Friday 8 July 2011

Great Wall (untouched) to Great Wall (over commercialised)

I looked at my photos after we left the Great Wall camp and wished that I had taken more. I wished I'd gone for a walk up the nearby hill and looked out across the wall and mountains and nice looking things. But there really wasn't time.

I didn't hold too many hopes for the official part of the Great Wall we were going to visit in Jiayuguan because typically, here, they do things to their ancient that would make my historian friend, Morag, sweat blood. The fort at the western end of the Great Wall in Jiayuguan has had just such treatment and corny is really the only word to describe a lot of it. But when you reached the other end and looked out into all the desolation, there was a sudden impression of the people who had lived here in this place that has earned the adjective godforsaken.

We camped not far from the fort and the site was pleasant (they even had a passing flock of sheep). I am loving the bush camping, but not the lack of showering while bush camping. The truck is no place for someone with a sensitive nose on a hot day after two nights of camping. 

2 comments:

Morag said...

I am glad to know at least that there are still parts that haven't been overdone to death. Maybe future generations of historians will get it right...

Jayne said...

Assisi was very overdone to the point where it was funny. It was interesting to get an idea what the walled towns might have felt like when they were new and shiny. I prefer mine a few hundred years old. That and Egyptian art.