Can smell the Yellow River 3

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22 km today.

Today’s walk was really good and varied. It started in the flat landscape north of Jingtai. Since it rained most of the night, the top inch of the earth became very slippery in some places.  The problem was that it was difficult to identify these places before it was too late. Thanks to the walking sticks it went OK though.

Later, I approached some small mountains and started climbing them to follow the trail of the Great Wall. Wow – it felt great to get ‘up there’ in the hills! Suddenly I had a greater perspective of the landscape around me. The Great Wall followed the ridges along the mountain sides.  It was almost completely erected with stone walls on each side and rammed earth in the middle. They had used the landscape to their advantage in some stretches so that they didn’t need a wall. It felt exciting to know that I was closing quickly in on the Yellow River.

At a couple of places it got a bit dangerous to climb, but just taking things slowly meant that I felt safe, although it was pretty steep. Now and again there was rock sticking up from the ground which made me think of the Norwegian Mountains in Jotunheimen. I like to have rock under my feet. Makes me feel safe!

Observant readers will see that I am walking a little further to the south-east than the planned route (Green line). The Great Wall crosses the Yellow River close to here and continues in a north-easterly direction on the eastern shore of the Yellow River for about 80 kilometres. Unfortunately as you can see from the map, this is a very inhospitable mountainous area with few or no chances of finding water. Nobody has ever walked this stretch before. One would think that the Yellow River has plenty of water, and it does, but it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get to the Yellow River due to the earth erosion along it’s shores. So tomorrow, when I hit the Yellow River, I will backtrack towards Jingtai and follow tracks, small roads and whatever I can find, to start walking towards Zhongning which is the next yellow blob on the Great Wall Route.

If you want to have some fun, go to the Great Wall Route, and zoom in really close by pressing the + sign on the map. The images here are detailed and you can see the Great Wall rolling it’s way through the landscape!

3 thoughts on “Can smell the Yellow River”

  • Robert

    Hello – From now on, I will try to respond a little to these comments! Thank you very much for them – they keep me going 🙂

    Wishing you a good weekend.

  • chinoook

    Hi Robert,

    I hope you can read this before you return to Jingtai. I hope you struggle to get to the Yellow river (which as far as I know no one before did) and can follow the track of the Great Wall. According to my maps it should get right down to the Yellow River and to pretty inhabitated area and should connect for a long strech along the YR. It would be new knowlege for all of us and probably a hand full of your exceptional good photographs. The way back to should be possible far away from Jingtai, both saving you a long walk and giving you more impressive sights than plasic bags blown along a road.

    All the best

    -chinoook

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