Hello all, this is a guest post by my husband. He recounts his recent visit to the Great Wall of China. Read on....




Changcheng (The Great Wall of China)

Visiting Changcheng or the ‘Long Wall’ as it is popularly known in China, built for over 6000 Kms, is an amazing experience. An awesome man-made structure built and rebuilt….and rebuilt…. Over thousands of years, by successive dynasties.

When I was in Beijing for my official visit, my colleague from the Beijing office suggested we visit some places. ‘What would you like to see?’ he asked. ‘Great Wall, of course!!’

I was a bit apprenhensive when my colleague offered to drive me to the Great Wall in his car. I was already having enough fun catching a cab from the hotel to my office and back. I would say traffic in Beijing is not as bad as it is in India, but it’s definitely stressful!!

My colleague Mr. Hao picked me up from the hotel at 8.30AM on Saturday morning. It was a two hour drive to reach Badaling section of the Great Wall. One could book any of the plethora of bus tours to the Great Wall from various points in the city. Since it was a Saturday morning, traffic wasn’t that bad and we made it in good time. After parking the car, we set off on foot to climb the tallest part of the Badaling Great Wall.



The climb was pretty steep and we were exhausted by the time we reached the peak. Of course, there were cable-car rides and train rides to reach the summit and I was tempted to take one of those rides; But after seeing some septuagenarians and octogenarians climbing the wall on foot, we decided to walk. And, what a walk it was!! I have been climbing the steps of Tirumala Hills since I was a kid and I thought I was very good in conserving my energy for long walks with steep climbs. But this was a totally different and amazing experience.




The scenery around the Great Wall is breath-taking. One can see the Great Wall disappearing into the horizon. Most of the Badaling section runs through mountains. One can imagine the hard-work put in by the people in those times, with no access to modern construction equipment whatsoever. There is a belief that some 2 million people died while building this wall.

After climbing down the wall, we reached Beijing city limits late in the afternoon. Since we skipped lunch (we were too tired to eat anything after climbing the Great Wall), we decided to eat an early dinner at one of the local restaurants. The food was amazing and I realized how spicy Chinese food could be!! Most of the Chinese restaurants offer a variety of choices for vegetarians like me.The only twist to this statement is to take a local person with you when you visit such restaurants. No matter how hard you try to explain your choice of vegetarian food, there will be some misunderstanding and you may end up with the famous Peking Duck cooked to perfection served steaming hot!! Your local friend can best explain your choice to the waitress.

Thank you Travelplaza for this space on your blog :-)