chapter fourteen: camping on the Great Wall

When we heard of the "great wall snow festival" we absolutely had to go there! The deal was as follows: skiing and dancing at a festival at the great wall of China, for a really good price!!

During my time in China I didn't see much of winter: some snow in Inner Mongolia (probably real) and one day it snowed on campus (probably fake as we'd heard the canons the night before). So although it was freezing cold since mid october, real winter feeling was missing a bit. We did get a lot of fog, but that was 99.9% pollution and not winter haha!

We searched for a small group to get tickets for the festival and in the end we were 8: Dee, Jamar, Kosuke, Ivan, Diane, Xenia, Simen and me. Unfortunately both Diane and Xenia were not up for the camping, and in the end Xenia couldn't make it at all, too bad... But that still left an awesome group of 6!

Earlier this year some people recommended sleeping at the great wall, but we hadn't found the time before and actually thought it would be too cold this time of year. Actually one of the people who suggested the camping was our Chinese language teacher, even though camping there is illegal in fact! Nevertheless, I was probably never gonna get that chance in my life again... so we went for it and rented a tent to combine camping with the snow festival!!

Since it was not officially allowed to set up a tent, we had to take a detour to get to the wall... a very long, hard, steep and sometimes dangerous (!) detour. We went through a lot of trees, climbed, walked, climbed some more, walked and walked for a few hours... Luckily we had some strong men like Ivan and Jamar to carry the big bags and the tents! Not always knowing where to go or how long we still had to go on, it was hard. But we made it in the end. The view was soooo amazing, made even better by the feeling of this awesome accomplishment!! So we awarded ourselves with a small break before continuing to look for a sleeping spot.

During this search we took a few small breaks again, to enjoy the nature and the view. During one of these pauzes Ivan decided to write history: he fell off the wall. Unexpected, with a beer in his hand, backwards, fast. The first second we were shocked, as most of us were sitting we couldn't see what was behind the wall. How deep did he fall? Is he alive? Shit. What do we do? Luckily he appeared again a few seconds later with the message "don't worry, the beer is fine". All's well that ends well.

There were some tourists and hikers on the wall too, so we had to make sure to find a good spot to hide our stuff while we were skiing that wasn't too far from the skiing area either. Luckily there was a pathway from the hiding spot to the festival grounds, so no more rough and dangerous hiking again!!

First of all: fake snow.

Secondly: both the Austrian Ivan, the Jamaican Dee and the Barbadian Jamar had never skied before in their lives.

So yeah, this was going to be awesome and hilarious! I chose a snowboard, it had been a long time for me so I really enjoyed snowboarding again! :)

In the end I was able to teach Ivan some proper technique! Dee on the other hand chose a different path when we met Kimani: both riding the boards like sledges :') ! When I tried to help Kimani things didn't exactly go as planned either... and he boarded into me! R.I.P. pants, but no other casualties. Skiing with the music was awesome!

All good things come to an end. Tired and wet, we returned the skiing gear, regrouped, had a nice dinner and went back up the wall to set up camp. Some people set up the tents and others were responsible for shining the flashlights, as it was already quite dark!

Some drinks and great company made for an amazing night! Even with Dee hiding in the tent the whole evening haha. :')

The sleeping itself was a bit less comfortable: we now know why nobody recommends camping in december... it's freezing cold!!

Simen brought his camera and took this amazing picture below!