The Great Wall’ker

On Friday, I went to visit the China Great Wall organization. I met Vice President Mr Dong Yaohui and Vice Secretary General Yan Jianmin. My Chinese friend Chen Shu had set up this meeting from Denmark. Thank you Shu!!

Mr Dong and I had a good talk about the Ming Dynasty Great Wall, and the potential challenges that will be awaiting me. He spent 508 days walking along the Great Wall in 1984 - 85 and possesses a lot of knowledge about it. Amongst the things that we covered: There will be snakes along The Wall, but none are poisonous enough to kill you. There are scorpions in the desert, but they only give a bad sting. They asked me if I was using a GPS, which I am (in a big way).

According to Mr Dong, there are two places on the Ming Dynasty Wall which have an inner loop but  I should follow the outer loop. He offered me a map of the Great Wall which was the result of his Masters degree on the subject. He also told me about the nine and later ten Fortresses along the Great Wall. Later, I showed Mr Dong and Mr Yan the intended route for the walk on Google Maps.

Mr Dong was kind enough to write me a letter of recommendation, which is much appreciated. He is widely known in China and I am very grateful for his letter and the standing offer of contacting him if I get into trouble. Thank you Mr Dong. We also talked about walking a section of the Great Wall together which I am already looking forward to!

We then went out to eat and the tone became more informal. I learnt many things, amongst others that in China it is seen as respectful to wait until one’s father has died before growing a beard. That is, luckily, not the case in Norway and my father is still alive and kicking. The food was really good and I used the opportunity to ask them to write the names of the dishes so I can order them later!

You can read about the equipment I am, and am not bringing here. This is the first of three pages on the subject. The others describe the high-tech-ness of this trip, and a list of everything in my rucksack.

Yesterday I had an important meeting with a salesperson from China Mobile. After sitting together for a fair amount of time, we managed to sort out the following: A new Chinese SIM card that works in all of China. It lets me send cheap messages to Norway but I cannot receive from abroad. I will be able to use the phone to update this website via GPRS once I’m walking the Great Wall. I even learnt how to recharge the phone card and call a number to see how much credit I have left. All this was done with a little English knowledge by the sales lady, and even less Chinese knowledge on my part.

The above - together with the HTC S740 mobile phone sponsored by Nordialog - are the two most important factors for me to be able to write daily reports when walking. So I was a very happy guy when I walked out of the door!

The next important meeting is with the China Great Wall Organization which I will write more about tomorrow.

After a long haul from London Heathrow to Beijing, I am at last in China! My brother gave me the address of a nice hotel close to the Beijing University and I have slept a little, as I didn’t get any sleep at all on the flight over. This is one of the blessings of being 1.85 cm (6 ft plus) tall and sitting in slightly cramped conditions on the plane.

Things have definitely changed since I was in China in 1998. The town looks a lot more developed and we drove past several of the spectacular Olympic arenas on the way here. The room I am in has both Norwegian, English and Chinese/US type power outlets. But some things remain the same. For instance I can hear the careful and more or less continuous beeping of cars, on the road outside the window, letting other cars in the vicinity know their whereabouts. In Norway, a car usually only beeps if there is a very close call, or one gets angry. Here it is just a happy signal letting you know: “Here I come!”.

Thanks to my parents and sister for giving me a lot of help these last days in Oslo! Much appreciated   

Now that this is posted, it’s time to go out and get something to eat. I will stay in Beijing for a few days now, to get the last preparations finished and hopefully meet a representative for the Great Wall Organisation in Beijing and the Norwegian Embassy.

At the airport safety check, I ended up talking to a very sympathetic guy and told him about the trip I am about to start on. He kindly agreed to write a greeting on the back on the boarding card. Thanks a lot Ole Gunnar Solskjaer!	A very nice greeting
The taxi driver that brought me safely from the airport to the hotel. First he asked if I smoke, and then said he wouldn’t smoke as I didn’t. Five minutes later he asked again if I really didn’t smoke, and I confirmed the fact. Another five minutes later he caved in and opened the window and lit a cigarette.A very nice guy, and we managed to keep up a conversation in Chinese of sorts. I learnt the word “Leng” which means cold in Chinese, and often comes up in a conversation when I say I come from Norway. Then I asked him what the word for warm or hot was, and he uttered a word that could only consist of vowels, and was impossible to repeat… I’ll have to bring out the dictionary.Thanks Andreas and Sue - I have corrected to “Leng” third tone, and the “Re” fourth tone that he referred to.	Taxi driver reading the address of the hotel
The Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium from the 2008 summer Olympics. Taken from the road.	The Bird's nest Olympic stadium

A dream, that became a plan, is now about to become reality.

Tomorrow afternoon, I take a flight to Beijing via London. The last days have been nothing less than crazy and I can feel that I’m pretty drained physically and mentally. Putting half a year of preparations into a rucksack might sound like a simple task, but it takes a lot of mental planning.

Also, I have spent a lot of time reflecting on how to update this website regularly in the best possible way, to give you an as good as possible experience of the trip.

Time to go to bed now, so that I won’t be a walking zombie tomorrow, or I’ll probably forget my sleeping bag…

Because of the intense preparations lately, I have not been able to update this site as often as planned. The first thing I want to do when I’ve landed in Beijing is to write about the equipment I am bringing along, and also to thank all the people that have helped me get this far! (The list is long)

The adventure starts tomorrow.  Good night  

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of holding a presentation for the Norwegian Travellers’ Club in Oslo. The Club was established in 1928 and has a rich history of travel and exploration. I held a presentation for the Club after I kayaked the length of Norway solo and this time talked about the preparations for walking the Great Wall.

As the audience was full of experienced travellers, I brought along a notepad and asked them to comment on my preparations and suggest how I can prepare myself even better. By the time the evening was over, I had written down a number of good suggestions that I will look into.

After the presentation, we all had a very nice meal with drinks and then we sat around talking of the passion that inspires us: Travelling the world. Towards the end of the evening I was presented with a ‘Good Luck’ greeting from the Club. I hope to be able to visit them again when I’ve finished walking the Great Wall of China.

You can read more about Travellers’ Club here, or more about the evening in Norwegian here.

Last week I met each of the women partly pictured above. Can you see what they are up to?

On Wednesday, I held a presentation about the preparations for the walk along the Great Wall for the Norwegian Travellers Club. I spent the following day with a member of the Board of the Norwegian Chinese Chamber of Commerce and applied for a visa for China. Later I met the other members of the Board. PC manufacturer Lenovo has agreed to sponsor the trip with one of their smallest laptops. More on all the above in later posts.

UPDATE: I have now reached agreements with NCCC and Lenovo. You can read more about these here.

Now back to the women.

	Gro Marit works as an optician. She did a routine check on my eyes and showed the best way to get rid of annoying sand which there will be plenty of in the Gobi Desert. She provided me with cleaning liquid and a very small container for the lenses. I will have to decide how much of this I can afford to bring along weight-wise. Since I will be away for so long, I paid in advance for contact-lenses for the next one and a half years to be sure that their shipment doesn’t suddenly stop.
	Aina works at the Oslo travel clinic. She stuck me in the arm a couple of times with very sharp looking devices and asked me to come back again before I leave for China. She went through my vaccine history and fortunately I have already had most of the necessary shots.Then we went on to talk about other health issues like dehydration, serious infections, tendonitis, breaking a leg (or two), diarrhoea, rabies and mosquito borne diseases.
	Hilde is an Osteopath who I have visited at regular and irregular intervals since my kayak trip, when I got a prolapse in the lower part of my back. This is slowly getting better, but it felt reassuring to let Hilde check how my back is and help it along even further. My knee has also started making a clicking noise lately. Although it does not hurt - even when I exercise intensely - I still wanted her to have a look at it.
	Hilde (no -  a different one) is a dentist, and examined my teeth thoroughly. She took a lot of x-ray pictures and looked for any signs of weakness in my teeth. Although there are no guarantees, at least I have done what I can to make sure my teeth will cause no problem along the Great Wall.
	Finally I met Hege, and as you can see, her ‘weapon’ is a pen. She is a reporter for a Norwegian newspaper. We met and talked for more than an hour about the trip and about all the preparations for it. More to come…

New equipment for the walk

At last, I don’t have say “next year” every time someone asks when I start walking the Great Wall. The past 10 days I have visited my host parents in Gloucester, MA. It’s been ten years since last time and I promised myself to do this trip before going to China. I bought a lot of equipment for the trip there. Two sleeping bags, hydration bag, backpack, jacket, camera - you name it!

As the departure date closes in, prioritising my time is getting harder. Would I be better off studying more Mandarin, and exercising less? Spending less time working on sponsorship deals, and more time on thoroughly testing all the equipment? Or perhaps studying the Ming Dynasty Great Wall in detail, instead of trying to get a book deal together? For sure, my girlfriend and I will continue seeing each other a lot. Some things will remain at the top of the list for as long I am in Norway!

Before departure I want to address the potential show stoppers of getting to China, and surviving the first month or two without major injuries.  That means applying for a VISA shortly, and exercising my body harder and harder. My Mandarin knowledge is severely limited, but I know I’ll pick up things along the Great Wall. My knowledge of the Great Wall is not expert, but I have been there before, and still have time to study my route in detail.

Those of you that have been on this site before may have noticed I have removed some without content. They will be published as soon as I have written content on them. There still remains some work on the website, as I have a high ambition of describing my experiences as well as possible through words, pictures, maps etc.

Thanks to Sib and Judy for being my host parents once again after all those years! See you again after the walk.

After quite a bit of work, this homepage is finally up and running! There are still some gaps in the content here and there, but they will be filled as time gets closer to the start of the adventure of walking the Great Wall of China.

A big thanks to Trude for encouraging words while I’ve been working on this page. To brother Jon for technical help, John for help with the texts, and to Jane for deep counselling on the colours here…

Enjoy