Leaving Jack Behind

Already on our arrival in the hostel, the staff tried to convince us to take a tour to the Great Wall, for which they would charge 260￥ (26€) per person. We seriously considered this offer, but after some checking on the internet we realized we could definitely save money by getting there on our own, especially considering the ‘tour’ would simply take us there and back, no guidance provided.

We woke up early and it was a beautiful day! We couldn’t have picked a better day for this trip. After breakfast we headed to the bus station to find the infamous bus no. 936, that was supposed to bring us to Mutianyu. We decided that this was the best place to visit the Great Wall, even though there were many other options. We eventually chose Mutianyu because of the raving reviews (on the internet and in our Rough Guide) and the fact that it should be doable to get there on our own.

Thanks to Michelle we could actually show a note at the bus station that said “where can we find bus no. 936?” in Chinese, so we were relatively confident we’d find it. Later on we found out that bus no. 916 would have been a viable alternative as well. After showing the note at the bus station and being sent from one side of the street to the other, we ended up with the guard of the bus station. He tried to tell us that there was no bus (“What do you mean, no bus? We’re at a bus station!“) and that we should go by car and driver for 400 kuai (the locals call the Chinese Yuan ‘kuai’ – which literally means “piece” – just to make it a bit more complicated). Not such a great idea. Luckily for us, a sweet Chinese girl on her way to the airport came to our rescue with her bus map of Beijing and surroundings. A passing by policeman joined the discussion, and we all had some fun for awhile. After many misunderstandings back and forth, and with the guard still shouting in the background, we finally all agreed (except for the shouting guard) that we indeed needed the 936 bus. Unfortunately the bus would not actually bring us all the way to the wall, but at least it would take us in the right direction, and drop us off in Huairou.
Sweet Chinese girl showed us to the right bus stop, and when the 936 passed by we hopped happily on (bus ticket = 10 kuai). We were dropped off in Huairou as promised, and after negotiating with a few non-english-speaking taxi drivers, we finally caught one that agreed to take us for 45 kuai (4.5 Euro). Still a bit pricey, but we really wanted to there already. Looking back we probably got ‘thrown’ off the bus a bit too early, and we should have stayed until we got to the center of town. From here it would have been much easier to find a minibus to Mutianyu, probably for around 10 kuai a person.

The taxi dropped us off in the right place (phew..) and drove off. It worked! We were here! We made it by ourselves to the Great Wall of China! All proud, we started our ascend to the wall. Ohad was climbing like a pro and I was somewhat huffing and puffing behind him. But oh my, it sure was worth the climb! We were standing at the wall and couldn’t believe our eyes – kilometers of wall were visible in both directions. It’s amazing to think that this gigantic construction has been around for hundreds of years. We walked and climbed to several watchtowers. It didn’t stop being incredible.

At about the same time that we decided to head down, we saw that there was a possibility to take some sort of slide down the mountain for 40 kuai a person. It looked like so much fun, but we were afraid we might not have enough money to do this and get back to Beijing. Imagine our happiness when we found a hidden hundred Yuan bill in our wallet! Mountain slide, here we come!

They called it the “toboggan“, and it was basically a tiny slide on wheels that rolled down an iron track off the mountain. It even came with a little handle for the brakes. I went first and Ohad was right behind me, trying to catch me on camera sliding down. It was great fun and surely much faster than walking .

Once down, we started our search for a ride back to Huairou, where we wanted to take the bus to Beijing from. At first we found a minibus driver who agreed to take us for 30 Yuan, but we decided to let this offer slide when we saw a familiar bus (no. 936) pull up at the parking lot, that we believed might take us straight to Beijing. We found out quickly though that this was unfortunately not the case – this bus does exists, but only drives this route certain times of the year (seemed like March through November, but we weren’t sure about that). Luckily, a Chinese family offered us to take a minibus ride to Huairou together with them, which led to us paying only 10 kuai a person. Even luckier was the fact that we had the chance to meet Rakeesh on the same minibus. He was a super nice guy from India, who was working in Shanghai, and was traveling during the Spring Festival. He shared our minivan and eventually also drove with us on the bus (no. 916 from Huairou, ticket costs 11 Yuan) to Beijing. It was really nice talking to him and he even got to show us some beautiful pics from New Zealand, where he’d traveled just before arriving in China.

When we arrived in Beijing we said goodbye to our new friend and headed to our hostel. All in all, it seems that by not taking the hostel’s proposed tour, we spent only about a third of the price, for pretty much the same experience. Plus, we felt all rough and rugged, traveling China the proper way . We ate something in the common room, had a quick chat with Michelle and went to bed – tired, but more than satisfied. It had been an amazing day!