The Wall

The lama temple was another bus and tram ride away, easy for us now we were seasoned pros! This wasn't included in our trip, so cost a punishing 25 yuan, or £3.50.  I'm sure I'll live.

The approach to the temple was blessedly shady (it was still super hot, and we'd been walking around for hours), and had tons of gingko trees, which I'm not sure I've seen before. They go yellow/red later in autumn, a shame they hadn't started to turn really.

Gingko sounds medicinal. Can... can I eat it?

We all got some incense to burn at the front of the temple, 3 sticks for prosperity, health and happiness. We also had some extra too which we could use to pray to the Buddha statues all of which had different specialties and so would be better to pray to depending on your wish.

The layout was very similar to the Forbidden City; buildings separated by open paved areas (much smaller in this case), with random buildings the sides. Here though, the middle buildings were filling with cook Buddha statues, and you could go in and look round, which was much better. The only downside is that there was no photography allowed inside.

In the first central room was a fat, laughing Buddha. He is fat because he has taken all the worries of the world into his belly, and laughs regardless because he has attained enlightenment. I gained a new appreciation for fat buddhas! He was flanked by 4 guards, holding weapons: sword, guitar, umbrella and snake. Yes, definitely weapons...

The next area held a guardian Buddha, who fights off evil spirits. Depending on the level of this Buddha (indicated by how he holds his sword), the monestary may accept guests to visit, or stay the night. This was the highest level of guardian, with an upwards facing sword, so people weren't allowed to stay the night (I guess he is powerful enough on his own to keep out the spirits?)

Do not mess with the upward-sword guardian Buddha, he is the strongest! The photo was taken from outside so I wasn't smited

Speaking of spirits, all of the thresholds have a raised step, both here and in the Forbidden City (but I forgot to mention it then). What does that have to do with evil spirits you ask? Well, they don't have knees, they just float about, so they can't jump, and the step helps protect the rooms from them because they struggle to get over!

This is a female guardian lion. She is feeding that baby with her claws, not killing it. What you never saw a lion feed her kid before?!

After those first 2 buddhas there were quite a few more, which honestly looked pretty similar, but were somehow different to one another and were good for granting good health, prosperity and the like. In the hall where they eat there was a very large Buddha who was one of the founders of lama Buddhism, and to whose likeness then have to prostrate themselves 10,000 times in their life.

At the very back of the monestary was the real highlight; the biggest statue carved from a single piece of wood in the world! 27 meters tall and carved from a single piece of sandalwood, it was very impressive, and quite hard to take it all in, as it is indoors so you had to look straight up to see it's head. To think the one we will see at Leshan later in the trip will be 3 times as big!

Stock photo of the giant Buddha. No photos inside, and from the outside you couldn't see up to the knee so...

We had a chance to wander around for a while, before getting the bus back to our hotel. By this time it was around 4.30pm, and I was feeling pretty tired. There was the chance to meet up for another meal at 7pm, but I ate a huge amount at lunch (I seem to get chosen to finish things off a lot), so a quick trip to the supermarket to grab some instant coffee (they barely drink coffee here!) and instant noodles was more than enough to see me through to bedtime at 9, when I basically passed out!

Good job really, since we wanted to beat the traffic, those who wanted to meet for another selection of Chinese breakfast food had to be in the lobby for 5:40! We went to a place about 3 doors down and had donuts, red bean paste buns, and dumpling soup. William ordered way too much, so I took 2 donuts and a red bean bun in case I get hungry walking the wall. Honestly the donuts were quite bland (just batter basically), and heavy for breakfast, but I really liked the red bean buns.

Just a small breakfast. There were 10 red bean buns and 15 donuts plus a bowl of soup each for 7 of us...

We got back to the hotel with enough time for me to have a cup of coffee, and then we were off to the Great Wall. The section we were going to, the Mutianyu area, was 2 hours drive away from the hotel, and we avoided rush hour thanks to our early start.

A map of the area of the Great Wall we visited. The maintained area that is *ominous laugh*

We arrived at 8:30. You had to get a shuttle bus up from the main car park, and then it was an option of walking or getting a cable car up. We all opted for the cable car (up to 14 on the map), in order to get up there when there were fewer people. This proved to be a great choice, as there were literally about 5 other people on the whole section.

The Wall as we arrived. See all those people? Damn right you don't!

A few people had emerged from their holes by the time I got my picture taken. The ones close by are all from my party though!

Alfredo and I rushed off up to the highest point of the section (20 on the map above) in order to beat the crowds; we backed ourselves to be faster than others, and get there first. We were right, aside from a lady selling drinks out of a cool box we were the very first up!

Looking back the way we came from. Hard to take a bad photo!

The last set of stairs of the maintained area (up to 20 on the map). There were 447, I counted.

I was there too.

The view from the top

One of the first times I ever recall taking a selfie; it was necessary because of the angle. I also developed a head laser.

Mum's friends were here too! The bug had a red abdomen, very cool.

The scenery was alright too.

The wall continued, of course (it's kinda long, in case you didn't know), but it was walled off after this point. We were going to turn back, but then from the other side appeared 2 European tourists! They had camped overnight on the wall, and apparently after the barrier was just the none maintained section. Tina and Julia caught us up too, and said that William said you COULD go further, but he couldn't recommend it (for health and safety purposes), so Alfredo and I went for it!

I am so glad we did. Aside from the fact that we only saw 2 other groups of people (5 people total) in over an hour of walking, after a certain distance from the maintained area, it got really wild, with trees growing all over the wall. It felt like a real adventure!

It is so poorly maintained I can barely look at it!

A long way still to go, gotta rest while you can!

These 2 are in the same place. On the first you can see the wall we walked to get here in the distance, and the second shows off the beautiful landscape. And me of course!

This sign was a lie. But it was the end of the wall without trees

It got pretty wild. We are actually walking on the edge, to the right is the top of the wall where you would normally walk if trees weren't growing

My favourite tower. So nice and cool in here

There is a wall amidst that forest, honest!

Looking back after a hard climb

The wall goes ever on and on... but this was as far as we went.

I would've liked to continue, but we had to be careful not to go too far as we had to meet the rest of the group at 1:30, and there was still lots of legal Wall to look at. It had taken us just under an hour to get to the place we turned back, about 8 towers along from number 20, but we still had about 2 and a half left, plenty of time! On the way back to the maintained area we passed a guy selling cold beer, so thought why not! Alfredo had brought some sausages so we ate those whilst drinking our beer, and casually returning to civilisation.

We retrod our steps, much more slowly down the section from 20 to 14 than when we came, and then walked along the now busier (but still only 10-20 people between each set of towers) lower area of wall. We got to 6 on the map, and Alfredo decided to get the toboggan down. I wasn't convinced it was worth 100 yuan (£13), so walked down instead, though I was quite tired by this point!

Almost back to the legal portion of the wall at this point

Back to civilisation. Where all the trees at?

It still wasn't rammed...

Looking back again. We had been further along than that section in the very top left!

Lunch, and our meeting point, was Subway... to be fair they was the only restaurant, and I was more than glad for a cold drink! Everyone marvelled at the photos from the wild section of wall, and then we got back on our bus back to the hotel for an afternoon of leisure. I climbed the equivalent of 139 flights of stairs after all, and that was just going up!

The walk down wasn't exactly lacking in stairs either.

Editor's note: 

Misty Pic of the Day!

Here Misty is having a play with one of her favourite toys, octopus thing. Have a great day!