Walking the Wall

Emma and Olivia Newton-John

Around this time last year, when Brendan and I were struggling to climb impossible slopes, fighting our way through brush and brambles, and sweating through blistering hot afternoons, I swore to myself, on more than one occasion, that nothing – nothing – could make me go through all of that again.

But I was wrong.

Walking the Wall Part 2 is about to begin, and this time ‘round it’s for a cause – the fight against cancer. As some of you may know, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at the age of 30, a few months after Brendan and I were married. We were devastated, of course, but practical. My Dad had survived lung, liver and bowel cancers, so I could survive this. As it turned out, thyroid cancer is, according to the doctors, “the best type of cancer to have”. The cancer is removed with either part or all of the thyroid gland, and survival rates are very high. My partial thyroidectomy was a success, and I continue to monitor my gland and control my thyroid hormone levels with medication.

It was partly because of this scare that Brendan and I were encouraged to go and walk the Great Wall of China in 2006-2007, a physical and mental challenge to prove that I was stronger than the illness.

But most people aren’t so lucky with cancer, as many of you would know. And it is because of this that I am returning to the wall.

From April 7-29 I will be joining Olivia Newton-John, Sir Cliff Richard, Dannii Minogue, singer James Reyne, actress Sigrid Thornton, dancer Paul Mercurio and dozens of other athletes, celebrities and cancer survivors such as myself to walk 228 kilometres on the Great Walk to Beijing, all of us raising money for the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Centre at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne. This centre will bring under one roof a comprehensive suite of cancer services, including research programs, an innovative Wellness Centre, and facilities for acute and palliative care patients.

All of us talking part in the Great Walk are supporting the Cancer Centre by asking our friends, colleagues and family members to “sponsor our steps” by making a donation at the Great Walk to Beijing website.

Cancer is an illness that will strike 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women before the age of 85. By its often devastating impacts on our closest friends and loved ones, it touches us all. If you can sponsor me, I would be honoured to represent my friends and family out there on the Great Wall. I will be walking for my Dad, walking for my godmother Pru, for George’s godfather Tony, for my cousin in London, for my two close girlfriends, and for all the people we have lost to cancer and who are going through it right now.

If you would like to sponsor my steps, just click on the banner below.

Alternatively, you can attend a fundraiser to be held in Sydney in mid-May on my return and donate at the door. Or you can click and go to the fundraiser!

You’ll see on the website that there’s a bit of healthy competition encouraged between the walkers, and in order to compete I have to get my sponsorship numbers up and clicking away while we’re walking. The numbers of donors are counted every day.

*****

Memories of burning thighs and blisters aside, both Brendan and I are over the moon about returning to China. It will be wonderful to see the Wall with fresh (and non-exhausted) eyes, to be able to share the pleasure of hiking along it with others, and to see some of the old friends we made on our first Great Wall walk.

We probably won’t be able to blog as frequently as we did on our first journey, but do check back here at the site in April and May. If we have time for nothing else, we’ll post a retrospective on the journey when we return.

Most importantly, head on over to the Great Walk to Beijing and sponsor my steps. Together, we can make a difference!

If the Beijing wall were a series of guidebooks, the Gubeikou-Simatai section would be the Lonely Planet – undeveloped for large-scale tourism but attracting groups of like-minded people all seeking out their own slice of private wall. It is also one of the best relatively remote sections of the Great Wall that can easily be hiked by people without 3000 kilometres of experience behind them. That was good news for us when we first came to China in 2005, having never stepped foot on the world’s longest wall before.

A charity fundraising group from England tackles the Gubeikou wall

Our first journey to the Great Wall was with Intrepid Travel as part of a fundraising campaign for the NSW Cancer Council. We did what most groups do – walk from Gubeikou to Simatai over two days, struggling down the hill in the middle at Jinshanling and asking ourselves how the hell were we ever going to reach the part of the wall that we could see in the distance.

You want me to go up that! The Simatai wall running up the furthest ridge

An original watchtower with Simatai in the distance

For very good reasons, this section is still very popular with the charity groups – in fact, when we were there a few weeks ago as part of this walk, we came across a group from England raising money for breast cancer and another Intrepid Travel group. Walking this section gives people the chance to see 20 kilometres of mostly original wall in absolutely stunning scenery.

No loose stones or falling rocks, now that’s what I call smooth walking

Might be a bit steep, but wall like this poses no danger to walkers

Apart from a few kilometres in the middle at Jinshanling, the wall is mostly unreconstructed but has suffered far less damage than many of the other parts of the wall we have seen. This means you can still see elements of original Great Wall construction without feeling like it was put together for your benefit as a tourist.

The arrow loop – soldiers can view the enemy through the top hole while remaining protected and shoot through the lower hole

Barrier walls – shown here on a reconstructed section – were designed to protect soldiers when steep slopes would otherwise leave them exposed to enemy fire

Barrier walls on an original section

The extension in the middle is a wall terrace or horse face wall that gave soldiers a better view and a more flexible battlefield

When we finally hit the Beijing wall, it was like walking into a Great Wall calendar. Behind us, to the west, lay the outer wall; to the south, the Huanghuacheng inner wall; and ahead of us, reclining majestically on the ridgetop, the Beijing wall. The three of them meet at a place called the Beijing Knot, high atop the needle-sharp Huoshi Mountain, and it was that view that we were treated to as we set up camp near the Nine Window Watchtower.

The Beijing Knot is on the peak to the right

Many of the towers and entrances are overgrown with trees and shrubs

And in some parts, even the wall

The Beijing Knot, or Beijing Jie in Chinese, marks the western boundary of the horseshoe-shaped wall that loops around the north of Beijing.

Making our way towards the Knot, visible in the distance

It is this wall that most tourists visit when they come to China, and it is here that you will find the classic “wall” images – stone, brick, watchtowers, windows, crenellations. For thousands of kilometres we had seen hints of these here and there, but Beijing is where they all come together.

The view through one of the windows in the Nine Window Watchtower

Stones form the base of the wall and the towers while the top is made of brick

A horsewalk is where the wall is wide enough for at least two horses at a time

Brick crenellations going up a sloping wall

This was probably one of our favourite days on the wall. Though far from our first day in Beijing municipality, the “mini-province” that encloses Beijing, this was our first day in what you would call “recognisable” Beijing wall. It was exciting to finally see, after nearly a year, the wall that we had envisioned when we thought of this journey.

The holes at the top were used to send arrows or rocks at the enemy

There we were, walking along wall wide enough for two horses, enclosed on both sides, beautifully decorated arrow loops and rock holes still intact, and we couldn’t go two paces without stopping to take a photo.

Brick wall with a watchtower in the distance

Hi, welcome to Countdown, and, um, I’m your host Emma “Wally” Nicholas. We’ve got a great show for you today so I, like, hope you can stick with us all the way through to the end, you know?

First up, we’ve got the Walking the Wall duo about to finish their, um, tour of China. The husband-and-wife team have spent the last year on the road, clocking up nearly 3600 gigs all along the length of the Great Wall. Final performance is set for, like, June 14 in Shanhaiguan, so stay tuned. We’ll be counting down the days till the end of their tour.

We’ve also heard that they’ve suffered several equipment failures over the past week and both hikers are showing signs of, um, physical deterioration. I mean, as painful as it might be, this, um, sort of thing is common on such a long tour, you know? Just as well that families will be meeting them in Shanhaiguan. I mean, maybe someone else can carry their bags back for them.

For the non-Australians who are wondering why Emma is wearing a silly cowboy hat and sitting next to a squirrel (or even for the Australians who are wondering that), Countdown was an immensely popular music show in the 70s and 80s hosted by a cowboy-hat-wearing Ian “Molly” Meldrum (the squirrel was a last-minute addition to the photo).

Our Wall Angels for Shanxi are a mixed bunch. Because we spent so much time on the wall and Brendan’s foot has pretty much recovered, we only have one driver; the other two are people we encountered along the way during times of hiking. These Wall Angels are selected because they made our day special, but they are by no means the only friendly encounters we had – on the whole our experience of people in Shanxi was extremely positive.

We were further away from towns and more independent of drivers in Shanxi than we had been while Brendan was rehabbing, but we still relied on people for water. Though we could go days without walking through a village with a shop and often boiled snow for water, we also relied on farmers and shepherds at times when there wasn’t any snow. This might explain why our experiences of people was so positive – small villages are always a lot more pleasant than roads or large towns.

The Jing Chang of Shiqigou, Inner Mongolia

Before we started this trip, we had been warned time and again to avoid the police. So many times, in fact, that whenever we see a police car coming our way we automatically lower our eyes and try to make our backpacks blend into the scenery. Well, that’s not going to happen, but as it turns out our fears seem to have been unfounded – the police really haven’t given us much trouble. Boring, I know, but that’s how it is.

When we met the Jing Chang (police) of Shiqigou, we had been out on the wall for a week or so and had been melting a lot of snow for water; as a result, we were almost out of fuel for our stove. We still had a few days of traveling ahead of us, so when the wall crossed a highway bordering Shanxi and Inner Mongolia we thought we should try to pick up some fuel. According to the locals, the closest petrol station was down the road about six kilometres. But don’t worry, they said, there’s a bus at 2 o’clock.

Your friendly neighbourhood police

While walking 3600 kilometres might seem a bizarre thing to do, we do draw the line at a 12-kilometre detour just to get petrol. And waiting three hours for the once-a-day bus isn’t usually on our schedule. So with sunken shoulders we dejectedly made our way back to the wall, the thought of cold dinners and no hot cup of tea at the end of a long day of hiking weighing us down.

When we walked past the police check-point on the highway we had a thought. In the past the police have given us rides, let’s see if they’ll do it again today, even if it is to buy petrol in a little throwable container. When Brendan explained to them that we have a small stove and need petrol to boil water, it didn’t take long for the youngest police officer to usher him into the officers’ van and speed off for town, leaving me sipping tea with the remaining one. After the quick round-trip we thanked them profusely, but they waved us away, saying in Chinese: “We’re the police, we’re here to help.”

Guo Yung

When you’re called up late at night and asked to pick up two hikers from a small village you’ve never heard of that is two hours’ drive away, and you agree, you qualify for Wall Angel status. That is how Mr Guo made it on to this list.

We had met him on a previous visit to Datong and employed him as our driver while we were sightseeing and for our return trip from Datong back to the wall. We had reached the end of a hiking week (most Wall Angel stories start this way, don’t they?) and thought we would be ending up in a township town. These towns are usually large enough to have a few snack shops and a simple place to stay. This town did have a few snack shops, but as for places to stay – well, unless we were willing to share the kang with an old man and his TB cough, there weren’t any other options.

Guo Yung dropping us off at the wall

So at 7 pm we called Mr Guo and asked if he had the time to drive from Datong to pick us up and take us back for a nice day off. He didn’t know where the town was, but he had the time. It took him two hours and a few stops to ask for directions, but at 9 pm he found us eating dumplings in a little mahjong room and hastily pushed us into his car. Definitely Wall Angel status.

Cheng Yu Tie

We never expected Easter Sunday to be much of a holiday here in China. Until we met Mr Cheng. While most of you were pigging out on chocolate Easter eggs and hot cross buns, Mr Cheng was busy doing something every bit as important – turning 74.

We had spent the morning hauling our bags up a 1500-foot climb, following the wall as it jumped over the mountain range from one river valley to another. Easter, like birthdays, Christmas and Valentine’s Day, was just another hiking day, except for the visions of our families and friends back home having picnics that occasionally popped into our heads and made us homesick.

But when we descended into the next river valley (not the last one, we were upset to see) we needed to stock up on water, so we sought out the nearest shop, which also happened to be the site of Mr Cheng’s birthday party. There were 20 family members, two tables of food, and after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, us. We tried to beg off joining in such a special occasion, but not taking no for an answer, his daughter sat us down at one of the tables, pushed chopsticks into our hands and told us to eat.

Grandpa Cheng is the one wearing the birthday hat

We spent the next hour making our way through home-style vegetables, sticky rice buns, noodles and fish – and that’s not even including Mr Cheng’s huge birthday cake with a singing candle flower in the middle. The cake wasn’t completely consumed like it is at most Western parties (flour cakes seem to be a pretty new thing around here), but the icing, like at most parties, was put to good use. What’s a 74-year-old’s birthday party without a cake fight?

Grandson Cheng Sheng can cake-fight and text at the same time

Of all the Buddhist grottoes we’ve visited – Dunhuang, Matisi, Jintasi and Shikong – we’d have to say we had the most fun at Yungang Grottoes near Datong. Not that the works were as gorgeous and beautifully preserved as at Dunhuang; they weren’t. Nor were the grottoes set against a spectacular mountain backdrop like those at Matisi and Jintasi, or a private, intimate experience like we had at Shikong.

What was so enjoyable about Yungang, and what we hadn’t experienced before, was that we were able to wander about the caves more or less unrestricted. We weren’t required to hire a guide, we could linger as long as we liked, and we could take photographs wherever we wanted.

Despite being affected by air pollution from Datong, many of the colours remain extremely vivid

Construction on the caves started in 453 AD at a time when China was divided between the Northern Wei and Southern Qi dynasties. At that time, Datong was the capital city of the Northern Wei and the rulers, wanting to show how serious they were about respecting Buddhism, thought Datong would be just the place to build one of the largest collections of Buddhist art and sculptures. This was no remote trading centre like Dunhuang, this was the capital city, and the capital city deserved a good set of grottoes.

The statue at Cave 20, probably the most well-known image of Yungang

Statue sizes vary from less than an inch to nearly 20 metres high

The rulers, however, did have an ulterior motive. After declaring Buddhism the national religion, they commissioned monk Tan Yao to build five enormous Buddhist statues at Yungang in the likeness of five of the Northern Wei emperors. The message was clear – adopt Buddhism, but remember that the emperor is God. It’s hard to say how well that message went down with the loyal subjects – the dynasty only survived another 40 years or so after the completion of the caves.

Looking up at one of the statues of Buddha carved in the likeness of a Northern Wei emperor

Celestial musicians can be seen around this Buddha’s head

There are only 45 caves at Yungang, but there is an astonishing number of statues crowded into those caves – 51,000 to be precise (give or take a few). The whole complex might not be as extensive as Dunhuang, which has more than 700 caves, but you do get to see more – at Dunhuang you must join a tour that only visits 10 or so caves.

A wall of the Thousand Buddha Cave

There are only a couple of hundred here

While we had a lot of fun at Yungang, the truth is that we probably shouldn’t have had quite so much fun. Since the 1960s the caves have been protected in law by both the Chinese Government and the Datong Municipal government, and in 2001 the whole area was listed by UNESCO on the World Cultural Heritage List. But to us it seemed that on the ground the grottoes are seriously underprotected.

First of all, people are allowed to wander through the caves alone as opposed to being forced to join a guided tour, as is the case in Dunhuang. Despite the presence of security cameras, it seemed to us there was ample opportunity for vandalism, and while we didn’t see any, one idiot can do a lot of damage (as we’ve seen occasionally on the wall). And sure, it was fun to stroll around unsupervised, but when 1500-year-old treasures can be destroyed in an instant, maybe a little less freedom wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

The walls are covered in delicate little carvings like this one

The long ears and headdress are typical of the Indian Gandhara style of carving, for which Yungang is famous and quite unique

Secondly, restrictions against flash photography seem to be a dead letter. While there are signs that seem to forbid flashes, no one takes them seriously – some of the caves looked like Hollywood openings with all the flashbulbs going off. And going off in front of commercial tour guides. And guards. You’d think they could do better than that, but if they can’t, maybe they should just ban photography altogether.

Indian Gandhara style brought with it influences of Greek art into China

Finally, there is a threat to the caves coming from the outside, and that’s air pollution. Just across the road is Datong’s largest coal mine. Though the local and state governments are said to be taking steps to reduce the impact of air pollution from the mine and from traffic, we can’t find anything specific on what these steps actually are. But if they are as effective in implementing these “steps” as they are in managing the much simpler problems of access and photography, Yungang’s future could be seriously endangered.

As always, all our photos of indoor artifacts were taken without flash. It’s quite possible that taking such photos, even without flash, was technically against the rules, but whatever restrictions may exist in theory are completely unenforced. For what it’s worth, we specifically asked for and received permission from a guard to take photos without flash. Under these circumstances, we couldn’t really see the harm.

. . . it’s probably best not to try. Or at least that’s what the builders of the Great Wall seem to have thought.

Along China’s northern frontier there are few physical barriers that act as a natural boundary separating China from the Mongolian steppe. One exception is the canyon of the Yellow River north of Fugu.

Here the canyon walls are so steep that not even the most highly skilled Mongol horseman could scale them. To make an attempt would risk death. That’s why, at various times in Chinese history, this stretch of river served as the border between dynastic China and the northern nomadic tribes. Its sheer natural cliffs could accomplish just as well, if not better, what the builders of the Great Wall sought to accomplish.

A round beacon tower above the river. Not even the man from Snowy River could ride down those canyon walls.

Yet passes could be found. Where tributaries meet the river, it is possible to cross, and by the 15th Century, groups of increasingly hungry and desperate Mongols began to infiltrate and weaken the Chinese hold around the Yellow River. While the Ming Dynasty army was suffering from a shortage of food and horses and unable to put up a good fight, the Mongols started to occupy parts of the Ordos, carrying out regular raids on the Chinese and basically becoming a huge problem for Ming national security.

A tributary valley is visible in the background

At that time, the current Great Wall in this area didn’t exist. Walls had been given a bad rap and the Ming Dynasty ministers wanted to work out another way of dealing with their unfriendly neighbours. So the bureaucrats did what bureaucrats do best – spent the better part of 10 years arguing over the pros and cons of a full-scale attack, trade and diplomacy, or, if all else failed, a bloody big wall. All else failed. By 1474, over 900 kilometres of wall went up around the Ordos, all the way to the Yellow River at Fugu.

But the Yellow River didn’t entirely lose its role as a natural barrier – in fact, it probably helped the Ming Dynasty wall builders save a bit of much-needed cash. From what we could see as we walked up the river, it was clear that the cliffs, in parts too steep to allow passage, were actually just as good as wall. For long stretches there was no wall at all, and there probably never has been. All that was needed to defend such sections were a few watch towers and beacon towers, which were regularly placed above the river.

Where the canyon walls gave way to tributaries and valleys, leaving room for easy yet well-concealed passage, there was still a need for continuous wall. In these sections, we saw at least 200 metres of wall stretching out on either side of the tributary canyon and angling down into the valley floor. This was probably enough, or thought to be enough, defence to block an advance.

This section of wall protects a break in the main canyon wall that could allow passage

Wall stretching down to protect a side canyon

It’s been a while since the last Q&As. We’ve been monitoring your questions, intending to get around to answering them, but we’ve felt that there haven’t been enough questions to justify a post.

Guess we should have paid closer attention. When we went back and counted, we had 13 questions total (after consolidating similar questions). That’s enough for three posts, but we’ll do it in two long ones (second installment to come in a few days).

Once again, thanks for all the questions and comments. We don’t have time to reply to all the comments we receive, so the Q&As is a great opportunity for us to talk directly with you, and we really enjoy doing them.

Are we back to camping yet?

Oh yeah. Camping, lugging around 22-kg backpacks, boiling snow to drink, wearing the same unwashed clothes for a week, eating instant noodles … yes, we’re back to camping.

During the rehab phase of our trip, we based ourselves in towns and day-hiked along the wall because Brendan’s foot wasn’t able to cope with carrying the weight. We started camping the last week of December and camped out for Christmas. But Brendan’s foot didn’t respond especially well right off the bat, and we camped about half the time in January and day-hiked whenever the logistics of transport to and from the wall were reasonably simple.

Since the beginning of February we’ve been moving forward, camping during the week and staying in towns for our regular days off. Over the last two weeks we’ve finally begun to average about 25 kilometres a day, our summer norm.

You said that camping near the wall in China was safer than camping in most parts of Australia. In what ways is it safer?

We don’t know if it is actually safer, but it feels like it is, at least in rural areas, as opposed to natural areas where you don’t need to worry about the number one danger to campers – other people.

As far as we understand, crimes against foreign tourists are met with harsh penalties in China. Also, it just wouldn’t be that easy to get away with stealing most of our stuff in the small villages we travel through, and we assume the villagers know it – if someone started sporting Macpac fleece around town the authorities would probably figure out who the culprit was soon enough.

On top of that, we don’t camp around people. We make an effort to finish our days well out of sight of any villages or towns. If we find ourselves too close to a large town we can’t easily avoid, we’ll probably try to stay in a guesthouse. We don’t like people knowing where we are camping, for both safety and personal reasons – personal, because if people knew where we were camping, we’d probably never get any sleep.

This campsite above the Yellow River is less than a kilometre from a village in the valley below, but there is no way we can be seen

It’s been interesting observing life in rural China and the roles the family members have. Gangs of bored youths don’t seem to exist in the villages, which might account for our feeling of safety. For the kids, life seems to swing between school or helping out on the family farm. Rarely have we seen graffiti on the wall or other signs of pointless vandalism.

As for the security of our possessions, the most serious threat comes from the shepherds who try out our walking sticks – they never want to give them back. To cameras they don’t bat an eye, but those walking sticks are like gold out here.

How’s Brendan’s foot?

Brendan’s foot seems to have recovered completely from the stress fracture that occurred in August. We’ve had a frustrating couple of months waiting for it to come back to full strength, with many days spent wondering if we should be back here at all. We took off more days than we ever anticipated and we went through more boots (looking for the perfect fit) than we could probably afford, but our patience and perseverence seems to have paid off.

Back on his feet (sort of)

Now that the foot is back to full strength, we only take one day off in a walking week, which means other things are feeling the stress, like Emma’s shoulders, back, wrist, knees, feet … but no one’s asked about those, have they?

How do we update our blog? Are there many internet cafes?

We update our blog and access the internet using our Dell laptop and a Motorola CDMA phone. The China Unicom plan that we bought in Beijing gives us wireless internet access all over China for our specified period of time (which we’ve naturally had to extend). We have only ever been out of internet range a handful of times on the entire trip, which is pretty impressive given our remote location.

We carry two batteries for the laptop, giving us a total battery life of six hours in theory. We rarely get the full use of these batteries, however, as photo editing, internet usage and cold weather chews through the batteries pretty quickly.

Many towns do have internet cafes (called wang ba), though fortunately we don’t need to spend the time seeking them out on our days off because they are usually smoke-filled places where teenage boys go to play teenage boy games.

Are we meeting the same number of people in winter as we did in summer?

No, not really. In summer, there were people working in the fields that we walked through and hanging outside of the local village shop, so an encounter with one person usually grew to an encounter with a dozen or so. Now, many village shops or noodle houses are closed over winter and the only people working outside are the shepherds.

Well, shepherds and the occasional overburdened three-wheeler

One exception to this was the New Year’s holiday period which ran for 40 days. Schoolchildren were at home during the day and many young people who had moved to the city were back visiting their parents. This meant there were more curious young people around who often invited us in for some tea or water. We don’t really blame those people who peered out of their curtains at us and refused to open the door; not many people would open their door to a pair of balaclava-clad, goggle-wearing, stick-holding foreigners (we soon learned to take off the balaclavas and goggles).

What fuel do we use for our stove?

Our stove is a Brunton Optimus Nova Multi-fuel Expedition Stove, and it is a miraculous piece of equipment. I (Brendan) have been through more stoves in the last 20 years than I care to count, and I have never had a liquid-fuel stove that remotely compares. I still marvel at the thing every day. I just can’t stop.

Our stove in action, heating up mulled wine on Christmas Eve

As anyone who has used liquid-fuel stoves knows, they tend to clog. A lot. Most liquid-fuel stoves sold in Western countries burn white gas, which burns hot and is squeaky clean compared to fuels that are availabe in developing countries like diesel, petrol or kerosene. And still they clog.

In six months of continuous use, in temperatures from 40° Celsius to -20°, our stove has never clogged seriously. It rarely requires cleaning. And this is using regular old petrol, a filthy, inefficient fuel for camping-stove purposes.

Not that Walking the Wall endorses any particular brand of equipment or anything.

Did we visit the twin pagodas near the Western Xia Tombs in Ningxia?

Yes we did. The twin pagodas are in a place called Baisikou (Baisi Pass) about 50 kilometres northwest of Yinchuan, the capital of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. The 13- and 14-storey high Buddhist pagodas stand 100 metres apart at the base of the Helan Shan mountain range. A third pagoda, the Square Pagoda, was built in 1075 during the Western Xia Dynasty but destroyed by vandals in 1990. When cleaning up the ruins in August 1991, archaeologists found little clay pagodas and Buddhist scripture books in both Chinese and Xixia language. According to the interpretive signs at the site, the Xixia Buddhist books are believed to be one of the earliest examples of fixed-type printed matter (i.e., typeset material) in the world.

The twin pagodas with the Helan Shan in the background

The east pagoda

Thank goodness for gaiters and Gore-Tex boots, because spring is on its way! I never thought I’d say this, but the other day, when my feet went straight through the ice and into the water of the small stream we were crossing, I was actually pleased. Pleased that the water-proofing on my boots worked as advertised, and pleased that the biting cold of winter was coming to an end.

When we first started this trip back in June, we were anxious to finish before the arrival of winter (see “Winter Cometh”) and before the temperatures plummeted to minus 20. Never did we think that we’d still be hiking through Christmas, and never did we think that we’d still be hiking well past it.

But here we are, halfway through February, and the daytime temperatures are already hitting a balmy 14 degrees (some of the time). It’s strange to think that less than a month ago, daytime highs were around zero. Now, we can feel the sun building up strength, the sky is getting bluer, and the temperatures are rapidly rising.

One thing that we both love about walking is being able to observe even the tiniest hint of a new season. The pretty blossoms in the photos above are actually quite small, but we have been watching them emerge over the past couple of days with some excitement. They are the first signs of spring that we have seen and they are the first splashes of colour in this otherwise monochome desert landscape.

The other day my mum asked us why we don’t post stories about our daily routine with photos of us doing everyday stuff. Here’s why . . .

Walnut-soybean-oatmeal porridge, mmmm

That’ll teach her to ask questions.

We have been aware that we neglect the day-to-day a bit. Some of this is because a lot of our daily routine is less than photogenic – if you think the picture of Brendan eating breakfast is scary, you should see him before he’s properly woken up. And some of it is that, to us at least, our day-to-day experience is, well, day-to-day.

Except that sometimes we can’t make breakfast when it’s -15C at 7 am because someone forgot to oil the pump cup and the stove won’t light, or we can’t brush our teeth because the toothpaste is frozen, or I have to remind Brendan not to step off the cliff next to our tent when he goes out for some fresh air and starlight at 2 am . . .

Okay, so maybe our everyday routine’s not quite that boring, but when you live it for months on end, even a once-in-a-lifetime adventure can occasionally seem like a daily grind.

Walking through the first snow of January

The overwhelming fact of our life right now is that it’s cold. Not actually as cold as we’d expected – in fact, on sunny days when there’s not much wind, which is most days, the temperature’s usually about 0 to 3 degrees Celsius and the hiking is downright pleasant.

Mornings and evenings are another story. Once the sun goes down the temperature usually drops to -10 pretty quickly. For the most part we can stay comfortably warm in those temperatures by rugging up and burrowing into our sleeping bags, but the cold does present a few challenges when we’re doing camp chores.

Ice crystals form on the inside of the tent and fall on our bags overnight

The most significant challenge is water. After the first morning of waking up to rock-hard water bags that didn’t thaw during the day, we experimented with a) sleeping with our water bags b) putting them in our backpacks overnight c) keeping them in the tent wrapped up in clothes overnight d) boiling the water before going to bed and e) pouring water in the pot before going to sleep and heating it up in the morning. “E” won out.

Winter also means the rivers are frozen, which is great for crossing but not so great for collecting water in the absence of a village. Occasionally there are holes dug in the ice for the sheep to drink from, but rather than elbow our way through a herd of dirty, thirsty sheep, last week we chose to scrape the snow off a frozen river to boil for drinking water – that is, after first scraping the film of dirt off the top of the snow.

But aside from a few alterations, winter has brought very few changes to our regular schedule – in some ways, the cold is easier to deal with than the 40+ temperatures of summer.

First task of the morning, boiling the water

Second task, washing up

As soon as we’re packed, we’re off

Due to our rehabilitation schedule, mornings are not as rushed as they used to be. We are still limiting the number of kilometres we walk each day to around 20, which means we tend to leave camp around 10 am in order to reach our next campsite close to sunset. We do this mainly for safety reasons – though camping out here in rural China is probably safer than camping in most parts of Australia, we still don’t want to expose ourselves if we don’t have to, so we usually wait until all wanderers and shepherds have gone home before setting up our tent.

Once we have settled down for the evening, I use the satellite phone to send our GPS coordinates back to Australia. This is part of our emergency protocol – if we haven’t been heard from for more than 36 hours, having our last coordinates at hand will be a huge advantage for anyone wanting to track us down.

Evening task, send coordinates

At the moment we’re walking seven hours a day, 50 minutes on followed by a 10-15 break. It’s sort of like a job where you have a fantastic corner office with an amazing view. The only thing is, your corner office suite is on the 100th floor and there’s no lift. So, you begin the day by walking all the way up the fire escape stairs, and when you get there, you have some water and a snack, then go back down and walk all the way up again. And do that all day. Every day for a week. Then go to town on the weekend and order a banquet of Chinese food.

The good news is we have covered around 1600 kilometres and are approaching the half-way mark. The bad news is we have now hit the canyons and hills of Shaanxi, which are merely a taste of the hills and mountains to come. But don’t throw a pity party for us just yet – the weather has been clear, the mountains very beautiful, and we’ve just mailed back a bag of unnecessary belongings, so our backpacks are each a whopping one kilogram lighter.

Setting off into the Shaanxi hills