The Great Wall’ker

We spent one and a half hours trying to get over the ‘Large Northern River’, but without success, so we ended up having to take a bus to a town and then a taxi to get to the other side of the river.

We started walking and soon we were close to the start of the desert stretch that would bring us to the next valley and river. We camped in the field of some farmers.

It’s getting late here in Gaotai now and we have an early start tomorrow, so I will have to write about the desert stretch when we get back here in 3-5 days time.

Thank you all for writing in the Guestbook and commenting on the pages. I appreciate all the support and funny comments and want to reply to you all. Earlier today I was at a China Mobile sales outlet and tested a Nokia to try to log in on this website. I managed to get to the login page but it wouldn’t let me enter all the way in. I will try again with a more expensive phone next time as unfortunately, I cannot get the HTC to work. The hope is to start writing daily reports from along the Great Wall!

Also, there has not been enough time to process all the pictures for the picture gallery. But in a weeks time, it will be up and running!

We will be without internet connection for the next days, but you can follow our progress on the map here.

The following day we got up and made an oatmeal breakfast with brown sugar, or red sugar as they call it in China. Oatmeal is great. Lightweight, quick to make and lots of energy.

We started walking and had a really dusty day ahead of us. The dust is hard to describe, so check these two pictures. One is of my foot stepping in to some sand or dust. The other of the dust getting between my toes. This is not traditional sand, but very finely grained sand which I call dust. It reminded me of the cement dust used to make cement which takes days to settle. Yes - it also gets anywhere and everywhere.

The dust is called loess and has blown all the way from Siberia during many Ice Ages.

As the day went on I noticed the frequent noise of jet planes high above us making their way to and from Beijing. These planes follow the Silk Route for some reason. I thought of the day I will eventually be sitting on a flight back to Norway and made a mental note to make sure to think about the people that might be treading slowly along The Great Wall.

I also noticed that the ground was full of last year’s plants. Some of them have been harvested and only 2-3 cm (an inch) of really hard stalks stick up. We are both glad we have brought extra ground sheets for our tents as I expect there will be a lot of wear and tear on them.

We ended the day by being invited to stay with some local farmers. It was fun to see how they lived and it seemed they enjoyed spending time with us too. In fact they had invited lots of friends to have a look at the foreigners so the crowd was in constant rotation.

It was a good thing we spent the night indoors because that night there was a sandstorm. It didn’t last for long but it swept sand high into the air. This sand usually takes 2-3 days to settle and makes it colder on the ground and also limits visibility.

Here comes a quick update on the last week’s events.

On Tuesday my brother and I started walking where I left off.

The area had quite a few irrigation channels to transport water from rivers and water reservoirs to the fields in the area. We stumbled upon a sheep that had fallen into one of the channels. Its hind legs were stuck in the mud at the edge. My brother and a Chinese guy tried to pull it loose, but it was firmly stuck. The Chinese guy decided he would get a spade to rescue it and we went on walking.

After about 14 km (9 miles) we got to some water and decided to spend the night there just out of site of a small village. We had just set up the tents and were chatting to each other when a local came over and sat down between the tents. He was a really nice and calm guy and my brother spoke to him for a while. He told us that there had not been a single drop of rain in 2009. We are indeed in a desert.

The night was a lot colder than expected, so the following nights we have put on all our wool to stay warm. My tent (a MSR HUBBA HP) is incredibly small! Hehe - it is great because it is VERY light weight, but since it only has about 5 cm (2 inches) of ’space’ on each side of the sleeping mattress, it feels slightly claustrophobic. I’ve got used to it already though and it is very quick and easy to set up. The small ‘footprint’ means it can be set up almost anywhere.

Many thanks for advice about emergency water supply in the form of water blisters.

So far we have not had to apply the advice. I’ve only had one blister on my right little toe, and it is under control.

To begin with we carried 5 or 6 litres of water each. As it turns out we only use about 2 litres a day, assuming that one of the meals is with a farmer or somewhere else. This makes our load 4 kg lighter.  It doesn’t sound much but is actually a fair bit.

Interestingly, despite that the province we are walking through is called Gansu Province, it has been formed by two earlier districts which were named “Gan” and “Su”. It is fed by water from the mountains and they have a good irrigation system where needed. Judging from the last time I was here, there is more water here than in many other northern provinces and it bears a direct relationship to how pleased and happy they are. One farmer said, “We have enough water, so we laugh aloud!”

Otherwise, the way we have been received has been overwhelming! Amazing really, for who are we? Just passers by. Have lost count already of the number of small and large favours we have received. Farmers inviting us to stay the night (once saving us from a sand storm), making food, helping us arrange things, driving us from nowhere to Gaotai, and going the extra mile, and driving us to the hotel. I could have continued.

Thankfully my Chinese language skills are holding out fine. I can understand a bit of the local dialect as well.

I am considering saving for a goat moustache since dry shaving the chin is not worth it.

Come to think of it, I have not had a shower since I left the UK 10 days ago. The odd thing is that I do not feel as though I need it! A face cloth seems to suffice. Might ask my brother for a second opinion. Will have one now.
Regarding hygiene, the first couple of days the ground was so dry that it had a thin layer of either a white talcum powder or the grey sandy variant. If one touches the socks, it results in a cloud of dust.

Jon and I are finished with the desert stretch and are now hanging out at the (open for business) doctor’s office in a small village. It is 10 p.m. He has kindly invited us to spend the night on the premises and borrow his computer. His son is looking at me with envy because writing this quick note is taking up his valuable internet gaming time.

We have met a lot of hospitable people lately and because of Jon’s Chinese knowledge we have learnt more of the people we have met along the Great Wall.

Will have to keep this short and sweet. From what I gather, we are going to be sleeping where the patients usually stay, so I hope there are no operations scheduled for tomorrow morning…

We will be in Gao Tai in about 5 days time, and will be able to write more about the events of the week.

My brother has arrived in Jiayuguan. It was really good to see a familiar face here. Tomorrow we continue the walk where I left off.

Chances are that we might not be able to update this website as we go along unfortunately, but hopefully the map will show our progress every day.

We will find a solution to these things - just hang in there! And from Gaotai which is the third yellow marker from the west going eastwards on the Great Wall Route, the picture gallery will be activated.

Until then - enjoy the Spring! (That is if you live in the northern hemisphere)

Those two blisters I got yesterday, were giving me a clear message, so I decided to let my feet heal a bit.

I also started getting pictures ready for the picture gallery. The first few days I have concentrated mostly on the walking and as I have to ‘fill’ the picture gallery with quite a lot of pictures before it can be activated, that is going to take a little bit of time.

Finally  - I made a decision. Rather than pushing on the next few days, I have decided to wait till Monday when my brother comes to Jiayuguan. I’m simply going to enjoy life here in Jiayuguan   

On Wednesday I set out for another stretch and decided to walk with the walking sticks I had brought with me. As I have promised myself to take it easy in the beginning, I did 12 km in two hours.

The landscape was flat and I could only see remnants of The Wall most places, but it was clearly defined as there were no fields in the vicinity. The wind was fairly strong, but that was fine. After a while I started to feel a lot of friction on my heels. It turned out that the thin woollen socks I have brought are a bit too thin. They had been damaged on both heels, resulting in two nice blisters.

After 12 km I called it a day and my faithful taxi driver got me back to the place where I’m staying now. I want to walk further and harder etc, but I also know that these first weeks are pretty important to the overall outcome of this project. Therefore I am going to take it niiiiiice and easy in the beginning    

When I was kayaking along the Norwegian Coast, I was a little less than a month behind schedule after the first six weeks. People were starting to write in the guestbook pointing that out to me. After the first weeks however I was stronger, and had managed to avoid injuries. This put me in a position to start kayaking a lot faster, making up for the lost time. I am planning for the same here, so thanks everyone for being patient with me!!

Another factor is that my big brother is meeting me on Monday. He knows Chinese very well and that is going to be a big help in the beginning. I just spoke to him on the phone - he is in Beijing visiting friends now.

On Tuesday the route of The Wall went into a more urban landscape with fields and houses. I tried to follow the path of The Wall, but when I got to a group of houses, it disappeared on the other side. Therefore I started walking in the same general direction looking for The Wall again.

It was quite fun because the area I was walking through was cultivated and therefore I had to follow the small paths between the fields which did not always line up with the direction I wanted to walk. After walking for a while and keeping my eyes open, I saw the Great Wall on the other side of the township. The Wall was partly covered in sand and soil, but there was no doubt that it was The Wall.

So I continued along it for about 10 km. At the end of the day I had two small blisters in the ‘classical’ place for my part - on the smallest toe on the inside. My toes are fat and line up partly underneath each other. So I have taped them up now… (I never thought I would be writing about my toes in a blog…)

Yesterday I thought I wasn’t getting anywhere with the GPRS problem because of Easter, so decided to spend the day walking instead of banging my head against the wall. My sponsor of the htc telephone in Norway - Nordialog - has sent my request on to the experts, so I hope it will be solved soon.

I got a taxi to the position where I last stopped walking (find the cross I  drew in the sand two days before) and start walking eastwards, north of Jiayuguan. Soon I’m out there alone and life is good. A few farmers here and there. After a while I get to a beacon tower with eight 2×2 metre (6×6 feet) and little higher constructions. They have a few holes going into the centre which is hollow. Andreas told me about them in advance. I take quite a few pictures of them and start thinking what they were used for.

The soldiers that served along the Great Wall spent their time, for the most part, waiting for an attack that maybe never came. So some scholars believe these constructions were used for some type of alternative industry to make money. There are 3-4 groups of these constructions, all placed close to beacon towers. Some believe they are stoves of some sort, while others think they may have been used as a sort of smoke signaling device.

As I continue walking, I associate that sand and snow behave the same way in some respects. For instance they both pile up behind obstacles when the wind is blowing. They can also be hard to walk through quickly if they have the wrong consistency, as they take the thrust out of your stride. So - we have sandstorms and snowstorms.

I am most certainly a Snowman. I was mostly brought up in Norway and have spent many nights out in the forests in the winter together with friends and alone. So I know what to expect even in pretty cold conditions.

The Sandman in me is having a pretty hard learning curve now.

For instance - what kind of socks should I use? I started off with cotton socks in two thin layers to prevent blisters. But they were much too dense and didn’t let air in or humidity out. Today I used a thin pair of woollen socks and they were great! Like walking on water   :-)  But when I took my shoes off at the end of the day they both had holes at the top… Luckily I have brought more robust woollen socks and will try them soon.

Another Sandman trivia - how many miles to the gallon do I last? (Hvor mange liter på mila?) Yesterday I drank 2 litres on the 15 km trek. That was a lot more than I expected. So I’ll have to drink more when I get to places and stock up where water is abundant - both in my body and outside.

As I walked on and got closer to the designated end point for the day, I suddenly got a shock. In the horizon I seem to recognize a very familiar structure (the header picture) on the dilapidated Wall. I got very emotional thinking that this is the exact same spot I walked past 11 years ago. I walked there with my brother who I will be meeting in only a week’s time. As I got closer I see that this is not the same spot. So I quickly regain control and save the tears for another day…

On Sunday I wanted to start walking, but spent time trying to figure out how to get the GPRS network to work. It works wonders with the Norwegian SIM card, but unfortunately not with the Chinese. So, after having spent quite a few hours alone and then at the local China Mobile place up the street, I was sent to a repair shop.

I came in and this guy was leaning over a mobile cell phone that looked like it was in a deep anaesthetic sleep, with wires hanging out of its open guts. The only thing missing was the classical ‘beep-beep’ sound of its heartbeat. Maybe there was no heartbeat at that point!? So I quickly turned around, as I know my HTC phone works great.  The problem is in the software setup somewhere.

Then I headed back to the hotel once more and decide to lighten my rucksack. I poured out everything on the bed and think ‘Half’. I just want half of whatever I can afford. First the provincial maps are cut so that only the route I’m following and the area around are left. Next I decide to get rid of moisturising cream and liquid soap as half a bar of soap will do and weighs a lot less. (Probably I’ll throw that away too) To you who think I’m a girly: when I went to China my hands were in a bad state. An incredible difference in humidity helped and things are better now.

I go through my clothes next. I only have one pair of trousers, so that is saved. But I have brought some fairly light woollen tops and one of them bit the dust. An extra pair of soles go, as I have found and now use the best ones. The largest waterproof bag goes, as by this time I don’t have that much to keep waterproof! My ten year old wallet says goodbye. And speaking of money… I have spent so much time exchanging large notes for smaller ones to be able to pay for things when I’m in the villages, that they actually weigh quite a bit! So half of them are spent on hotel bills.

Not long ago it was pretty cold here, so I have brought a little bit of used light winter equipment. This also goes. Next I throw out half of the salt tablets (for keeping the salt balance in the desert) and half of the Ibuprofen anti flammatory tablets go. Then I open the different medicine packets and manage to compact and lighten them a lot.

I also brought one of those aluminium emergency rescue blankets. It joins the rest of non-wanted items.

My Great Wall mentor Andreas advised me to bring some pictures of family and friends to show people along The Wall. He even asked if my girlfriend has blond hair which she does. This is very popular here in China. Anyway - I browse through the pictures, and throw away about… half.

All the things are placed in a plastic bag and I am amazed at how much weight I have saved. Don’t have any scales here, but I assume it is at least 2 kg. That is more than this Lenovo Thinkpad I’m writing on now! So, a day that could have sent me into a major depression because of technical difficulties is saved by the ‘half’ project.

I have taken quite a lot of taxies the first few days, in and around Jiayuguan. For some reason there is a majority of women among the taxi drivers here.

And that’s great, because: They don’t drive too fast, they don’t speak so quickly that you haven’t got a chance to understand what they are saying and they don’t smoke in the car! Today I took a taxi to the fortress where I ended the walk yesterday. I managed to arrange with the taxi driver that a couple of hours later, she would pick me up somewhere north of the town.

The walk today brought me north of Jiayuguan, and then eastwards. Some places The Wall has disappeared, but because of previous findings among the Great Wall Forum, I was able to follow it all the way.

It was dry and dusty today too (and will be the next half year from what I can gather) but there were some clouds that gave some protection from the sun. So, I’m not baking my face today like yesterday. When I got to the outskirts of the town I started meeting local farmers preparing their fields for the summer.

When I got to the designated end point which was exactly a 10 km walk, I started talking to a man and his wife. After a while I called the taxi driver, and they told her where to come to pick me up.

I spent most of the morning trying to figure out the problem with the GPRS connection. It is still not working, and therefore, I cannot connect to this site to make daily updates as planned. Not sure about the solution yet. I might try to fix it tomorrow.

If you don’t hear from me for some days, you know why! I should still be able to update the route with a daily coordinate via satellite, so that will give you an idea of the progress.

Time to take a shower now and then prepare the GPS for next week’s walking.

Happy Easter!

Hello,

Today was a big day   

For some reason the local TV had picked up the news about the walk and wanted to do an interview. In China it is good to have a slogan, big signs of what is happening and a speech to make for a good send off. Shirley is a woman that works with tourism in Jiayuguan, and she has been very helpful with guiding me through the interview experience. Thanks Shirley!!

About half past nine in the morning, two representatives for the Jiayuguan Fortress, Shirley, three people from the local TVand I set off for the first beacon tower of the Ming Dynasty Great Wall. It lies about 7 km (4,5 miles) south-south west of the Jiayuguan Fortress.

There, we took out the posters and I held a little speech in Chinese about the walk and explained that I am doing it for cancer research. Then we took (a lot) of pictures in front of the banner and I was given a book with a greeting from Jiayuguan Fortress and also a letter of recommendation for the walk. I then gave the two representatives and Shirley a gift. After that I did a mock walk along The Wall which was filmed. In the end, I was sent off on a gondola’ish chute across a big river bed. As I weigh 70 kg and the rucksack about 15, the 90 kg’s were a lot more than the chute was calibrated for, so I ended up banging into the other side. Luckily they had a mattress there that took some of the blow. Then my hosts went back to work.

I walked back to the beacon tower and looked around for a suitable stone. This is a tradition of mine. When I do long walks or kayak trips, I pick up a stone at each end of the journey. It is really good memento

The walk was nice. Flat terrain through a very dry landscape. So dry that dead shrubs were dancing around in the wind. At one point I was half expecting John Wayne to show up and ask “What ya doing out here Son?”. And I would reply: “What are YOU doing out here!? Aren’t you dead?”.

I tried to take pictures of myself walking today, which turned out to be a slight change as there are only two options: Put the camera on The Wall to get a good picture of me, but not The Wall. Or place the camera on the ground and get a good picture of The Wall, but from the surface pointing up. I tried both…

After only a couple of hours the walk was over and I turned up at Jiayuguan Fortress. The end point of today and starting point for tomorrow.

That’s when I noticed that the sun is incredibly strong here although it is only the beginning of April. Jiayuguan is about 1.600 metres over the sea, so I’m glad I put sun cream on arms and ears. But not the face…  

I got back to the hotel pretty early and then went out to try to get the mobile to work on internet. I went to a large China Mobile sales outlet and they were really helpful in trying to understand my problem, and solve it. After two hours (!) we were still not finished, but they said they would investigate further and that I should come back tomorrow. We spent quite a lot of time in front of the computer writing back and forth from English to Chinese on Google Translate. One of the wonders of the world.

I will update this post with pictures tomorrow. The category “Short daily report” will be used when I get on the track. As I have a good internet connection at the hotel, this was a long report. Time to go to bed now.