Been through the desert on a camel with no name...




Jaisalmer is an amazing town about 100km East of the Indo-Pakastani border in the Great Thar Desert, renowned for it's stunning hill top fort. Amongst the backpacker community however it's best known for camel safaris, and missing the peace and tranquility of the mountains I was in town looking for some quiet and calm and hoping to find some in the desert.

The heavy rainstorms that were hitting Mumbai and Gujarat brought cloudy skies to Jaisalmer as I squashed into a jeep with Amanda, (who i'd met on the train), Christine (who I met in Jodphur and turns out to be a neighbour in Paris!), and a couple from Oz & the UK. After a couple of hours of rough roads and a side-trip visit to a Jain temple we climbed aboard our camels and set off in a train across the barren desert.

Climbing aboard is much easier when they're sat down ;-)

Once I'd got used to being up so high, the sway of the camel's gait and their smell I started to relax and take in the scenery around me. Finally, there were no horns honking, traffic noise or pollution. Just huge skies and calm; that is until panic broke out at the rear of our camel train.

All our camels were roped together with the last camel being a young female in training and carrying all our food for the next 2-days. This young novice was now quite literally untrained having broken free of her rope and cockily trotting off across the desert, evading all attempts to be caught and deaf to the guides cries and whistles. The whole thing would have been quite comical had it not been for her precious cargo and it took a good 10-minutes to capture her and rope her securely back to the pack, where she spent the rest of the day stamping and snorting.

'Johnny' sets off at a trot to capture the rogue beast (and our supper)

Around midday we stopped and whilst the guides cooked up a lunch of veg curry, dahl and chapati and we stretched and snoozed, grateful that the sky was still overcast and we were spared the midday sun. Lunch over we hopped back aboard our desert ships and continued on, the scenery sometimes rocky, sometimes scrubby but always arid. Although this wasn't the great peaks and rugged hills of the Himalayas, as the hours past I slowly found that inner calm and space to think that I seek in the mountains, and, surprise suprise, I discovered my 'inner Bedouin' was just as at home in the desert as in the hills. Having tweaked America's lyrics to suit my situation, I had 'A camel with no name' on my 'inner ipod' as the day's soundtrack and despite the chaff of the saddle and aching inner thighs I was loving every minute of it!

Sleeping off lunch

Late afternoon we entered a region of soft undulating dunes and found ourselves in the deserts of Hollywood with the wind etching patterns in the sand. As the sun set we unloaded the camels and set up camp and the animals, hobbled with knotted ropes , lopped off across the dunes in search of scrub and trees to eat.

What most of the desert looks like

What we expect most of it to look like

The evening meal was pretty much the same as lunch, although accompanied with cold beer brought in by a jeep, along with a group of people who wanted to skip the saddle soars but bed down along side us under the stars. Despite the feeling of remoteness the beer delivery and distant lights indicated we were not that far away from civilisation, and the occasional fly-by from a military aircraft served as a reminder that we weren't that far from the Pakistani border either.

Dinner over, camel handlers transformed themselves from chefs into musicians and with one guy drumming on a plastic water container and another playing 'high-hat' on a tin plate the third started singing local songs in a high warbling voice; a haunting melody desert, a lulling tune to sing to a woman that's just given birth and a fast, funky number to play at weddings, the catchy chorus of which we were soon all joining in with.

Music proving once again it can fusion all of languages and cultures,
especially around a desert fire with a couple of beers ;-)

As the fire burnt down the temperature dropped and the padded blankets that had cushioned the camels back against the wooden saddles were unfolded to become mattresses and pillows on the sand. Although I'd mailed home my Gore-tex jackets and fleece I'd kept my down sleeping bag with me and was grateful it would now protect me from the chill air and the reek of camel! Cocooned in my bag with just my eyes and nose peeping out I remembered how much I loved camping like this, without a tent, without a ceiling, walls or floor, and watched the sky for a while, tracking the progress of the Seven Sisters,Orion and the Great Bear across the dark night before falling asleep.

The good life

I woke early the next morning to find our camp enshrouded in fog. The cold air confronting the warmth of the sand formed a thick blanket of mist that hid the camels legs so they looked like they were swimming and left everything about us damp. Once sunrise came though the brume quickly burnt off, and without yesterday's clouds to protect us we were soon at the mercy of the desert sun. Scarfs were wrapped around heads Lawrence of Arabia style and shirt sleeves were rolled down as just three of us (the rest having succumbed to saddle soars and hopped in the jeep) saddled up again and lopped off West for another day in the wilderness.

They really looked like 'ships of the desert' as they swam through the mist

Sunrise, with camel saddles

With the sun on our backs and a vast array of nothing in front of us I once again 'zoned out' and found the peace and solitude I seek when I travel, and before the day's end I'd promised my inner Bedouin we'd be back in a camel saddle and once again in the desert just as soon as I could make it happen.

At peace with my inner Bedouin ;-)

Feeling funny...

Somethings not right. Its almost mid-April and i've only been on a handful of planes, haven't stepped off the continent and haven't been above 1,400m...

This time last year i'd clocked 7 weeks in HK, more than a month in S America and was getting ready for a road trip round Ireland. To date in 2008 i've been to Manchester, London, Bristol and if all goes well will go to Den Haag and Utrecht next weekend. My horizons are shrinking and i'm slowly slowly suffocating.

I need light... space... air... sky...
I need this:





more precisely, I need a very generous sponsor... any offers anyone?

x

A long list


Once upon a time I had time. Time to think, time to research, time to plan so that when I arrived in a country to travel I had a pretty good idea of where I wanted to go see and do. I don't know what happened to change all that but even finding time to choose which country I would travel to for this trip was a struggle, and its only now that I'm here I'm able to sit down, open the guide book and start to look at my options. Maybe that's not such a bad thing though as I find the most useful travel reference is other travellers, so yesterday, sat in the sun with a coffee I pulled out all the notes I've scribbled and started to string them together into a plan.


The problem is I've just spent the last 5 days trekking with Rob, who now in his early 50's is riding a Royal Enfield around India, and as hes been traveling since the age of 24 has literally hundreds of great travel tales and recommendations. My notes therefore stretch someway beyond India's borders and the list ends up looking like this (in no praticular order):


Trekking in Sikkim (where I arrived today)
Mountain treks in Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir
Jungle treks in Madhya Pradesh & Chhattisgarh
Orrisa
Loas, and back into Northern Vietnam
Qinghai–Tibet railway
Trekking in The Mountains of the Moon - Uganda
Bolivia
Equador
Colombia
Chile - Torres del Paines and back into El Chalten (Argentina)
River running in French Guyana (like Cama & Fion)

Tanzania

Ethiopia
Istanbul to Cairo overland

Norway

Japan

Trekking in Borneo

Trekking across Tasmania (I'm saving this one for when Jo & Gerry are back in Sydney)

New Zealand

Kazakhstan

Kyrgyzstan

Mongolia
Road trips, anywhere!

... and the list goes on.

As you can see the majority of the destinations revolve around trekking, mountains and my love of food (Ethiopia & Japan for example). When I'll get to do them though is in question, all I know is that I feel more comfortable now that I've drawn up a list so if I ever do get time I can start to research all these destinations, and potential travel buddies. If you fancy joining me on any of them drop me a line and we'll start some plans!

For now though I'm just planning 1 day at a time in the hope of finding some friends with which to do the 10 day Goecha-La trek here in Northern Sikkim, but given that it involves 9 nights in a tent and the night time temperatures are down below freezing I'm having trouble finding anyone crazy enough to join me ;-)

xxx

What makes me tick?


Fishing around on my friend Pier-Andrea's blog the other day I found his visual DNA - a collection of images hes selected, which strung together represent his take on life. Its an interesting concept and if you scroll down past the labels and links you'll find my cluttered collection of x&y chromosomes represented in picture form. The whole thing got me thinking though about if I had to represent myself (not the me that goes to work every morning or the me that goes out with friends or curls up with a book but the real 'me') which images would I choose? And so my reflexions started.

This all kind of links in nicely with the fact that since i'm back from that little Irish jaunt i've had this niggling, gnawing feeling that something is missing, and after a weeks deliberation I think i've identified it. I'm craving the open road.

Let me be a little more precise. Its not just the road i'm craving, but the car, and the driving; the feeling of liberty and the spontaneity that comes with 4 wheels and a full tanks of fuel. Something that has been all too absent in my life the last couple of years.



I grew up in an area where a car was essential. From the aged of 7 I was saving frantically for my first car and have always loved driving, yet I haven't owned a car for the last 12 or 13 years and I now climb into a plane more often than I get into a car, let alone drive.

Driving and the open roads are however not the only thing that makes me 'me'. If I could choose where i'd want to be whenever I have time it would definitely be up a mountain.

I've been lucky enough to trek and hike in many beautiful places, two of which i've found truly awesome. Awesome in the true sense of the world in that i'm left dumb by the impact of the scenery; the vastness and strength of it. Trekking in the Annapurna region first did this to me in Nepal in 2000. I remember waking up early one morning, climbing on to the roof of my hut and watching Annapurna's silhouette slowly turn pink as the sun rose.



At that moment in time I left so small, so insignificant, and yet at the same time so young. Young because unlike us adults who simply recognise the environment around us and take little notice of the details I felt more like a child watching the world for the first time; noticing leaves, stones, wildlife and seeing how it all knitted together.
El Chalten in Argentina had the same effect on me. Faced with one of the most stunning vistas i've ever seen I took literally hundreds of photos of the same view, realising now that I wasn't trying to capture the image I saw but more the emotions I was feeling sat before that image.



Looking at the photos now its difficult to conjure up those same emotions, whats not difficult to materialise is the craving to relive those same or similar moments.

There is one other activity that I think totally liberates 'me' and gives me a similar childlike sensation and one that again I find myself doing very rarely; flying my kite.
I remember my first kite. I remember failed attempts at making kites during school holidays and I remember the sting and burn as the rope has run across the folds of my fingers on countless occasions but what I remember most of all is how I feel when I fly my kite. The Australian cartoonist 'Leunig' sums it up best...




Why does kite flying do this to me? Maybe because being able to fly properly involves being out in the country or on the coast, preferably without too many people around. Perhaps its because being up high helps where the wind is stronger and more fickle in its currents. I guess there are all kinds of analogies that could be drawn but honestly the reason is not important, its the sensation and emotion that counts for me, and hence kite flying is an integral part of who I am, even if I dont get to do it that often.

The psychologists and therapists amongst you are now probably all brimming with theories and facts that will enable you to compartmentalise me into one of your little boxes but although the images of my visual DNA described above may differ from those on the VisualDNA website i'll stick with their definition of my character type thanks.

If you get a chance do check out their site and do the test yourself. If you feel like sharing drop the code for your DNA or the images you'd choose to represent yourself into a comment. Lets see what makes everyone else out there tick.

On the road again...

I've made references to traveling companions in previous posts and the bonds formed with complete strangers when you find yourselves in bizarre situations or moments of extreme beauty in strange places. Thats where I met Mat (previously known as 'The American') as we bussed out of Beijing on a cold clear December morning towards the Great Wall of China.

The day we spent walking the wall was truely awesome. On countless occassions during the hike I had to remind myself I was in the middle of China standing on one of the wonders of the world in beautiful sunshine. Its an experience thats been hardcoded into my memory, and its a memory that Mat and I will always share.

Mat was in Paris when I was in Argentina but we'd promised to try to travel again together at somepoint and so dates were set and flights booked for an Irish roadtrip rendez-vous.

The last time I was in Belfast was back in 1995 when the Troubles were very much apparent. I remember driving up across the Newry checkpoint which resembled a war zone with armoured tanks and rocket launchers lining the road and I clearly remember the night I spent in the Stormont hotel looking out over the city as it burnt and wondering if the streets would be opened again by morning so that I could get to my meeting. Belfast was a broken city; divided and explosive with no sign of peace in sight.

When I arrived in Sarajevo back in 2001 SFOR were doing their best to keep the fragile peace but the tensions between the ethnic groups were all too tangiable and the violence bubbled up regularly in pockets around towns and on the borders. It felt like war and it felt all to famililar - it felt like Belfast. I've resisted the urge to go back to Sarajevo as i'm afraid nothing is going to have changed but since 1998 things have moved on in Belfast and the city I discovered was vibrant, booming and basking in good weather with students sunning themselves in the parks and sidewalk cafes spilling out into the streets.

There are still sparodic tensions (old habits die hard) and the wall that divided Catholics from Protestants is still in place and closed each night, but these days Belfast is celebrating its future whilst remembering its past and marketing its history in the form of black taxi tours - not to be proud of its Troubles but so as to learn and not to forget. The 90 min taxi tour that Mat and I took was truely a whistle stop tour of the history and geography of Ireland and Belfast, much of which is emblazoned on the buildings and walls in murals and it gave us a very broad and yet very real taste of what the city has been through, and how far its come in the last 12 years.

Next morning with the wind in our wheels we drove North to the Giant's Causeway and to explore the Northern Irish coast.

Back thousands of years ago when giants roamed the earth and the moon was made of cheese Fin McCool (the local Irish giant) built this causeway to Scotland so as to fight his Scottish nemisis, Benandonner. Since then some clever scientists have debunked this legend claiming that the huge hexagonal stones were formed when basaltic rock from volcanic eruptions cooled into these regular shapes. Either way, giants or volcanoes, the causeway definitly is cool and we had a great couple of hours clambering over the columns and up the stepped cliffs.

Although the main area was quite touristy armed with the Lonely Planet's 'Hiking in Ireland' guide book and picnics in our daypacks after only a short walk along the clifftops we pretty much had the place to ourselves and after lunch found the perfect place to snooze in the sunshine. This had become a bit of a habit; hike, picnic, snooze and if anyone from Lonely Planet is reading i'd be happy to contribute a couple of entries to the 'Napping in Ireland' guide book when its published.

The perfect spot for a snooze.

The other habit we feel into all to easily was that of frequenting Irish pubs...

Irish bars are legendary, quite literally the world over, for their hospitality and music, and none more so than in Ireland itself where going to the pub is almost a full body-contact sport when the band is playing and the place is jumping.

The good weather had left us and the usualy Irish showers and rain returned so next morning we jumped in the car, threw away the map, pulled out the compass and headed West until we hit the water.


This is the stuff that great road trips are made of; stunning scenery, good music, twisty winding lanes and nothing but the open road and the unexpected ahead.

What we'd certainly not expected was to find the small town of Ardara in which every pub and bar on the high street was hosting (inside and out) a band, group of fiddlers, flautists and whistler players for their weekend music festival.

It seems every kid in Ireland is born with an instrument tucked under their chin or in their mouth and even the most timid of 8-year olds in pink sweatshirts armed only with a junior sized accordian is capable of getting an entire pub up and jumping or singing. Like all good road trips our Irish jaunt needed a themesong and with 'Dirty old town', 'The gambler' and 'Molly Malone' being bashed out in every pub we set foot in we had plenty to choose from and hearing any of them ever again is sure to bring back the memories of that spectacular day.

Our final days were spent in Dublin wandering the town by day and the bars by night (cue 'Dirty old town'...) with some Irish friends Mat had made back in Thailand.



The next morning I picked up the headlines in the Irish Times to find that the country had completed its troubled journey and jumped into a new phase of peace with the end of control from London in Northern Ireland and power sharing agreed between two previous enemies, Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness. History completes its cycle in Northern Ireland and I hope someday i'll see the same cycle run its course in Sarajevo. For now though our little roadtrip had run its course and Mat and I went our seperate ways at Dublin airport knowing our travels will probably cross again sometime, someplace now that we've some great Irish memories to tack up alongside those great wall moments.

El Chalten


Having said goodbye to Alex in El Calafate Johan and I jumped on a bus NorthWest up a bumpy unpaved road to El Chalten, high up on the Chilean border.


Established in 1985 so as to claim the area as Argentinian the place has a very temporary feel about it. It lacks unpaved roads, has no banks or cash machines, no mobile phone connections and in fact all communications with the outside world rely on the satelitte links that allow phone calls and internet connections. What El Chalten lacks in technology it makes up for in natural beauty with the town being surrounded by fantastic hiking trails and the stunning Fitzroy peak towering at 3441m.


Arriving at night the first thing that struck me was the stars. Here in the Southern hemisphere there are just so many more stars (proximity to the milky way or something...) but high up in the mountains where there is zero light pollution the number of stars visible is awesome. Having been dump struck by the stars I was then quite literally swept off my feet my the wind. El Chalten has a bit of a reputation when it comes to blustery weather and what would be light rain anywhere else is transformed into a hail of bullets as the rain is driven horizontally at a rate of knots, and when it was not raining the wind will drive the dust at you with the same force.


The next morning the weather was a little better. It wasn´t raining but the wind was vicious. We set off none the less, wrapped up in Gore-tex and armed with the ubiquteous ham & cheese sandwichs and some cereal bars. Our route was the 8hr hike up to the Laguana de los Tres whch climbs up about 1200m. The first couple of hours were hard work thanks to the wind but nothing overly strenuous. The fun really started when the rain came on.


After about 3 hours of slight climb the last kilometer was at almost a 45º ascent on loose rocks and as we climbed that driving rain turned to driving snow so that when we reached the top visibility was seriously hampered, as was my ability to stay upright against the wind. This little hike had just turned seriously nasty. The tops of our bodies were somewhat warm and dry in Gore-tex but neither of us has waterproof bottoms on and so my trekking trousers and Johan´s jeans (!) were soaked. Stopping to admire the view or take a break at the top was not an option. I took a quick photo to capture the moment then we scrambled down that steep kilometer of loose rocks and an incredible speed, however with the wind in our faces the volume of water running off my jacket and down my legs was too much for my boots and for the first time ever my boots started to fill up giving me cold wet feet. Quickly I lost feeling in my toes making walking all that more difficult and dangerous.










The flash helps make the scene seem prettier than it was, I promise.









In the basecamp at the bottom there was, thanks to the trekking gods, a German couple who had just fired up their stove. We traded a bar of Milka for a couple of cups of tea but having stopped moving we were both quickly turning hypothermic. Johan rang out his jeans and we put our heads down for a quick march back into town against that bloody wind.

What should have taken us 8hrs took a little under 6hrs given that we practically jogged back to the hostel in order to keep warm, the only thing we stopped for being the supermarket to pick up mountains of pasta and a bottle of wine to sooth our aching limbs. We were still quite literally soaked, as was everything in our packs; money, passport, camera, maps. Even Mixie!


A hot shower, change of clothes, plate of pasta and couple of glasses of tinto later we could look back and laugh about the day, and also reflect on how lucky we´d been. If either of us had slipped or fallen on the climb or descent, or if that German couple hadn´t been their with their stove we´d not have faired so well, in fact things could have gone seriously wrong. Johan is a soldier in the Swedish army so when he says a hike is pretty hardcore I consider that relatively extreme.



Still we survived and over the next 2 days the wind dropped and the clouds evaporated giving us the most spectacular views of Fitzroy and some of the best hiking i´ve done in a long time. This is what I crave. Being in the wild, under enormous skies, in the mountains with high altitude sunburn being my only concern.



xxx

Ice Ice Baby




Large swathes of Southern Chile and Argentina are in fact covered with glaciers and the area contains some of the most active glaciers in the world. Active unfortunately not just in that they advance and receed quickly, but that they're disappearing. Between '95-'00 the area experienced twice as much melt as it has for the last two decades.



Being one of Air France's favourite customers I have a carbon footprint the size of the Antarctic (thanks Jenko...) and so probably contribute considerably to the stat above so I thought i´d pop by the Perito Mereno glacier in order to apologise.

I´ve seen a few glaciers in my time but none quite as awesome as this. Its a 65ft high wall of ice, twisted into sharp towers with deep fissures and undulating through different shades of grey, blue, white and green. The photos really dont do it any justice, especially as you cannot hear the deep groans as the mass moves or the gunshot cracks as chunks break off and crash into the water below.




Many agencies in the area sell tickets to allow you to hike on the glacier, or if you´re skilled enough ice climb, however given that I was supposed to be paying my respects I decided to skip these and head for the ecologically sound walkways that have been constructed nearby.


It used to be that you could get a lot closer for the glacier face but since a couple of folks were killed by falling icebergs you´re now kept a safe 30m or so back, but thats plenty close enough to really appreciate how amazingly beautiful and powerful these things are. I´ve stolen the photo above from someone elses blog as it was kinda grey and rain the day I was there - punishment for my polluting now doubt...

Shopping



Having promised not to buy anything I didn't really need it was obvious after the Shanghai trip that my camera was on its last legs and so knowing HK is the place to buy photographic equipment I managed to concinve myself I really did need a new camera. Et voila!



I've not played enough with it yet to be totally happy but here are a couple of shots from todays hike over the top of the island to Repulse bay.






I'll no doubt be boring you all with more snaps very soon. Consider yourselves warned.

x

The perfect Christmas

Everyone that knows me knows I cant stand Christmas. Whether you're talking about it from either a religious or commercial perspective as far as I'm concerned its one big farce.
What I do love about Christmas however is that its a great opportunity to get together with a group of friends and do something you'd not normally get up to. Last year was a prime example.

On Christmas eve when everyone was swarming to the stores I went to Musée d'Orsay with Doug & Steven. Usually you'd have to queue for an hour to get in an then jostle with others in order to see the art, but last year we strolled through the doors and had the place practically to ourselves for a couple of hours.
Christmas day was spent with a group of us at the cinema watching a marathon 3 films back to back with only a short pause for beers and burgers at lunchtime.

This year was a little bit different what with being stuck in HK. The benefit of being here is that rather than cold damp Parisian weather Christmas is bathed in blue skies and bright sunshine, although there is none of that horrid humidity or mist that usually dogs the island. Therefore Christmas was the perfect opportunity to get outside and get back to those hills.

On Sunday I met up with Ellen, a friend of a friend in Berlin, and we walked back over the route I did last week, tacking on to the tail of it the next leg of the HK Island trail which took us up to Jardine's Lookout (great views over the city) and then on to the summit of Mount Parker. Getting there was a good strenuous hike but it was the 589 steps down that killed me. Having hiked for a full 7 hours we ended the day in style, seeing in Christmas with big plates of sushi followed by swanky cocktails in the bar at the Mandarin Oriental.

Wanting to make the most of the day off on Christmas Day I met up with Emma and her girlfriend and we hiked the Dragon's Back trail out to Shek-O, ending up on the beach with just enough time for a quick paddle before the sunset. And to finish the day off, Thai green curry in a little roadside restaurant. That is my idea of a perfect Christmas.

For New Year's we're going to hike the New Territories and I cant wait!

x

Head for the hills!

Sorry about that incredibly rude interruption. I've wrestled my blog back from Mixie and have shut her away in her box so that normal service can now continue.

It was such a beautiful morning this morning that I couldn't stand to be stuck in the concrete jungle for a second longer so grabbed my pack and set off to discover the other side of the island. HK is a small place with the developed area being squashed between the coastline and the sharp green hills that make up the spine of the island. From my place in Wan Chai I headed directly South, straight up practically and in 30 minutes had gone from sea level to 500m with amazing views over the city.


In the bright sunshine it was still fresh because of the cold Northern wind however once i'd made it over the crest of the spine there was not a breath of breeze and the temperature went up by a clear 10c. Often either mist or haze obscures the views here but today the views from the top over Aberdeen and out towards Lamma island were stunning (you could even see the power station!)



I stayed on the Southern side of the hills and trekked on for another couple of hours enjoying the fresh(er) air, calm and green, which is interrupted every so often by enormous power lines or the tops of skyscrapers from the other side of the island.




I'm not naturally a claustrophobic kind of person but living in one of the world's most densly populated cities is tough, but at least now I know there are little pockets of wild just an hours walk from my door that I can escape to.

x

Down and out in Beijing

So having been sick for most of last week with the help of Mixie-san I dragged myself on to a plane Thursday afternoon and jetted off to Beijing. I really could have done with some R&R however theres just so much to see and do that I felt obliged to cram in as much as possible, and besides, with the sub-zero temperatures and biting cold winds I had to keep moving in order to keep warm!

Friday was spent exploring the Forbidden City in the centre of Beijing. Home to the Ming & Qing dynasty at a mere 720,000 sq metres is makes my Parisian pad look pokey and the wealth and beauty in which the Emporers and Dowagers lived is stunning. The architecture of the buildings (all 800 of them) is stunning, with the attention to detail really making the difference.






On leaving the Forbidden City and heading South you enter Tiananmen Square, the largest public square in the world and one that its impossible to mention without conjuring images of tanks rolling towards students back in 1989. An extract from the Thirty-Eighth Group Army 'Accomplish the mission, conscientiously complete the Martial Law task' report to the Central Military Commission in June 1989 states:

'Before they cleared the square the various movements of the group army's 10,800 officers and soliders and 45 armoured vehicles crushed the blazing arrogance of the riot elements, smashed their lines of defense on the west and struck fear into the hearts of the diehards who were entrenched in the square'

Today the square is calm although still a mass of people although now they're taking photos, flying sites, waiting for friends or queuing to see the body of Chairman Mao and whose photo overlooks the space. Personally I didn't want to be photographed with the man but Mixie saw this as a perfect opportunity and insisted...




Friday, much to Mixie's disgust, I dragged her out of bed at 6am and we bundled ourselves into a mini-bus headed NE out of the city. The Great Wall of China is only 110km away from the city however with the bad traffic conditions it takes over 4 hours to reach it but its definitly worth the trip. I was expecting the place to be pretty crowded with tourists however upon arriving there was practically no one there, in fact I was luck that there were an Italian and an American on the bus planning on walking the same section of the wall as me otherwise i'd have been all alone (Mixie can be distant at times).





The Wall truely is awesome. Its big, strong and very long and yes, can be seen from space. Try it, look on Google Earth! For me the thing that made the wall impressive was the surrounding scenery. The area is tree-less with hundreds of small hills and peaks, that like the wall go for as far as the eye can see. Along with the Italian and American we followed the wall on foot for about 20km, at times having to scramble and climb un steep steps or carefully tread over broken sections of lose stones. Building it truely was an enormous project and i'd question the logic behind it ('a wall is only as strong as the people that guard it' remarked Ghengis Khan...) however it is remarkable and even though parts of it are tumbledown the fact that so much is still standing demonstrates its brute force.