Bhutan Death March – Training Walk One Jinshanling to Simatai Great Wall

In May, I am off to Bhutan.  In preparation for the monumental undertaking I have engaged the services of a sadomasochistic Chinese trainer, who shouts slogans at me and stretches me into incomprehensible positions.  I am also running up (and down) the fire stairs of my building, with my personal best a staggering 22 stories out of a possible 32.  I’ve even managed to give up drinking, for 7 days straight and have now cut down on alcohol consumption,  heavily.  Although I did have a monumental evening at the Australian Chamber of Commerce Ball.

As part of this new training regime, I figured I should throw in a few hikes, so this weekend 3 intrepid explorers set off to conquer the Jinshanling to Simatai section of the wall.   Five hours, 32 watch towers, numerous ascents/descents and 16 kilometres later, we made it.

Here are a few photo’s of the trek.

North's up right?

Basically all you can tell from these maps is that you have a bloody long way to go.  North seems to change, we saw it point down, up, left and even right.  Get to the top of the wall and turn left.  Keep going.

We've walked HOW far

At this point you’ve made it up to the wall and down that bloody big hill.  I was already buggerred.  The wall is rugged and ruined in this section.  It is the best Great Wall experience I have had so far.

What article of clothing will Heidi take off next

This was Beijing’s warmest day in a long long time, our mate Heidi had decided to take the layering system to an extreme.  She takes off more and more clothes as the walk goes on.  If that last paragraph doesn’t up my Google ranking, I don’t know what will.

Steep AND dangerous

The walk is bloody steep and dangerous in parts.  You have to walk right on the edge of precipitous drops.  The condition of these stairs is typical on the Jinshanling section.

You! In the blue shirt, get out of the bloody way

Like I said, you have to walk right on the edge, I love this photo.  From where I was sitting, I am also on the opposite edge of the wall.  Go Tans!

Rest time

Above, you will see an example of the total level of buggerred-ness that you will feel after walking up an absolute shitload of uneven, rocky, moving stairs.

It just goes on and on

On and on and on it goes.

Halfway point

More and more stairclimbing awaits you.

Will it never end

From memory, this is about halfway.  You can see the wall continuing on over the mountains.  We still have to walk over that.

Long and winding road / wall

We also still have to walk over this section.  One step at a time.  This section of the wall is great, as you get long stretches, watch towers and compact winding sections like this.

Strong bridge, strong wood

At the end of the walk you get to walk over this cool Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom style bridge, and you get to see what happens when a river intersects the great wall.

The End

After the swing bridge, you then have to walk up a massive hill to finally get to the end.  At the end there is a surprise, I’ll spoil it for you by telling you that you get to ride the rest of the way on a flying fox.

100% Safe

A smart sign with no date and some obvious age to it lets you know that your a-ok! on the flying fox.

Flying Fox

As you can see in the above image, it sure beats the shit out of walking anymore.  By the way that water is Beijings water supply.

Finally at the end, I drank 3 longnecks and rode home in the Bling Mobile!

Bling Mobile interior

If Liberace drove, I’m sure his cockpit would have looked like this.

Bling Mobile Interior #2

Afterwards, we all went to Luga’s and drank many many Margahritas.  These helped ease the pain.

Over and out.