You haven't been to Beijing if you haven't been to the Great wall. Even if you had only one day in the city, you have too visit the Great wall which is the only human architecture that can be seen in space!(or so they say!) Despite the cruel means of which it was built (with forced slavery and torture), it is indeed a beautiful iconic sight that cannot be missed. My girlfriend and I have something against large crowds and would love nothing more that to admire the great wall with minimum tourist around. So instead of taking the day tour to Betaling which is the most common and crowded part of the Great wall, we chose to visit Mutianyu instead. We booked the day tour from the small tour agency beside our hotel (Holiday Inn) just the day before we visited Mutianyu. It cost us about SGD100 which includes a chinese lunch. The small van came by our hotel to pick us up at 8.15am in the morning and we were off to see the Ming tombs (1 hr away) and the Great wall. (We do not want to post pictures of tombs as a form of respect to the dead even though royal deceased bodies have been removed) A note of caution, Mutianyu is alot steeper and older than the Betaling portion of the great wall and that means good walking shoes are needed! Also if you have breathing difficulty you might want to skip this or take it slow. There is a total of 1400 steps up to climb to the top and we chose to take the cable car instead. On this 2250 meters section of the wall, there are 22 watch towers which overlooks streams and mountains. This is one place to get the gorgeous postcard shot of the great wall and its surrounding. By the time we were climbing for 2 hours, we were panting slightly even with multiple breaks for photo taking. The ancient Chinese soldiers would have to be so fit to climb this everyday! The highest portion of this section's wall is 540 meters above sea level(no kidding!).
We even got to enter one of the old watch towers and get that spectacular view of the surrounding nature. Here you can imagine how the watch tower guards use to observe the enemies from afar. We had a really enjoyable tour and even got to know some new friends on this tour. So the next time you visit Beijing, don't forget to visit Mutianyu. You won't regret it!
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April 2017
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