The Great Wall’ker

Today I got off to an earlier start and was walking the Great Wall at about half past seven. It was fairly cool, which was a great improvement from yesterday. Walking the Great Wall was fun today. The first section was on the border of the desert. As it was cooler, I had enough energy to get the camera out and take quite a lot of pictures. The sun made interesting patterns in the sand since it was quite low on the horizon.

In one section, I walked in a large man-made forest. (It could have been made by a woman of course, but I only saw men there today.) This was ideal walking terrain as the ground was flat and the trees provided shade!!! There were even large patches of green grass under the trees. I was so happy to see grass again that I sat down and took a break, just to look at it.

About half way during the walk the Great Wall entered a valley with fields.  The Wall became more difficult to follow. There were lots of rice paddies and maize/corn plants. It was fun to see the rice paddies up close. Some of them were in about 50 cm’s of deep water, so I had to be careful to keep my balance when walking on the thin strips of land between them. Rice paddies are mosquito-land, so I have donated blood to quite a few of them today. The maize plants were so high that I couldn’t see anything when I walked through them.

After having lost The Wall trail for five minutes, I re-discovered it and started heading towards it. There was a mud house on top of it and a dog started barking it’s head off. I climbed onto the Great Wall and saw that the farmers were harvesting and drying Chinese Wolfberries. The area is well known for this berry. The dog continued barking and soon the inhabitants of the house came out. They invited me inside, as it was getting pretty hot by this time.

One man found a watermelon, cut it in half and offered it to me together with a pair of chopsticks. I thought it best to just go on explaining why I was there, as I have little experience eating watermelons with chopsticks. Luckily another guy picked up the other half and used the chopsticks as a knife to loosen the meat on the inside. It was delicious. I had forgotten to restock on water, so it was great to get some fluids into my body. They were very nice people and I showed them a printed page explaining what I was doing. (Thanks for the translation Sue!) They seemed to like the project and invited me to stay for a warm meal. Unfortunately, I had to decline the kind offer as it was getting hotter outside by the minute.

I left soon after and stepped straight on to the Great Wall from their front door. The dog barked me farewell. Towards the end of the day I really started noticing the consequences of walking 23-24 kilometres on just half a litre of water and half a watermelon in July in Ningxia. It was a good lesson for the coming days that are going to be more challenging with regards to the distance between villages and water supplies.

I got up about seven o’clock this morning ready to beat the heat with a fairly early start. In Inner Mongolia, this would have been early enough to escape the high temperature, but here in Ningxia, there was no hope. I went to the airport north of Zhongwei and found a very large beacon tower by a Great Wall fortress. It took a bit of dodging and walking around fences to get to it. The beacon tower must be the second biggest one I’ve seen so far and there was a metal stair-like installation so one could walk to the top of it. I did and enjoyed the sight for a while.

But there was a problem. It was before nine o’clock, and I was already sweating incredibly hard. It was dripping from my face and into my eyes. It was humid too. I shook my head and thought - I can’t do this. If I’m sweating this much before nine o’clock, then this day is going to be absolute murder. After letting the heartbeat slow down a bit, I started walking and luckily the Great Wall went along a quiet road for the first stretch.

After a while, the wind picked up a little and this made the walking (and sweating) better. Soon, I was off-road trying to follow the Great Wall as closely as possible. In this area the Tengger desert reaches the Great Wall and sometimes swallows it completely.  I walked past a small brick factory. I have wanted to see how the bricks are made from start to finish, but the actual stove wasn’t lit, so I’ll leave it for another day.

Towards the end of the day, it became very windy and I could see dark clouds gathering behind me. After a while the air was filled with sand. People were hurrying home, or at least taking shelter. Even the dogs understood something was about to happen, as they didn’t bark at me when I walked past.

I called it quits after a little less than 20 kilometres. I was really exhausted as the heat on the first half of the trip had taken a lot of energy from me. The biggest problem with the heat is that not only does it drain energy, but it also drains me mentally. I’m not used to this intense heat and walking around in it doesn’t make that much sense. Will try for a much earlier start tomorrow.

It is raining now.