SITE OF THE GREAT WALL AT JINSHANLING

The must of the Great Wall. Same road as to go to Simatai, but continue about ten kilometers further to Jinshanling. There you will see a parking lot, often deserted on weekdays and the traditional window that will allow you to enter the site. A small walk-in walk will lead you into twenty minutes on the wall.

First option: if you are tired or poorly grounded, you can simply make the loop that connects the right-hand path, then a few hundred meters on the wall, and go down through the left access path. This little walk will take you an hour or two following your rhythm, and you will have a splendid panorama of this famous wall snapping on the top of the mountain landscape ridges to the horizon, like the famous back of the dragon, as the Chinese say. Sometimes even if the cloudy ceiling is low, you will feel like surfing the clouds and the wall will appear like a wavy stone line on a matted mattress, it's completely surrealistic!

Second option (Jinshanling/Simatai): for athletes. Make yourself deposit and ask your driver to get back to Simatai's car park, some 10 km later. Be careful, you won't have the chance to turn around. Once on the wall, you will head towards Simatai by following the winding path that rises to the assault of the steep mountainous slopes and often descend in such a vertiginous way. The landscape all around is almost lunar, at the limit of the fantastic, it looks like it's made to be the nut of this long snake. The wall is in very bad condition and in places you will be forced to bypass a ruined fork, laying your feet carefully on a rock almost peak! And then you'll have to climb windows and blocks scattered on the ground, moving from steep climbing to such steep descent that some, very unwittingly, do it partly on their pants. This is one of the reasons why it is essential to have good mountain shoes with a rigid sole to make this journey. So, by being careful and taking his time, there are no risks for good walkers. In addition, if you fear anything, improvised guides will start to accompany you… sometimes, they'll take you all along your walk, offering you help to climb a 40 cm high walk or to descend a steep slope… It is by far the most beautiful vision of the Great Wall and the wildest. Only the arrival near Simatai was a little restored. Walking normally and stopping for picnic, count a good day of excursion and about 4 to 5 hours walking along your pace.