) - three hours from Jinshanling to Simatai. By the time we made it to the wall itself Sophie thought she might die, but to be fair we had only some "breakfast bread" (think of a dinner roll that's a little bit sweet and milky) and some honey covered nuts. Not exactly climbing food. However, a coke purchased from one of the many hawkers along the wall put her right as rain.As a kind of reward, they have a flying fox (zip-line) at the end of the trek, over a hot spring (fiery chasm) which is quite spectacular. Unfortunately for you, we weren't brave enough to film our descent, thinking we might drop the camera.
So now we've made it to Xi'an, where it looks like we'll be staying for a while - the tickets to Lhasa are much trickier to get than we first thought, which unfortunately now means we won't be going to the Panda breeding centre in Chengdu. Sigh.
We've got our tour to the terracotta warriors lined up for tomorrow, as well as plenty of rest - poor Sophie has a cold!
On the upside, we're staying in an awesome hostel, with a massive room: about twice the size of Sophie's room. The manager is a jovial Chinese (duh) man who seems to be constantly wandering about saying hi to people. The perfect place for chilling.
Speaking of chilling, Xi'an is noticeably warmer than Beijing, and it's only going to get warmer from here. Kathmandu is currently at a pleasant 25º maximum.
