Day 6

The night before, the boss at the hotel suggested we start hiking at Hongmenyan, I don't completely understand why. I also did see in my research that most Chinese people begin at Hongmenyan. From what I can gather, it's because they drive and get there early in the morning hours and don't stay at a hotel and can park there car for free at parking lots there. However, my research also told me that you could basically start hiking from anywhere in WTS. We were also on a different kind of trip and we didn't want to be driving from BJ in the middle of the night and I didn't really see any hotels I liked near Hongmenyan that accepted foreigners. To drive from our guesthouse to HMY would take 45 min, so it seemed to defeat the purpose of staying in the guesthouse at all.

We didn't wake up until about 9:30am, and then went for some breakfast, so we didn't actually begin hiking until pretty late around 10:30. By that time the boss wasn't around to ask again about where we could find the nearest trail. I asked AI and it kind of led us to a place that looked ok to me, but Alan thought it was a service road and didn't want to trust AI. So we decided to take the free bus(there are busses running constantly and are free with your entrance ticket) to another place that that I heard there was a trailhead. That turned out to be a bit of a wild goose chase. We weren't really sure what to do, then I saw 3 people in the sidewalk all wearing hiking clothes and carrying poles. I explained to them we were aiming to do a day hike and we want to start at any point in the circuit, basically the nearest point. One of them downloaded a Chinese hiking app for me on my phone and recommended a starting point, showing me where it was on the app trail map. It was a bit of a walk, so I decided to see if I could get a didi to take us. Pretty quickly one cam and it was about a 10 minute drive down a forest road, the driver confirmed with me that our aim was to hike and then he dropped us off kind of in the middle of nowhere, he said go up the mountain that way. We quickly say hikers flags and followed the trail.

In terns of scenery, April is not perfect for WTS as things are still brown. However, the weather was great, chilly but not cold and not hot. A wonderful temperature for a strenuous hike. It took us about 2 hours to get to the top of the South peak. There was some barren stretches, and then some forrest and some residual snow. We didn't encounter another person until we were almost at the peak. When we got up there, we took in the sights of the temple, I forget the name. There were other hikers there, but it was not crowded, some shared snacks with us, and of course there were monks. After a while, we decided it was time to head back down, but we didn't want to take the exact same route. It was also too late to even consider hiking to the next peak and staying the night at a temple. I was talking to one of the other hikers, she was an older woman in a group and she said to come down with them, they were going via a different trail.

This group was being led by a monk, and it honestly seemed like you couldn't feel more like you were in China than following a monk through a mountain forest. It was a beautiful walk down, even if not so green at this time of year. There were babbling brooks, birds, flowers and we a couple of horses at one point. It took 3-4 hours to get down and we ended up at far gate of the park, nowhere near our guesthouse, but it was an awesome walk. We said goodbye to the group and now the challenge was how to get back to the guesthouse, we were on a road at a remote entrance gate at least 3 hours walk from our guesthouse. I tried Didi and there was nothing. There was almost nobody there other than a couple of gate security guys. It was getting dark. We were kind of screwed. We just started walking. About 20 mins in, a car pulled up and asked where we were headed. I showed him and he asked us for 100rmb. I tried hard to bargain, but he would not budge and we really had no other option. Alan said for that money in London, you couldn't get a taxi to take you back for the pub. So, we went with it.

We got back to he guesthouse, starving and exhausted, went straight for dinner. The food was very tasty and afterwards we called it an early night.

That's quite the adventure! And that walk back with the monk sounds like you treated your friend to an experience he could not otherwise get. Unplanned, of course, but those experiences can provide deeper memories than anything else.

Day 7

Got up, had some breakfast and took the free bus to the main town in the valley. We walked around and toured about 3 or 4 temples. There were people, but not crowded feeling at all. I told Alan I'd eat my hat if we saw another westerner in WTS, and my hat is still perfectly intact.

We went back to the hotel, checked out, got the car and set off for a village outside of Beijing next to the great wall. I had been there before and had the owners contact, so I set it up a couple days before. We took a different route from WTS than we did going, and the scenery was quite different as well, highway was carved through mountains with lots of bridges and tunnels. Traffic was light and it was an enjoyable ride. We did encounter a very suddeand quick sandstorm at a Rest stop. We got to the wall village after dark and the owner made us a homecooked dinner. We sat in yard and drank beers and chatted for a few hours and then slept in the very rustic farm house room.

Day 8:

We got early, the boss cooked us breakfast and then drove us to the trailhead less than 10 mins drive from the guesthouse. He dropped us off and we made our way to the wall, which is nice hike taking about an hour. We made it to the wall, and climbed up a pile of rocks to get on it.

It could not have been better : beautiful blue skies, cool temps not cold or hot, cherry blossoms in bloom, the mountains already green (in contrast to the still brown mountains of WTS?), flowers here and there. We were on a wild wall section, so there were no tourists around. The hike took about 3 hours on the wall and we talked to half a dozen other hikers in that time. Lots of great photos opportunities, beautiful vies. The route we took basically leads back to the guesthouse. As we walked down the mountain from the great wall, we ran into a sheep farmer with her flock and had a laugh with her.

If anyone is coming to Beijing and wants to do an excellent gw hike, let me know and I'll give you guesthouse owner's contact.

After arriving back at the guesthouse, we got the car and drove an hour or so back to Beijing. We dropped off the car and moved to the TrueGo hotel in Sanyuanqiao, it was an excellent choice. We spent the afternoon and evening going to a few spots in beijing that i like and dinner.

Day 9:

A rare rainy day in May in bj put a bit of a damper on the plans. It was a moderate consistent rain all day and doing anything outside was out of the question. We went to the urban planning museum. Then Alan had the idea of just talking the high speed train to anywhere and then back, just for the experience. Unfortunately, every ticket to everywhere was sold out. It was Friday at Rush hour lots of people leaving bj. So we went to a mall so Alan could do some last minute shopping. The rain let up and I took him to Nanluoguxiang so he could find ore souvenirs. My first time there in ages, kinda tacky but fun anyway.

Next day was his flight home, I took him to the airport and said farewells. He found Air China to be totally fine.

It was a really good trip all around and he enjoyed China a lot.

I prepare for travel by doing a lot of armchair travel. Can you give me the location of the great wall hike. Maybe coordinates on Google Maps?

I don't use Google maps(It's Amap or Baidu Maps in China), but here is the name of the village/wall section: Chenjaipu. About an hours drive from BJ. Cripes, I still can't post Chinese characters, doubtful I can post photos. It is a very nice section of unrestored/lightly restored wall and quite picturesque. Cripes, I still can't post Chinese characters.

Here's a few pics:

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fod...f922e7f422.jpg
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fod...9f801613ac.jpg
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fod...26a124dd25.jpg
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fod...760c4056bb.jpg
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fod...fafbb7673e.jpg

That should be Chenjiapu

I was using 'Google Maps' as a generic term. Like Xerox. Or Kleenex. I use Baidu as well. For China. Latitude and Longitude are good as well as place names.