november-2012
november-2012
november-2012
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wonder<br />
wall<br />
Fleur Bainger camps<br />
overnight on the Great<br />
Wall of China<br />
My body is stiff, my hips are bruised<br />
and my hair is a tumbleweed, but<br />
the view from my unzipped tent<br />
makes it all worthwhile. I’ve spent<br />
the night camping on the Great<br />
Wall of China. I’ve travelled more<br />
than three hours from Beijing to<br />
Jiankou to visit a beautiful, timeworn<br />
strip of the Wall that is well<br />
away from the more accessible,<br />
restored sections.<br />
I didn’t sleep much last night. My<br />
bed was a thin foam mattress laid<br />
on hard stone, the air was thick with<br />
humidity and mosquitoes. But my<br />
complaints are nothing compared<br />
to the suffering of the people who<br />
actually built the wall. It’s thought<br />
that one million people died during<br />
its erection.<br />
“You could call this China’s<br />
largest cemetery,” says Liu Jianjun,<br />
aka “Jack”, my English-speaking<br />
tour guide.<br />
While tourist-heavy sections<br />
of the wall, such as Badaling and<br />
Mutianyu, have been renovated to<br />
show what the wall was like<br />
in its heyday, Jiankou’s<br />
degraded stretches reveal<br />
its layered past. As we<br />
trek a short, ragged<br />
section, I am in awe of<br />
this age-old rampart.<br />
Sometimes, even if you’re<br />
tired and sore, you feel<br />
lucky to be a traveller.<br />
28<br />
takeoff » been there done that<br />
Photo: GETTY IMAGES
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