It was all about the Mongols. China wasn’t really my main focus when I came to Beijing. There wasn’t enough time. I actually wanted to grasp as many places outside modern-day Mongolia itself where these fearless nomadic people first started their conquests. In a way, I wanted to revive their past, to get at least some taste of it, and Beijing was a good place to start – here’s why.
In the 13th century, Genghis Khan and his army of fierce riders breached the Great Wall of China. They were supposedly the only ones who ever managed to do so. The great warrior didn’t stop there and he went on conquering the rest of Asia. He didn’t seem to care about leaving a perpetual physical trace behind. His forces ravaged and plundered, without bothering to construct anything to glorify themselves. After winning his battles, Khan would always return to Mongolia. I imagine him in a thick winter del* and high leather boots, treading heavily in snow towards his yurt*, and then bending his head, with a fur hat on, to get inside through a small wooden door frame.
Kublai Khan, his grandson, was different. He moved the capital of Yuan dynasty, the main center of the Mongol Empire, to present-day Beijing. There he built breathtaking, luxury palaces surrounded with heavenly gardens, as Marco Polo describes them.
So, there I was, climbing a small island in the center of a lake in Beihai Park to check if there’s anything left of that place where Kublai Khan received one of the first Europeans to travel the Silk Road to China. Unfortunately, this place, the Palace in the Moon, wasn’t there. In its place I found just a regular temple and a big white pagoda. Not really what I hoped for but still I spent whole afternoon around the park, letting my imagination recreate the place from Marco Polo’s memories.
The next stop was the Great Wall. It was hard to get any decent information from the receptionists in my hostel about how to reach the Wall other than by booking a tour. They would give me weird looks, as if saying – why would you go there by yourself. To make things easier, I asked them about the closest villages or cities to a couple of sections of the Wall that interested me (there are many sections available for visiting and not all of them are close to Beijing) but that caused even more despair in their eyes. They said they had never heard of any. I asked (already a bit annoyed) if they were suggesting that there was no village or city in 200-km radius around Beijing and they said there wasn’t :D.
Of course there was, but they didn’t know about it. They’ve never been outside Beijing and when I asked if they had any desire to visit any other city in China, they didn’t really seem very enthusiastic about the idea.
Anyway, in the end I managed to get the info I needed, although I struggled a lot because not many Chinese speak English and my VPN wasn’t working well so I couldn’t ask Google. Tip: buy VPN before coming to China and don’t count on trial/free versions.
Google search did save me, however, at one crucial point. I was at the bus station and there was a lady, wearing official driver uniform, telling me that I should take a different bus to reach Mutianyu section where I was heading. There was something fishy about how she approached me out of nowhere, convincing me that I should take another bus, that I quickly googled to double-check the bus number she was suggesting.
I was soooo lucky that my Google search worked that instant because there were several travel blog entries warning about this lady and her scam. If I had taken that bus, I would’ve been left literally in the middle of nowhere, forced to get a taxi, that was conveniently waiting there to get me out of this hopeless situation for loads of money.
Reaching Mutianyu section and seeing the Wall for the first time made me forget all about this. I was speechless, deeply impressed and amazed. The last time I felt like that it was when I first saw Machu Picchu. No wonder both of them are considered one of the greatest wonders of the world.
Mutianyu section is fully-restored but less crowded than the most visited section, Badaling, so the feel and the views were spectacular. The following day I visited another section, Gubeikou. That’s one of the unrestored sections of the wall. It looks like a beautiful ruin ravaged by both time and challenging history – over 130 battles happened there.
I camped in of its watchtowers with a guy I met in the hostel in Beijing. That was a really special experience because around midnight the sky seemed to crack under uncountable lightening strikes and thunders. The sound of heavy rain and the smell of refreshed vegetation all around was so soothing.
Well, soothing up until I started noticing some flashlights in the distance, moving along the wall in our direction. Poor Santiago stayed up whole night on the lookout for ”thieves and rapists that were coming to get me” (whom I invented and who never reached our tent in the end). In the morning, we both agreed those were just enthusiast photographers trying to get some cool photos of the Wall in the thunderstorm.
Anyway, who would say that the following day that girl, so scared of a couple of flashlights on the Great Wall of China, would head for the Mongolian border, get a horse and spend more than a month sleeping alone in the wild Mongolian steppe (and get out if it alive).
But that’s a story for another time. For now, here comes the selection of 20 pics (out of approx. 1200) of the most magnificent wall I’ve ever seen. There is a mixture of photos from Mutianyu, fully-restored section, Gubeikou, original intact section of the wall, and Jinshanling, half-restored section that Santiago and I reached after finishing our hike over Gubeikou. Hope you enjoy it!
*del: long coat typically used by nomad people in Mongolia
*yurt: white round tent where nomad people in Mongolia live
