walking the wall

hello!

so today we went for another mini hike along the wall but in the opposite direction form yesterday's.  The hotel provided us with a hand drawn map with amusing annotations and piqued our interest saying that the last section is "the most dangerous section and crossing is not recommended as sheer drops on both sides of this rock ridge are EXTREMELY DANGEROUS".  It goes on to say that some visitors have made the crossing so we assumed we would be in that tough category being hardcore and all that.

The morning was pretty overcast and the ridge pretty exposed with quite strong winds whipping over it.  as we got towards the hairy section the clouds started to part and we got some sun (yay) and the cherry blossoms on the hills lit up.  We started off along the ridge and it was comparable to most steep ridges, like striding edge, until we got to a narrow gap between two huge boulders that we need to descend for about 10m to a narrow ledge that then turned to the right with a fairly vertical drop directly forward.  After a few half hearted attempts we realised that we weren't willing to risk a few hundred meter plummet to our doom so retreated.  yes, we are gay.

It's quite a feeling walking along these parts of the wall that are unrestored but still intact.  You can follow the line of the wall with your eye and see towers on every peak along that line for as far as you can see.  It's not hard to imagine what an impenetrable barrier this would have represented to an invading army.  Even now the eyes of the towers looking down on you from all angles is slightly unsettling.

Tonight we're back on the train to Lhasa.  This will be the famous skytrain with it's highest pass at over 5000m and oxygen being pumped into the carriages.  Hopefully the windows will be a bit clearer than those on the Trans-Siberian so we can actually take a picture through them!

Tootle-pip till Tibet!