I was planning on visiting the Eastern Qing Tombs today, but after waking up early and rushing to the sight seeing bus station, I found out the last bus ran last week for that location. It sounds like it is a summer only thing and the low season officially starts November 1. Kind of disappointing, but I can still go if I can find maybe two other people who want to go and use a Taxi.
The only other place the buses are running is the Great Wall of China. It was an especially clear day so I decided to make the best of it and go. Since it was Saturday, I didn’t want to go to the main tourist area of the wall, but opted to go to the less traveled, but really far away Simatai area.
The bus ride was over 3 hours. When we arrived, I was told we have to be back to the bus in three hours. See the entire Great Wall of China in 3 hours? I’ll give it my best try! So most of the time I was out of breath going up and down these mountains. The wall at Simatai is built on an especially high mountain, so the views are great, but it sure is exhausting. Overall, it was a really good day to go. The weather was excellent and there were not many other people there.
I was walking on the wall for nearly an hour and I asked some other tourists how far you can go this way, and they said you can keep going for 10km. They came from the other end and were walking for 3 hours so far. It would take a lifetime to see the entire Great Wall since it is thousands of miles long, scattered throughout the entire north end of the country.
The Simatai wall is nice because most of it is unrestored, which I think is more interesting. You can see areas where the bricks are crumbling away. I think I got a good feel for the wall, even though it was rushed.