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I've hiked every section of the Great Wall — from the crumbling wild sections to the restored tourist routes. Here's my honest guide to hiking the Wall, with everything a beginner needs to know.
I've walked the Great Wall more than a hundred times with clients. Every single time, I tell them the same thing before we start: "Don't look at your phone. Just stand there for one minute and let it hit you." The look on their faces when they finally look up — that never gets old. Most tourists go to Badaling because that's what the tour buses advertise. I take my clients to Mutianyu. Same wall, better experience — way fewer people, a cable car up, and a toboggan ride down that adults enjoy more than kids (don't tell my children I said that). Pro tip from hundreds of trips: arrive before 8am. The ticket queue at 10am can be 40 minutes. At 8am you walk straight through. And bring water — the vendors on the wall charge triple. If you really want to escape crowds, Jinshanling is where I go when I have a free weekend. It's unrestored, crumbling, and absolutely stunning. Pack a picnic and you can walk for hours without seeing another tourist.
This afternoon I dragged both kids up a mountain trail on the outskirts of Chongqing. The four-year-old complained for the first 15 minutes. Then she found a stick. The stick became a sword. The sword defeated every bush and rock on the trail, and suddenly hiking was the best activity ever invented. Chongqing is surrounded by hills that most tourists never see. A 30-minute drive from the city center and you're on trails that cut through bamboo forests, past small temples, with views of the Yangtze winding through the valleys below. We stopped at a little pavilion halfway up. An elderly couple was there with a thermos of tea and a bag of sunflower seeds. The wife offered some to my kids, who accepted with sticky hands and huge grins. We sat together in comfortable silence, looking out at the city far below. My oldest asked me on the way down: 'Mama, why do the old people in China always go to the mountains?' I told her: because they know that a mountain doesn't ask anything of you. You just walk, breathe, and remember what matters. She didn't fully get it. But one day she will.
