go out and have a good meal, and do some Skyping in the evening. A pretty low key event in other words…

Other than that I will be working on pictures and washing dirty clothes. On the 8th I go to Hong Kong to apply for a new visa, and then meet up with my sister and mother in Beijing which will be great! Am really looking forward to seeing someone I know again. So there will be a break from the Great Wall now.

Thank you very much for the birthday congratulations   

I knew I was in for a cold one. There was no wind, so within a few hours, there was a lot of humidity hanging from the inner tent in the form of ice. I had a 1.5 litre bottle of apple juice as a cold companion in the sleeping bag so that it wouldn’t turn to ice during the night. Although I had walked a fair distance considering the conditions and was physically tired, I lay awake for a long time. I had absolutely all my clothes on. Fives layers on the upper body, and two on my legs and feet. Because the tent is small, I had to try and move carefully every time I turned around. This didn’t prevent ice falling in my face and on the bottom part of the sleeping bag making it wet.

Next morning I started packing the tent while a dog barked at me from a safe distance.

Yesterday’s forecast said there was more snow on it’s way, so I decided to return to Datong today. Every day I have to cross 6-8 steep valleys, and I don’t want to risk walking in hilly terrain with ice under newly fallen snow. That would be pushing my luck too far.

In a few days I go to Hong Kong to apply for a new Visa as the one I have now soon runs out. Then I will meet my sister and mother in Beijing! I am really looking forward to seeing them again after so many months of solitude in China.

12 kilometres today

Today was a beautiful day. The wind was pretty strong, and since it was cold all day, and partly cloudy it was cold. Some places there was a path along the Great Wall. The landscape continues to be coorporative. Nice rolling hills allowing for some fine Great Wall pictures. Yes Sue - I have taken some good pictures lately - the only thing stopping me is that the camera is very cold and has a metal body. Brrrrr…

There are valleys at regular intervals, and since I am walking northwards, descending in to these valleys is extra challenging. I fell once today due to hidden ice under some earth. Luckily it happened at the right place. A few times, I have decided to take the longer route around these trouble spots when it has looked too risky.

It was a shame to have to stop walking the Great Wall at around five o’clock. I could have gone on for longer, but the sun was close to the horizon, and without the sun, this place very soon becomes very cold.

23 kilometres today

I am sitting on a warm Kang now. Can’t get over how comfortable they are. I almost feel like a cat sitting in the sun. I am at a very small guesthouse waiting for a meal that they are preparing.

It was windy today. I had no water left, so had to ask a couple times for water from locals along the Great Wall. The goal for the day was to get to a road and try to find a guesthouse and a place to eat. The meal has just been served now, so you know I got there as planned.

What has not gone to plan however is that THIS was the night that was supposed to be -20c cold. Just checked the forecast and now it says -20c tomorrow. Bummer. So I’m going to feast on a very large meal now and drink some of the 4.5 litres of apple juice I bought in the shop along the road. I’ll decide later what to do tomorrow.

The Kang (Chinese style bed where the fumes from a stove are channeled under the bed before going up the chimney) is right next to a large window. The view is nice now that the sun is setting. Soft hills and a beacon tower on the horizon. A lot of fields and some trees in the distance.

14 kilometres today
The point on the map will show the place I am spending the night and not exactly how far I have come along the Great Wall. Didn’t have time to send the point before hitching a ride on a large trailer.

The landscape has become softer lately. The Great Wall still, mostly, follows the ridges of the terrain, but it usually doesn’t require as much effort to follow it. There is earth erosion here, but not as severe as in Shaanxi province to the West.

The are however other challenges. Last night was cold, and because there was no wind to circulate the air in the tent, a layer of ice (”rim” in Norwegian) had formed on the inside of the inner tent. I hadn’t slept much through the night and decided to sleep as it grew warmer. This also meant the tent and sleeping bag would be dry by the time I started walking.

The sun doesn’t hit the Northern hills in the terrain. As a result there is old snow and ice there. The problem is that some places the ice is under a thin layer of soil. This makes walking difficult, and I have slipped a few times. A slip might not sound that bad, but with a five meter drop just a couple of feet away, it could definately ruin the day. I prod the ground with my walking sticks and try to stay away from dangerous descents.

Yesterday and today the forecast has been -16c. Tomorrow night it is -20c. I might try and find somewhere to spend the night indoors tomorrow. After that, it is supposed to get warmer.

16 Kilometres today

It was so cold and windy this morning that it took me time to get out of the sleeping bag. Didn’t start walking til after eleven.

After a couple of hours I got to a small village and knocked on a door to ask where the small shop in town was. Had heard from a shepherd that there was one there. A young woman called Yu Lan answered the door, and immediately asked if I would like to eat with her and her mother. I thanked her very much. They told me the shop didn’t have any food. Not even instant noodles. The mother in the house had made the best large dumplings I have tasted in China. Also an egg and tomato soup and a salad. I was so grateful for the meal. Later I showed them pictures from life in Norway. Then Yu Lan’s Grandmother and brother came to the house and we took some pictures. All the time there was a funny 15 day old goat jumping around in the room. It was too small and weak to be outside with the rest of the herd now.

Yu Lan asked if I would like to spend the night with them as a relative was arriving tomorrow. I would really have liked to, but there was still daylight and I wanted to walk further.

Thank you for your hospitality Yu Lan and family!

I’m in the tent and sleeping bag now. It should be a bit warmer tonight, and less windy. Yesterday the wind was so hard that I used ear plugs to shut out the noise of the banging tent sheets so I could sleep after getting warm.

16 kilometres today

Friday 29th. Written 30th because it was too cold yesterday.

Took three buses to get back to where I last stopped walking. Walking the Great Wall of China was fantastic. I probably saw more stone clad Great Wall this afternoon than in total so far. This is exciting as it is a little taster of what is to come in Hebei and Beijing.

Milestone - for the first time on the walk, a person didn’t believe that I had walked all the way from Jiayuguan. I like milestones like that.

A woman asked: Why don’t you walk during the summer, so I told her I had been in Gansu and Ningxia

I was very cold when I finally got in the sleeping bag yesterday. Spent literally hours to get some warmth. Then I heard what seemed to be thunder. Was placed right at the top of a hill, so got out and walked away from the top to see where the bad weather was. Didn’t see any more, so went back to the by now cold sleeping bag. Can there be thunder in well below sub zero conditions I wonder?

My left knee is a bit painful, but I try to walk a bit slower than usual, especially walking down steep hills

15 Kilometres today

Minus 19C tonight at the place I will start walking tomorrow. Minus 15C or warmer from tomorrow and onwards. That’s good news! I just hope the mended knee will manage OK, and am looking forward to a good stretch walking the Great Wall.

To Norwegian readers: There will be an article about this walk in the magazine: Vi Menn in a few weeks time. I’ll write more when I know what date it is printed.

Wishing you all a good weekend! Particularly Trude   

Things have been slow here lately. I have had a cold that was particularly bad in the mornings. The prospect of waking up in the tent in minus 15-20C with this  cold was not very compelling. I feel better now though, so I plan to leave shortly.

Lately I have also written a couple of articles about the walk that I hope will be published.

Sorry for not writing for a while. My knee is feeling better now, and it looks like the cold weather will soon be over. I’ll soon be walking the Great Wall again. Am looking forward to it!

Wish you all a good weekend.

I hope to be able to pick up the new Visa tomorrow, and am looking forward to walking the Great Wall. The weather has suddenly turned nice and warm in Datong. By warm, I mean above zero degrees. Almost feels like spring. But there is still some cold weather ahead.

My left knee is slowly getting better, and I hope it will be good to walk on with the weight of the backpack in a few days time.

I had no experience with using walking sticks before this walk. They felt strange to use in the beginning, but now it feels strange walking without them.

The Black Diamond walking sticks come in three sections. They can be collapsed using two flick lock mechanisms on each stick. Practical when travelling in a car, bus or train as they can be fastened to the side of the rucksack. Their length can be adjusted to any length up to 140 cm.

The sticks have steel tips which is good in hilly terrain. I also brought a couple of rubber ends for walking along roads. They quickly wore out. A clever Chinese man made me another pair out of the rubber from a wheel. These will last for the rest og my life.

The walking sticks help in many ways. Walking up steep sand dunes, walking down steep hills, checking the depth of water in a river, and how hard the surface under the river is. If extended all the way, they can increase the length of your jump when traversing small rivers. They are handy to keep dogs at arms length. Two or three times so far I have used them to whack dogs to prevent an attack. Right now the ground is covered in snow and sometimes ice. The walking sticks give me the two extra legs I need to walk confidently in places where I wouldn’t dared have walked otherwise.

This post is for those especially interested in cameras. I love photography and therefore it is hard to keep it short when I describe the camera I use while walking the Great Wall.

I don’t carry an SLR while walking the Great Wall as it would be too heavy. I carry two smaller cameras. Although the Panasonic DMC-LX3 has a limited zoom range, I use it for the majority of the pictures I take.

The camera has a metal body that both feels and, more importantly, IS sturdy. My camera has hit the ground a couple of times without being damaged. It is slightly bigger and heavier than the average compact camera.

It has a fantastic Leica lens that is both sharp and bright at F2.0-F2.8. This means I can take pictures in dark places without having to use a too high ISO setting or a flash. Teamed up with the optical stabilizer and a sensor with a lower pixel density than most small cameras out there, the image quality is very good also in dark places.

I record most shots in RAW format and use post processing to adjust the colour temperature, brightness, contrast etc. This takes a bit of time, but gives better control and hopefully raises the overall quality of the pictures.

The camera is small enough that I can take it out from my beltpack and fire off a couple of photographs without drawing too much attention. And attention is guaranteed in rural China when taking pictures with a digital camera. My camera has a lens barrel mounted in order to keep dirt, sand and rain from entering the zoom mechanism. This makes the camera more bulky. It also gets in the way when taking pictures with the pop-up flash, which I very seldom use.

Speaking of zoom - this is probably one of the few areas where this camera doesn’t match others. It’s zoom range is from 24mm to 60mm (35mm equivalent) so you have to get close to the subjects you are photographing. But in my experience, the best pictures are not taken from across the street or field. They are taken at fairly close range.

I like this camera because it has plenty of dedicated physical buttons giving me direct control. I decide on which shooting mode, aspect ratio and focus mode I want to use before raising the camera to my eye drawing attention after a short while.

I use three shooting modes: Intelligent auto that records in jpg in case I don’t have too much space left on the memory card and the scene is not too challenging light-wise. The Program mode records a RAW image as does the Aperture mode where I have stopped down the aperture to a minimum for maximum depth of field.

The switch for aspect ratios is placed directly above the lens. I often play around with these ratios before taking the picture. This makes me think before taking the picture. Maybe I move around a bit to get the best possible composition after having decided on the aspect ratio. I like being forced to think about the composition while taking the picture and not two weeks later when I am sitting in front of my laptop.

I always carry two batteries. This is enough for a week or two along the Great Wall in the summer, all depending on how much I have been photographing. But in the coldest periods the batteries run out quicker, so I have to save the camera for the pictures I want the highest quality on.

This post is dedicated to the geeks among you. This web site just made Google Page Rank 4 which I am very happy about. Probably that is as far as it will go - that is unless I fall off a cliff or something and make headlines around the world. Probably not worth it!

Have a good week. I will apply for another Visa extention at the end of this week.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO BROTHER JON  

Got up early and took three buses to get to Datong. In Pinglu there was a three hour wait.  I got in touch with the owner of the bus which goes  daily to Datong. He was a very nice guy and rescued me from the -5 C in the waiting hall of the bus station. We ate together with his driver and some others. The place was warmer and the atmosphere was great with lots of noise from hard working guys shouting at each other when they entered or left the place for the cold outside.

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Two hundred metres down the road, there had been an accident.

The recent snow has made driving even more risky than normal. I saw several lorries that had lost their grip and sailed off the road. At one place two lorries had collided, but both of the drivers carriages had swung to the opposite sides saving the drivers. (I think)

— Written the 9th of January

The night was cold. On my upper body I wore two layers of wool and a fleece. My legs had one layer of wool and fleece. On my head I had a cashmere woolen hat, and my neck was protected with a double fleece. I had stuck my gloves in the fleece trousers to protect my hip bones from the cold. There is absolutely no fat there, so the cold goes straight to the bone which from experience is pressed hardest against the cold ground. Then the down sleeping bag, and two sleeping mattresses. Then the tent to wrap things up. Still though - in the middle of the night, the cold came creeping through the sleeping bag making me shiver without control.

I was happy when the first light came, and later when some rays of sun hit the tent. As I got out of the sleeping bag, rubbing my eyes I heard a voice from outside. A farmer that looked seriously concerned asked if I was OK. He looked at the small tent and shook his head. I had warmed up by this point, and stuck out my hand to touch his to show that I wasn’t a block of ice. His hand was warmer than mine though.

It snowed today too. More or less the whole day. I often scouted Northwards, feeling that if I ever come back to the Great Wall, then this small stretch will be the first I want to walk DURING THE SUMMER. Due to the snow and dark weather, I only saw the Great Wall on a few occasions, and it looked magnificent.

The area I walked through had many watchtowers and several large fortresses. A few of them had villages inside! In one, I found a large shop - in fact a very large shop considering the size of the village. Inside, I met an old couple that ran it, and an 85 year old woman who had dropped by to chat. She had bound feet. I asked how many kids were left in the village and the couple answered that there were only two kids left. The rest lived with their parents in larger towns in the area. This is the story that I see time after time in China. The largest migration that has ever taken place on earth is happening right in front of my eyes.

I noticed that my left knee was painful. Probably because of the longer than normal distances lately, and having walked on hard ground with a heavy rucksack. I decided it was time to take a breather and let the knee rest. In less than a week I have to renew my visa.   I don’t want to chance walking the next stretch with a banged up knee and perhaps not getting back to Datong in time to renew the visa.

After it was dark, I got to a small village by a road. The local shop was still open and I bought some Ice tea and food before asking if there was a lu dian (simple hostel) around. He nodded and told me his mother ran one in the back yard. It was a room with an arched roof dug into the ground. I was happy , thinking I had the place to myself. Just as I got ready to sleep two men came in. They were nice in every way, but they smoked a lot. These dwellings have no air circulation, apart from the little that happens naturally through the windows and when the door is opened. So I spent the night breathing smoke. The oldest got up in the middle of the night just to have another smoke although he was coughing like mad. He repeated this first thing in the morning. Poor guy.

30 kilometres today

— Written the 9th of January

It was under minus ten when I started walking this morning, determined to follow the Great Wall along the small river that runs into the Yellow River.

During last night I thought it was a great idea to walk on the river, but when I got close to the edge I saw it would be too dangerous to get ON to the ice. There is a big dam seven kilometres south of this point and hence the Yellow River is a gigantic water reservoir here, rather than an actual river. The level of water had dropped about three metres since the first ice. This left crevices along the shore of the river for about five metres. Usually, these ice crevices were pretty steep and the ice here was insecure. So, although I was certain the flat ice on the water below me would hold my weight, I was alone and didn’t want to take too big chances getting on to it - and also getting off it at some unknown place.

So, I started climbing the steep hill behind me and walked on the inner side of the Great Wall of China. Most of the hills I climbed, up and down, were covered with some snow and ice some places, as they were all facing northwards. Then it started snowing - pretty heavily at times. The snow in itself didn’t bother me as it was light and dry. But it covered the ground and made it impossible for me to know what lay beneath. At one stage I was walking down a steep narrow path to get past a valley and slipped, because there was hidden ice under the snow. With the walking sticks, I managed to keep my balance.

After a few kilometres, the snow got heavier. I got to a high point and looked eastwards. I couldn’t see any more of the Great Wall of China from this point - only watchtowers. It was dark, although only early in the afternoon. I summed up my situation: I was cold, but as long as I moved it was OK. I was alone. The weather has deteriorated the last hour and there was a centimetre of snow covering the ground and ice. I took to my senses and it was a hard decision not to walk on. Instead I headed in a more southerly direction. At the first possible place I tried to return to the Great Wall following a small dirt road.

When I got to the end of it, I asked a guy if there was any chance of getting to the Great Wall from there, but he shook his head. So - I had no alternative but to follow a small untraffickated dirt road a little to the south of the Great Wall. Needless to say, all the walking today was in very hilly terrain. The walk to the ‘end of the road’ that I just mentioned would have been a good days exercise for most people. At least the walk up again with 20 kilo’s on one’s back.

Towards the end of the day I just found a little field hidden from view and set up the tent. It was too cold to start fiddling with the mobile to write a report. I knew I was in for the coldest night so far.

19 kilometres today

At 8.30 this morning I got the bus back to my end point yesterday. Then I walked 31 kilometres to get to Lao Niu Wan. This is where the border between Inner Mongolia and Shanxi Province turns eastwards away from the Yellow River. As does the Great Wall.

I had heard from many people that this was a tourist attraction for it’s very scenic location. I had also heard that there were several hotels here. My plan was to book in at a nice hotel and have my first shower for a week, wash clothes and check the route for the next few days on Google maps. I was even considering spending a rest day here as a tourist.

My disappointment was therefore huge when I discovered there was nothing remotely like a hotel here. Not anything like a shop either. I am not disappointed in the place itself, just that I had planned to spoil myself a bit after some long and cold days.

So now I’m sitting on the Kang of an older couple that run a sort of Chinese bed and breakfast service. There is one warm room, so we are all sleeping on the Kang tonight. I won’t be able to check the route or wash myself and my clothes.

IF I have understood the man I spoke to this evening correctly, there is no path along the Great Wall tomorrow. From looking at the very mountainous area after walking today, I am going to be careful not to walk myself into any problems. Have to check the weather first to make sure I can continue walking tomorrow and sleep in a tent for some nights.

31 Kilometres today