The Great Wall of China

Most people don't know too much about China, other than Chinese eat rice and they live in a country with a big wall around them. When I was a kid, our teachers told us that the Great Wall in China was one of the few man made things that could actually be seen from outer space and it stretched from the coast and surrounded all of China. Call me naive, but when seeing the pictures of the wall and how it stretched over mountain tops for as far as the clouds would allow you to see, it somehow did not contradict what I had been told. Well now, this was my moment to go and check it out for myself.
I decided that I did not want to go to the usual Beijing Great Wall spot, that most other tourists go to, but instead I found a website called Beijing Hikers that offered a full day hike to a part of "the" wall that not many people go to and which was in really good shape.
On the way to the meeting point where the bus was parked I crossed the street at a light with a 100 other people and a small Chinese girl approached me and asked if I was a hiker. Do I look like a hiker I asked, and she said yes and smiled all over the face. She was dressed in a little more outdoorish clothing and she then walked next to me and kept talking to me. 5 minutes later I was at the bus and it turned out that Suzie as she was called, was actually the tour-guide of today's trip.
There was about 2 hours drive out of Beijing after picking up people at another stop. Most people were quiet except a group of American's in the background who were blabbing loudly, impossible to get a little sleep. When we arrived we got to meet everybody and it quickly turned out that there were not many locals. Most people were traveling on their own and had been on the road for days, weeks or months already. I felt a little like a traveler virgin, with only 2 weeks of travels so far.
We climbed a lot of stairs and finally arrived to a watchtower, which was part of the wall. I have seen pictures of the Great Wall before, but standing there is something else I can tell you. The day was sunny with blue sky and the view was as far as the eye could see.
The wall just kept going over one mountain ridge after the other until it disappeared in the horizon. I can not imagine the amount of labor that had to be used to build this wall, just simply amazing to be there in person.
We walked approximately for 3 hours on the wall up and down super steep steps, through towers, down through almost crumbled stairs declining with up to 60 degrees. There are other parts of the wall that has an 85 degree incline, imagine how steep that is!
Now and then we bumped into Chinese people selling drinks on the wall, with a noticeable margin I should add. 10RMB for a water, which we had gotten for free at the bus already and this woman asked 50RMB for a soda. Probably the prices are for bargaining, but imagine you are really thirsty and don't care what it costs, they will be ready to sell you one of the most expensive sodas of your life.
On the way I learned a few facts about the Great Wall.
It is not one big wall, but consist of walls in Northern China, mostly towards the border of Mongolia. The Mogolian people were known to party a little too hard and the Chinese wanted to protect themselves. If you dig deep and think of Genghis Khan, then you know that the walls did not hold forever.
In fact there are 3 walls protecting Beijing, the one we were on today was called Jinshanling and was the inner wall, the last line of defense before entering the flats where Beijing was located. 

The myth about being visible from outer space, well, that is not true either. Go to Google, and search for "jinshan ridge great wall, china" then change to the satellite image and try to zoom out - it doesnt't take long before it is not visible anymore, in fact it takes quite some time to find it in the first place.

There were 3 of us in front, 2 girls and I, and the gap between the end of the pack and us became quite big at the end. We sat waiting for Suzie the guide, who had said we could go ahead and wait for her at this one watchtower of the trail, which was going to be the end of the hike.
When she came, she asked us if we were ready to go down, and the two girls were pretty exhausted it looked like. I said I could do some more and then she pointed at another watchtower on top of the ridge about 1 km away. It was part of the Simatai wall, which has been closed for renovation for 3 years already. And yes it was closed, but if I went into the bushes, I could get around it.
Off I went and some 20 minutes later I had reached the top of the ridge with the tower, which was in pretty bad shape. But from there I had the best view and there was nobody around,
The Great Wall, was it disappointing then? Oh no, just the opposite. This construction is truly impressive, especially not being able to see the end of it in the horizon, but only one watch tower after the other with the wall between them climbing over over one mountain top after the other. I got to go with a group of very interesting and nice people, all of them really talkative and friendly. Another huge plus was the fresh air out in the nature, so much better than the big city. We had a lunch together at a local restaurant on the way back and when the beers came on the table people started really talking.
Too bad it had to end at that point, but I guess I'd better get used to that feeling...