The Great Wall’ker

A little report from Inner Mongolia. Andreas and I have been walking along Zhao, Qin, Han and Jin walls. The oldest being between 2.400 and 2.600 years old. We found clear evidence that the oldest wall was a man-made structure as it was exposed some places, and not just an elevation in the terrain with grass on top of it.

We hired a taxi to get between the different Great Walls but then walked along the last one for 35-40 km. The terrain was great. There was green grass for the most part, which was great and a nice change from the desert terrain. We slept in the landscape without tents and walked further on the next day. Thanks a lot for the great experience Andreas! Also thanks for bringing along the shipment from Norway.

I have stayed on in Baotou a little and plan to return to Zhongwei in a couple of days to continue the walk along the Ming Dynasty Great Wall. Ningxia is very warm this part of the year, so that is going to be the biggest challenge when I get back.

Wishing all readers of this blog a happy summer holiday!!!

Today I went back to where I left off and headed for a Ming Dynasty Great Wall section to the North of Zhongwei. It was hot as usual, but I have taken some simple measures to make things a little more bearable. My beard has gone and so has all the hair on my head, except the last 3mm. I also wore a very lightweight and thin pair of trousers that I have saved for this warmer weather. All the changes seemed to help a little, but it was also pretty humid and I was sweating most of the time.

I managed to avoid big roads for the most part today which took a little longer, but was nice. The new GPS does not work unfortunately. It simply cannot lock on to the satellite signals. I am glad I have the old and faithful one, but it was a disappointment since the new one has pretty good road maps. Will have to see what options are available for getting a replacement  

While I was walking along, not all that happy since there was no Great Wall around, and pondering on what to do with the GPS, I stumbled across a little and very old woman sitting outside a small house. I walked closer and her son came out the front door. She was 90 (!) years old and had the most charming face! Her son said it was OK to take pictures, so I will upload one at www.picturesfromchina.com when I get back from the Inner Mongolia trip.

An hour later, I stumbled across a short section of the Great Wall and a beacon tower that I have not seen on any map before. Small things like that really make my day and when I have time, I will report it back to the Great Wall Forum. At the end of the walk, I was right next to Zhongwei airport and at the start of a Great Wall section close by.

Time to sleep now, because tomorrow I’m off to Inner Mongolia! I am going to join Andreas there to explore Zhao, Qin, Han and Jin Dynasty walls. Andreas is a very knowledgable guy, and has been of great help in planning and executing the first part of this marathon walk.

Because I will not be walking along the Ming Dynasty Great Wall, I plan to take a little break from blogging every day here and will instead write a report of our trip when I return to Ningxia. I guess this is like my summer holiday… There will still be a new picture every day on the site and also a new word of wisdom every day.

I wish you a good summer, and have fun in the US tomorrow!!

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Til Norske lesere:

På TV kanalen CCTV 5 viser de Bislett Games nå! Artig å få litt stemning fra gamlelandet   

I’m really happy that I have finally got the GPS. Set off early today to get to Jingtai and back, before it got too hot. So off to walk tomorrow. I will be bringing the old and new GPS’s to see how they compare.

Today I have been working on pictures that I am going to put in the picture gallery before I leave for Inner Mongolia to meet up with Andreas.

I left Jingtai to get back to Zhongwei, but a few hours later, I got a message from Kelly in Beijing that they had been able to find the GPS that my brother sent a couple of weeks ago. Now, isn’t that strange - it was sent to Jingtai a long time ago, went missing, but when Kelly starts poking around, it suddenly shows up again. I don’t want to risk losing the GPS again, so therefore I will go back to Jingtai a final time tomorrow to collect it in person. It is going to be really good to have a GPS with a lot of memory and fairly good maps of the roads in China.

Many thanks to Kelly, Pingping and their secretary for following up the GPS issue from Beijing. I’m very grateful for the help guys!!  

After coming to Ningxia, I have had a lot of positive experiences. The people seem nicer and more open than what I have experienced generally, so far. Today, I needed to take out some money from a bank using my MasterCard. I asked a couple of young girls the location of the nearest bank. They didn’t just point me in a direction, but accompanied me to the bank. The bank didn’t accept my card, so we tried another bank across the street. That didn’t work either, and by this time the manager of the bank had got himself involved.

The manager got hold of a taxi and the four of us went to a Bank of China office. I was very grateful for their help, withdrew money, and wanted to pay for the taxi. But the bank manager had beaten me to it. I felt almost ashamed to have used so much of the two girls’ and manager’s time, but they all seemed very happy to have solved my problem. Episodes like this really make me grateful and make the whole experience of travelling in a foreign country a lot more pleasurable.