On this walk along the Great Wall of China, we need to celebrate as often as possible. Here is a reason for celebration – the end-point today is the place where the Great Wall leaves the Hexi Corridor. The Hexi Corridor is a geographical feature in Gansu province where the Silk Route used to go.
When we continue the walk, we will go eastwards away from the Hexi Corridor. Another reason for celebration is that we are soon finished with the Gansu Province part of the Ming Dynasty Great Wall!! I remember when I kayaked the length of Norway how I used to tell myself, for each County I passed “At least now I can say I have done x Counties”. Well – now we can soon say that we have done Gansu Province 🙂
Today was very hot – very sweaty hot that made me feel a bit out of balance in the middle of the day. My brother Jon decided to stay in Wuwei as he needed to make arrangements for his return to Europe in about a week. I went for the umbrella tactic again today and it definitely helps. But, when there isn’t a lot of wind and the temperature is well above 30 degrees centigrade, an umbrella doesn’t seem to be enough. Although I used factor 30 suncream, my head feels like a radiator right now.
It was easy to follow the Great Wall today. Some places there wasn’t that much left of The Wall, and here it had a dirt road on top of it. I stopped at midday and was consoled when I saw local farmers lying in the shade of the trees resting, at the hottest part of the day.
In the afternoon I took another rest and a farmer came over. He offered me some pea pods from his field which tasted great. A nice variation from biscuits. He was very kind and offered me some of his food. At the end of the walking day, I got to a resort where they had big tents in an enormous area with apple trees. They served food in the tents. I sat down and started chatting a bit and soon heard that several Great Wallker’s had been here before. Amongst others Mark Scholinz exactly two years ago.
A guy that had just ordered some food sat down beside me and despite my limited knowledge of Chinese, we managed to have a conversation. It turned out he had a management position in the local Wine Company. It also turned out that the two chickens I watched being slaughtered were for his dinner. Then he kindly asked me to eat together with him. I even got to taste the wine and it was really good! It was great to get some food in my stomach immediately after I had finished walking. Many thanks!!
Jon and I have been using the same taxi driver in and around Wuwei lately. We invited him and his wife to dinner this evening. This was our way of saying thank you for his help. He and his wife are both taxi drivers. They have one taxi and they share the driving. It was fun to show them pictures from Norway of friends, family, work colleagues and my girlfriend. In fact it was fun for us to see the pictures again, since neither of us have been home for a couple of months.