Gubeiko to Simatei or The Hissy Fit DIVA and The comeback Queen
After breakfast on the fifth day of the trek and after doing our morning stretches, we set off out of the back of the hotel and headed up a steepish road where we picked up the wall almost straight away. This morning the Doc decided to walk with me for a bit, it turns out that she had heard about my coughy, throaty, chesty thing and was concerned. I had questions like is there any phlegm? And other embarrassing things like that. To the point where I had to show her some eeeeyyoooo! And she decided I had a chest infection (I thought it was bronchitis - turns out I was right) Half way up the road the hacking painful cough had returned and I was feeling rough and just a bit sorry for myself in the way only I can. We hit the wall and by the time we got half way up the first rise, I was in a bad way, so the Doc said to me ‘do you want to go back’ and I said yes. The front of the group had got to the first landing by this point, and were waiting for us, the Doc said to the tour leader ok, can we get one of the guys to radio the baggage truck and see if they will come back (to pick up another baggage! - she didn’t say that bit) so they started radioing through and the tour leader said ‘don’t you think you can do it’ and in the biggest loudest voice I could muster I had a Sian Chatfield DIVA HISSY-FIT as only I can do it. It went along the lines of:
‘I cant do it any more, this wall is NOT fun any more it is a chore and I HAAAATE IT!!!!!!!!!’ It was said with more venom than a sack full of snakes and the conviction of a religious zealot. All it lacked was the tears the purple face and the stamping feet (well ok I had the red face but that was from climbing a whole heap of stairs not from my hissy-fit) I performed this in front of an audience of fifty people and funnily enough, I didn’t get a standing ovation, but I probably did get (although I was in such a lather I didn’t notice) a whole lot of rolling eyes and sighs, I can laugh now but at the time I vehemently DID NOT want to walk that bloody wall.
After watching my hissy-fit (which only a three year old could have pulled off better) the tour leader said to me, ‘come on Sian you can do this, yesterday was much harder, and I don’t want you being all down on yourself and calling yourself a wuss again like you did the other day. You can do this and besides, there is quite a bit of flat and down today’. That did it, hissy-fit almost forgotten, I said I would try and I’m so glad I did.
The wall was steep, but soon the air warmed up and I found I was having to stop and catch my breath a lot less than I had the day before and I was still coughing, but not as much. It still hurt to breathe but it was becoming almost bearable, and so I set my own pace which was slow but steady, I was still cursing, but the swear words went down a notch in severity and soon I began enjoying myself once more, at this point I wasn’t really looking at the scenery too much I was just trying to concentrate on my walking and climbing. The wall was in much better repair here than it had been in other places but was still very broken down. Here rather than stairs, the wall was mostly amazingly steep slopes, as steep as the stairs had been and I found that these were actually harder to climb than the stairs. On a lot of the slopes the paving bricks were non existent and you had to really carefully pick your way up the rises. If you were to fall on this you wouldn’t die but it wouldn’t be pretty. Broken legs and ankles galore! In some places you almost had to do it on your hands and knees it was so steep, the steps were killers too, three housebricks on their ends high and one across, you couldn’t climb more than one at a time and some of them were really crumbly you had to watch your step. We were told that in this area accidents were actually less frequent than in a well repaired section because you have to think about what you are doing and you manoeuvre yourself really carefully. The thought that really struck me here, because it was so high, was how the hell did they ever get horses up here. They used to have to have supply horses and messenger horses running up and down this wall as much as the soldiers and although Mongolia has a reputation for breeding sturdy hard arse horses that can go over pretty much any terrain, I would think in winter, when the slopes and steps were icy they would slip and fall easily and most horses, I’m sure would baulk at going up such a slippy, hard, steep surface. If in fact they could even make it (maybe they had horse snow chains!)
The shadows were ever present along this stage of the wall, although not as aggressive or in as many numbers as they had been the day before. I found rather than ‘no’ the phrase ‘Go away’ worked really well, I had used it several times but as we were approaching a watchtower you could see them looking out of the windows. This watchtower was situated at the top of an extremely hard section of ‘up’ and I noticed that one of the women was staring intently at me, because I was having a bit of trouble, I also recognised her as one of the shadows that had been really hard to shift the day before. I reached the watchtower, and as I knew she would, she pounced, ‘I carry your bag’ she said trying to grab it, ‘I help you’, ‘I don’t want help’ I retorted, ‘ no, I help you’. On paper this sounds ok, but it was said in almost an aggressive threatening way, so I yelled ‘GO AWAY’ which she did, but as soon as my back was turned I got a sarcastic ‘woooo!’ - fair comment I surpose.
I carried up the wall and just as I was wondering where all these surposed ‘flats’ and ‘downs’ were, we stopped for lunch.
We sat on the ground on either side of the wall, the shadows were with us the whole time, trying to sell tourist crap. Some of our group had got really into the art of haggling by this point and were getting great deals on the things that they wanted, I however sat quietly, eating my boiled egg - the same thing that I had eaten for breakfast - now unable to stomach anything else, and as you would imagine finished that pretty quickly.
As I was waiting for the others to finish, I looked out at the scenery and soaked it up like a dry sponge, you can lose yourself looking at the beauty but soon I found, that where my backpack had been, I was sweaty and therefore getting pretty cold, as I was pulling my hoodie on, some other walkers came past us and this was surprising, because apart from some Chinese tourists on the day of the heavenly ladder (they didn’t go up the ladder) and a few of the shadows along today’s walk we had been completely alone.
As the rest of the group were getting their things together I slowly started to walk, my horrible competitive streak was starting to kick in and I didn’t want to be at the back feeling like I was holding people up (which in fact I wasn’t, it just felt like it) Before long Jordan, our other Chinese guide was walking beside me and we walked together for a little way. The rest of the group were up and at’em now and some of the faster ones were over-taking, but I was surprised to see they weren’t streaking ahead, and for the first time in the trip, I was keeping up! I still had the cough but the pain had gone and now rather than an all consuming hindrance it was merely an inconvenience, and I was able to crack on the way I had wanted to the entire trip.
Whereas the wall before lunch had been unrepaired and rough the wall after lunch was in a state of good repair, the steps did not seem so steep (and for the most part weren’t ) and the slopes were smooth and pleasant to walk on. I found that I was clogging along and really enjoying myself.
For anybody that knows me well, this will be old news. But I am hideously competitive. If I do something, be it fancy dress, or a game of pool, I’m in it to win it. I try really hard not to be so competitive and although I try to hide it, I am a sore loser, and that is why being unable to be at the front and be fit and up to this walk had really hit me hard - even though I was arrogant enough and stupid enough, not to train enough. This afternoon however, I got my second wind, I was steaming along and although it wasn’t a running race, I soon found myself coming to the end stretch, where we had a massive ‘down’. But I had learned that I was good at down or flat, just not ‘up’.
The ‘down’ that we faced, was a sheer ravine at the bottom of which was basically a long rope bridge, that went across a river, I could see some of the group waiting for us at the other side and I shot down those stairs as if I had skates on. There were a lot of other tourists descending as well and I resented their presence. How could they be here, they didn’t respect the wall, they hadn’t given their life to it for days on end, they weren’t even looking at the architecture, or appreciating the landscape or marvelling at the wonder that is the wall - how dare they. They didn’t know the wall, but they would go back home as if they had known it as intimately as we had.
I virtually jogged the rope bridge to join my fellows on the other side, and I was easily and comfortably within the first ten to get there.
I wanted to crack on, because the next part was higher and steeper than any parts of the wall that we had encountered before, reaching further up than the heavenly ladder part and I didn’t want to find myself at the back of the pack once more. But to leave the bridge and carry on you had to pay a toll, which our group had paid in advance so they wouldn’t let us go until at least half of the group was ready, so the toll guy knew who we were. When it came time to leave I was in the first ten, that quickly became the first twenty, after the fitter more competent walker/climbers shot ahead of me, soon I reached the second watchtower up and I nearly wet myself with delight to find I had reached the summit of my day’s climb. As I walked through that watchtower a fat American man came puffing down the hill complaining that there was so many down steps and that he hadn’t done any up at all, and that he would have liked to have done some. The answer he got from us was, ‘try doing the wall for a week straight mate‘, ‘then you will know all about ’ups’, It turns out that at the summit of this massive high, was a cable car, and he had caught this, walked down the steps to our height and then took the short cut around the mountain back to the bus park. We however, got off the wall at this point and took THE ZIP LINE!!! Down a huge mountain and over a massive reservoir.
The zip line cost thirty five Yuan to go down (about a fiver, or $10) but it was worth it, you were strapped into a parachute harness and suddenly you were off! Fast as lightening down a wire I twirled around so I was going down backwards, and spent most of my flight trying to right myself, but it was thrilling!!
At the end there was an angry Chinese lady who put a set of stairs next to you and shouted ‘get up, get up get up!’ I was trying to walk up the stairs but my harness was going faster than I was and I couldn’t - she didn’t smack me on the legs like she did others, but she seemed very cross that I didn’t get it right first time!!!! Once out of the harness, myself and a few of the others waited for the next few people to come down before going down a short path to the ferry which took us over the reservoir to the short path that led to that nights hotel.
This hotel was again set round a central courtyard but this time, there were picnic tables in the courtyard and a lady selling the big beers that we had grown to love. My little group got ourselves established pretty quickly at a table and when they said ‘who wants to go three in a room’ again I piped up that myself and Diedre would share again with Shirley, (without asking her - ooops) I don’t think she minded too much, but I should have asked. So I was waiting for them, two beers down, with a room that to me, was LUXURY!
When I had gone in, hoorah! There were three beds!!! I bagsy’d my bed and sat on it. It was as downy as a pillow, the bathroom was clean and there was an easy to use heater that I started straight away. When they arrived, in a state of euphoria, I showed them our room, and asked them to bounce on the beds, you don’t know how good your bed at home is until you sleep on a Chinese bed! It was lovely to have a comfortable bed!
I went out for another beer with the guys that I had been sitting with, and was happy. After a while I noticed the tour leader who had made me go, standing outside and I went and thanked him wholeheartedly, I had gotten my stride and confidence back, and that truly was a gift.
After a shower we were ready for dinner which was the usual fare but by this point I had started to do Chinese food overkill, I just couldn’t eat much so I joined another table of my friends and treated them to a rendition of the song that had been going over and over in my head all day.
Whenever you walk in the joint! (dah, dah!)
I could see you were a man of distinction, a real big spender!
Good looking, so refined,
Now wouldn’t you want to know what’s going on in my mind
So let me get right to the point, (dah, dah!)
I won’t pop my cork for every man I seee!
Hey big spender, (hey big spender) speeeend!, a little time with me!
(da da da dah)
wouldn’t you like to have fun! Fun! Fun!
Like to have a few laughs, laughs, laughs,
Let me show you a (dah, dah!) good time!
I can show you a (dah, dah!) good time!
Yep you got it. Nissed as a Pewt!
After a few more renditions of Shirley, my version of the sesame street theme tune and the muppet show theme tune (yes I am a muppet) I gracefully retired, without tripping over too many things on the way, I hasten to add.
And that is where tonight’s story ends, I will write some more tomorrow.
