The Great Wall’ker

A couple of hours after we had gone to bed on a mattress, the wind started increasing. After a short while it was blowing really hard, so hard that we both got up in the tent and tried to secure it by counteracting the forces of the wind gusts from within. It worked pretty well, but after doing this for more than an hour, it gets tiring.

The wind was blowing so hard that I was sure I could here the jet engines of a plane in the background. After trying to hold the tent steady for a long time I gave up,  laid down on the mattress again and hoped the tent would manage by itself the rest of the night, although the wind had the same velocity as before.

The next morning we were both pretty tired. Our tents and sleeping bags were full of sand and dust. It was still blowing in the morning but not as strongly as before.

We got up and headed for a nearby town to buy food and water. Then we walked through the town in search of the Great Wall on the other side. This was a hint from Andreas of the Great Wall Forum and his suspicions turned out to be correct. We hit on the Great Wall and followed it South-eastwards.

At this point it was still very windy. I went into the desert a couple of times to walk along some recognised stretches of The Wall. Later in the afternoon it was still blowing fairly hard and there were few places to pitch our tents in other than loose sand, so we decided to head back to Gaotai to get some sleep after a pretty sleepless night

I was very happy about this decision later on as the following night it became very windy and for the first time in a long while it rained heavily too. I’m happy we didn’t need to hold on to our tents again …

Today we took a bus back to the Doctor’s office and continued the walk. We walked about 14 km (9 miles) before trying to cross the river, only to find the path was closed for reconstruction. We didn’t want yet another detour so decided to go for it and just walk straight into the construction site and hopefully through it.

It worked well for a while.  We were then stopped by a guy shaking his head and pointing further on, indicating that we could not cross. I just nodded and told him as convincingly as I could (in Norwegian) that everything was OK and that we would cross the river. It seemed to work.  We walked on and managed to get ourselves over without getting wet feet or crushed limbs by the industrial machines at work.

We walked on a little further before finding shelter in a small gathering of trees. We spent some time debating whether it was best to put up our tents in the middle of the little man-made forest where there was nothing but sand on the ground, or towards a verge where there was a thin layer of grass. The latter would potentially expose us more to the strong wind but we decided it was best to pitch our tents there.

I sent off the GPS coordinates as usual, but this time from inside the tent. Although I got an ‘OK’ message that the position was sent, it later turned out that the message never arrived at the other end.

Then came the night, and the sand storm, but I’ll write about that in the next post.

We gave ourselves a whole days rest in Gaotai and the thing I will remember best from this day was the sadistic foot massage I received.  We found a foot massage parlour and the owner of the place massaged my feet while Jon got a massage from another younger woman. It seemed that the criteria for a successful massage was as many gasps of pain as possible. After an hour we were pretty drained.

The problem was, that after the blister on my left foot had become so bad, I had started favouring my right foot. This is turn meant my strides had uneven lengths. So my left calf muscle had stiffened completely and was like a solid ball.

Anyway, after an hour of pain, we walked slowly back to the hotel hoping that our feet and legs would be better the day after - which luckily they were.

The wind blew really hard through the night but we were safe in the Doctor’s premises. In fact we were very safe, because he had not only locked the door but taken down the metal barrier in front of the door too.

We were planning to walk on but we were both pretty beaten up after the desert crossing. Sticking to our plan of not overdoing things we thought it best to take a couple of days rest to get our bodies back in shape. We were sitting in the small shop by the doctor’s office when a very nice guy offered to drive us to Gaotai, after he had unloaded his truck with metal forms to make concrete elements for the irrigation systems. We were very grateful and were soon sitting in his truck with our rucksacks on the back, heading for Gaotai.

Shirley had called ahead and arranged for a place for us to stay. It’s nice to have a person with knowledge of Gansu to call ahead, so many thanks again Shirley! We spent the rest of the day relaxing, washing ourselves and the most dirty things in our rucksacks. In the evening we went out and had a nice meal.

Gaotai is not a very big place. It has a nice local atmosphere. In the middle there is a ‘city green’.  It looks like there is something going on there every evening. Lots of people, music and dancing in the evenings. It is a little hard to blend in though, as there is usually a virtual wave of people in front of us opening their eyes wide open when they see two foreigners walking down the street. I guess it is hard to blend in when we are both over 6 feet tall.

After breakfast (with our new friend at the factory) consisting of a sweet rice soup, we were on our way again. The wind was blowing quite hard, so we both listened to music. I favoured Neil Young and Bob Dylan - many of their songs are just right for a walk that lasts for a very long time.

In the end we hit upon a green valley. Because the wind had blown sand into the air the visibility wasn’t all that good, but it was nice to see something green for a change. In the valley the Black River slowly drifted downwards giving life to the area around it.

We headed southwards and followed the rim of the valley and The Wall until we got to a beacon tower and then climbed down a hill. This was pretty interesting because the side of the hill consisted of sand in varying degrees of firmness. We followed a crack in the ground where the sand was loose. It felt safer. I was glad to have the walking sticks.

In the village below we soon found the local Shang dian (shop) and bought some food and drink. We felt the need to rest a little after three days that were a bit longer than what we should have exposed our bodies to. But this place was far too small to have anything that resembles a hostel.

The Doctor had knowledge of both Chinese and Western medicine.

After about half way through our walk the next day, we got to a large factory that we were told made a chemical ingredient for making pictures. Because of the financial crisis it was temporarily shut down. As we walked through the area it was clear that the factory had employed a lot of workers. All the houses of these workers were empty now.

We got to a shop and the lady there greeted us. We asked if there was any place to get a warm meal, which there wasn’t. We asked if she could make us a Ji dan chao jiu cai against payment, and she agreed. The building had two rooms. The shop in front and her living quarters and a small kitchen behind. She said we could stay in the back room until she was finished with the meal. This is a delicious dish, yet simple to make. Jiu cai is a vegetable that is fairly easy to get hold of and ji dan are eggs. Yummy. We also bought and drank more than a litre each. Ice tea is our favorite.

We spent some time in the shop and then went on walking. Along The Wall we saw footprints of camels in the sand. Toward the end of the day we started looking around to find a place to spend the night. Jon walked to another factory and started talking to one of the workers there. He kindly offered us these premises to stay the night. He was a really friendly guy.  We were able to wash our feet which is nice when they are full of sand.

We got off to an early start. We were soon out of the fields and started on the desert stretch. We walked up to a plateau. The area consisted of the desert, the Great Wall and a lot of ancestral burial places formed in slots. These places varied from heaps of sand and stones some places, to a site with a gravestone, a bench and plastic flowers. Some places there were also greetings written on paper placed under a rock to keep them from blowing away.

We kept on walking, and after about 20 km (12,4 miles) we decided it was enough. The only problem was to find a suitable site to pitch the tents. The sand was loose and even though we have free standing tents, they also have an outer tent that requires two plugs in the ground so that they can withstand some wind. We ended up sleeping without the tents and luckily there were no high winds that night. Otherwise we would have been covered in sand.