The Great Embarrassment

As previously mentioned, I went to China recently. Now no visit to the Peoples Republic would be complete without a visit to to the Great Wall.
As the tour party departed and with excitement filled in our bellies we headed from our hotel in Beijing to this majestic piece of architecture. It is approximately 50Kms outside Beijing however it was only noticeable from about 5km because of the altitude and mist/clouds/smog.
Climbing the great wall is not for the feint hearted especially if your overweight, unfit and smoke about a pack of ciggies a day.
My adventure started at one of the starting points.


As can be seen from the picture above, it is quite a climb, the little rest stop seen at the top is about quarter way up.
Look at the size of those steps, at this point everything was going hunky dory, I was marveling at the sights and wondering how simple men put this structure together even if one person died for *every meter that was built*.

As I said, I am very unfit the further I got up the more my legs turned into jelly and the less and less I could breathe. Because of the altitude the air is quite thin and because it was March, winter had just finished but the chill was still in the air.
When I reached the quarter way mark ( to me it was half way in my head ) I tried to lift my leg for the next step. Try as I might, my leg would not lift. My heart was pounding out of my chest and behind me was an elderly couple wanting to pass me. Here I am a thirty something year old suppose to be in the prime of his life being overtaken by grannies and grandpas. My heart sunk to the ground as well as my body. For the next hour or so I just sat there getting my breath back and taking a few pics. I then started my descent which was a bit easier than going up but one still has to be careful as at some points the drop is vertical. When I reached the bottom, I went to a coffee shop and ordered a cappuccino which I paid 25RMB for, this equates to about R40. Once done I phoned the tour guide and told he not to look for me as I was waiting for the tour party back at our bus.

So my embarrassment would be that I could not climb the great wall because I am unfit and NOT because I smoke . Here are some more pics I tool while regaining my composure.



It seems as if I was quite high up, in reality it was only about the quarter of the way up.

PS. The lil bit in ** is a statement that might be incorrect but that was what I was told by our tour guide.