The Great Wall – Mutianyu

This is completely insane. How on earth did they build this thing?
These were my thoughts as I rode to the top of what should normally be
a ski run in my shiny orange gondola. There is no easy access point
to the Great Wall of China, it literally lines the mountain tops. It
is almost 9,000 km long! At one point the Wall was guarded by more
than one million men and almost three million people died in the
endeavor making me wonder if it is one of Man’s great accomplishments
or a testament to ancient slavery? I don’t know, but I do know that
manual labor sucks.

The steepest section I went up had more than four hundred steps. I
was counting them. When I finally got to the top I was horrified to
see another entire ridge continuing in the distance. I proceeded and
went through a section that was closed. The Wall is falling apart and
nature is winning. You cannot see this damaged section from the main
tourist area and this struck me as something that the Chinese
government is very big on. Appearances.

It was hot and hazy. After my thirsty three-hour trek I bought a well
earned two-dollar Chinese brew from a weathered Chinese man and sipped
it on the Wall.

I rode down in the same gondola that Clinton did and had a bottle of
cold green tea and an over-priced freshly made chocolate and banana
pancake. I had hired a taxi for the day and we drove back to
civilization we had to stop on a small bridge to allow a farmer and
his heard of sheep to cross.