The Ultimate Slumber Party – Sleep ON The Great Wall Of China!
A journey to China is filled with dozens of unique travel experiences for first time visitors. The miles of neatly parked black bicycles, the first time you’re offered a “1000″ year old egg to eat, the brightly painted Ming Dynasty temples, the sheer size and breadth of the highways and public squares, and the pace of new construction, all create a juxtaposition that is staggering. 
At the top of most traveler’s sightseeing list is a visit to The Great Wall, located about 3 hours outside of Beijing. What a shame it would be to travel all the way to China, and all the way to The Great Wall only to be herded like lemmings onto a restored section of the wall with hundreds (maybe thousands) of other sightseers. Forget about jogging on The Great Wall… you’ll be lucky to find a spot to peep over the parapets and glimpse the countryside beyond. If you’re like me, there will be way too many heads and necks in your view! And don’t spend too much time walking along the wall, for you’ll surely want to visit the gift shops and purchase your requisite “I Climbed The Great Wall” t-shirt before the bus leaves. The picture above was shot on May Day with a few of my fellow sightseers!!! Fortunately there’s another way….
The folks at TheChinaGuide.com (an American managed/Beijing based travel company) offer a unique and intriguing tour to The Great Wall that includes a “Sleep On The Wall” experience. (Less adventurous travelers can opt to stay in a traditional courtyard hotel at the base of the wall instead.) The tour visits a section of the wall that is less frequented by tour buses, so you will have plenty of opportunity to roam. Following dinner in the village and an evening hike along the wall, tour participants who opt to ‘sleep on the wall’ climb to a watchtower along with their guide, and bed down in a cozy sleeping bag with sleeping mat. 
After a night of imagining you’re a trusty tower scout watching for an invading Mongol army, breakfast arrives (hot coffee, muesli and fruit) and it’s off for a 6 mile walk to discover more mysteries of the wall along with your guides. Imagine the stories you’ll have to tell when you return home. “I not only climbed the wall, I lived on it like Chinese soldiers did thousands of years ago”! Here’s a link that will bring you to a full description of this unique Sleep On The Wall tour. You might also like to read the trip report and watch a video by a Toronto Star reporter.
Now for the rest of us who are not entertaining a trip to China in the near future…. TheChinaGuide website has an outstanding feature - 360 degree panorama videos of major sights in and around Beijing including The Great Wall, Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven, The Forbidden City, and Olympic stadiums – you’ll almost feel like you’re there. Enjoy this virtual tour of Beijing!
ps – the photos in the article were not taken on The China Guide tour – they are my photos from a previous visit to China.
Category: Adventure Vacation Ideas, China, Unique Vacations
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Ahh, thanks for pointing me to TheChinaGuide! Planning a return trip to China this new years exactly ten years after our first visit, which was one of the most intense and rewarding travel experiences ever, despite being hearded like cattle. So intense that we dropped dead at 11pm new years eve so this time around we wanna do a more exclusive kinda thing and the ‘Build your own China tour’ tool over at TheChinaGuide is pretty darn cool!