Our last few days were spent in Beijing after several hours traveling by train. We hiked to a completely unrestored part of the wall, and ended at a small Mongolian village where we enjoyed a traditional lunch in the village. Our day started early in the morning with snow on the trails. I was wearing six layers, three of them being jackets, long johns, and a beanie. It was cold!!! We hiked for about an hour up to the wall, enjoyed the satisfaction of finally arriving and spent a couple more hours climbing and hiking along the wall. Hiking the Great Wall had to be one of my favorite experiences.
Our starting point!
Snow on the trails
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The Great Wall is 6,000km long. Just to give you a little idea, this means it could stretch from New York, NY to Los Angeles, CA. Crazy, right? It is estimated it took nearly a million people to build the wall. Many criminals and widows were worked to death in attempt to complete the wall. So… why would they build something like this? There was actually a lot of dispute among the people in the midst of building it. The idea was to build it in defense against barbarians, the sea powers of Japan, and later Europe. The attempt proved unsuccessful, but the wall did prove to be an asset in providing a swift passage route through the empire for troops and goods.
God is good. All the time.
