notes and images
The first time I took my daughter hiking without her mother, she was just learning to walk (the kid, I mean!). Because this was a test run, I brought my sister along (now a new mum herself). But the challenge arose from the fact little W was still breast-feeding. My sister’s great, but (back then) she couldn’t help with that. Instead, I had a bottle of frozen milk and my PocketRocket…
“My car (che) is in Zhangzuo Village, how do I get there?” “Oh you want to eat (chi) in Zhangzuo?” “Okay, uh, (to other lady) is there a bus to Zhangzuo?” “Sorry, I’m deaf!”. Oh. “What did he say? I can’t hear!” Between my rusty Chinese, the old ladies’ rusty Chinese, and a few hearing problems, our hike to the General’s Pass ended in a bit of a comedy of errors. It had been a long day, a sudden heat snap in Beijing’s usually mild spring hitting us during the rugged ten kilometers of rocky, early Ming wall. Negotiating nearly a kilometer of vertical gain with a new puppy who needed carrying most of the way, topped off a pretty tough day. But as always on the Great Wall, there were wonderful views, interesting features, and friendly villagers. As I’ve said before, if you’re tired of the Wall, you’re tired of life.
Click through for photos.
Home to pandas and spicy foods, Chengdu is, oh, right, you mean Chengde?
Yes. Chengde. Four hours up the freeway from Beijing, not four hours by plane. Chengde doesn’t, and probably never did, have pandas. But as the Qing Dynasty’s summer resort it has beautiful gardens, an impressive replica of Lhasa’s Potala Palace, laid back people and a great vegetarian restaurant. Sounds like a perfect weekend destination.
Evolution. It is as real as gravity; as certain as death and taxes. And on Borneo, if you visit Semenggoh near Kuching, you can see into your own evolutionary past. Because when you look at the orang utan you’re really looking at yourself in deep, distant history. Not your direct ancestor, but a creature who’s also evolved from the same ancient great ape swinging from a tree. Meet the orang utan: your long lost cousin, twice removed.
April 2015: Half way up a narrow, steep, crumbling, five hundred year old staircase is not the place to decide to turn around and climb down. It’s still less the place to switch places with your friend. But when I looked at the sagging lower layer of bricks and the loose sand around them, I decided that hauling myself over the top of the nearly two meter brick wall in front of me was too risky. It was the last obstacle before the top, but I didn’t want it to be my last obstacle ever. Cause of death? Crushed in a rockfall. No thanks.
Far to Beijing’s north, the Great Wall runs roughly along the border with Hebei Province. Just west of the well-known “wild wall” at Gubeikou is a little-visited but wonderful section of Ming Dynasty Great Wall called Beihualing – Beihua Ridge. It has everything: dramatic towers, ridgeline wall, remoteness, beautiful Ming stonework lying just where it fell centuries ago, and a really big fort. Just up the road is the equally impressive White Horse Pass, or Baimaguan.
Click through for photos of this incredible area.
The experiment: Shanghai-Beijing. Which takes more time door to door? The plane, or the train?
The result: It’s closer than you might think.
It’s true that you don’t get much sense for a place on business trips. Airports, hotels, conference rooms; if you’re lucky the program includes a “cultural performance” or “typical local restaurant”. Depending on the nature of the trip you enjoy this bit or endure it, waiting to go home to family and friends.
Occasionally though, usually in odd destinations with few outbound flights per day, you wind up with time up your sleeve between the closing remarks and the boarding call. So it was two autumns back when I found myself with an afternoon in Ulan Bator.
There’s only so many Chinese New Years you want to spend in Beijing. Cold, fireworks so incessant it sounds like one of those week-long artillery barrages from some horrible war, and smog spikes from all that gunpowder smoke. Oh for somewhere a little warmer, clearer, and quieter. This year, having run out of entries on our China visas, we travelled “guo nei” and took the short hop down to Fujian Province’s Wuyi Mountains…
Self portrait with GPS
Recently, one of Journeys, &c’s most loyal readers asked about choosing a GPS solution for hiking. Though far from expert, I’ve had a bit of experience using GPS, including to save my bacon on at least one occasion.
The trick with GPS is to know how to survive without it. Once you can do that, it adds a welcome margin of safety and convenience to your trips. Read on for the Journeys, &c take on this great technology.
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