Mao Zedong once said "He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a man". Not to have my masculinity mocked by the Chairman, I promptly found a travelling companion and headed out for the wall to prove myself. Eron, from Israeli, was sharing a dormitory room with me at the time, and shared my disdain for the cost and hand-holding of the great wall tours, so we decided to head there independently. Keeping true to our adventurous spirit, we choose the Jingshanling-Simatai section, a 10km hike through both restored and unrestored sections, as a nice alternative to the more famous touristy sections at Badaling. Unfortunately, it is also located about 3 hours from Beijing, requiring us to travel into the next province and then walk back other the border on the wall itself. But we can do it!

     Everything begins well. We catch a bus for the first 70km for a paltry 15 yuan ($3), but are a little confused about how to make the next step from Miyun to Jingshanling...where will we find taxi drivers in this small town? No worry, the moment we get off the bus we are surrounded by taxi drivers yelling "Great Wall! Great Wall!". Our taxi driver doesn't speak any English, but he seems positively chuffed with the amount we paid to him for the taxi ($70 for both us for 150km, plus 4 hours waiting for us at the other end), and smiles and jokes the whole way. We revel in our freedom, stopping at McDonalds along the way and laughing at all the tour groups eating glad-wrapped sandwiches on their mini-buses.

     After an hour or so, we arrive at the foot of the great wall, and leave our smiling taxi driver to begin our hike. At first glimpse, the wall looks like...well, like a big wall on top of a hill really. We walk through the gate, chatting loudly, until we come to a window and step outside to have a peek at the view. We abrubtly fall silent. In front of us is a panorama of bleak hills and barren fields, with the great wall gently snaking away into the distance. The landscape follows us for the rest of the way, with the views growing more and more superlative the longer we go. It is a harsh landscape, a landscape of war, an epic world of bleak mountains, crumbling watchtowers, everywhere characterized by the mesmerizing view of the wall snaking into the infinite distance.