So my expectations were pretty high.

To back up The Great Wall's greatness, you just need to look at the facts: the wall stretches from the banks of the Yalu River in Liaoning Province to Jaiyuguan in Gansu Province. Estimates on its length vary, but on one thing everybody agrees - it's very, very long. From undulating end to undulating end is around 5,000 kilometers. But if laid out straight, it would be an estimated 15,000 kilometers long. To me that seems a lot. Especially as, on this day, I was only planning to cover a small proportion of it - about 5 kilometers, or 0.01 percent to be precise. This is a very, very tiny part geographically speaking. But a long, long way to my urban-acclimatised muscles.

I had heard strange stories of weird people that walked the whole length of the wall in intermittent stages, taking years, in some cases decades to realise their quest. And as I contemplated the immensity of this task, and the dedication and perseverance required to achieve such a dream, I couldn't help but ask myself the obvious question as to why they weren't locked up.

I didn't have decades at my disposal anyway, so I had to choose the location of my visit with care. This involved nothing more arduous than looking at my guidebook. Unfortunately, back then, I was still enough of a travel greenhorn to take a certain guidebook as my bible and, like a born-again Christian, was similarly uncritical and evangelical about it.

Now, The Book (and yes it was always referred to in Capital Letters), The Book said that it was a two dollar taxi ride, which takes about 10 minutes, but if you got the bus, which takes four hours, it would cost only about 25 cents. If you expressed any doubts about the recommendation and wished to wimp out and take the simpler, but more expensive route, you found yourself derided by other more 'experienced' travellers.

"Oh! I guess you could do it that way," one would patronisingly say. "If you want to do it the easy way," pause for the killer punch line, "like all the tourists."

And there you had it. There was no comeback. I couldn't bring myself to say what I really thought, "Yes! I do want to do it the easy way!" The one that doesn't involve pain and hardship. If I wanted pain, then I just needed to put Britney in my CD player. If I wanted hardship, I just needed to go into one of the public toilets and breathe deeply.

But I didn't want to reveal myself as the closet tourist that secretly I knew I was. I believed that I had to do this right. I had to go to the place that the travellers who'd vomited in some of the most unusual parts of the world would consider suitable.

This turned out to be a remote place called Huanghua, from where I could "Climb the Wild Wall" as The Book suggestively described it. I should have read the warning signs. If it had said something like, climb the easy, and NOT steep and crumbling wall, I would have had a less fraught, but nonetheless less dangerous experience.

So, it was a two-bus journey to the desolate, dusty mountainous land. Three hours later I arrived. I looked up, awestruck. The Great Wall (no argument over capital letters here) was silhouetted against the skyline as it followed the contours of the steep, mountainous ridges. The operative word here is steep.

Then I looked at a rather narrow path across a dam that was - to my eyes about the width of a credit card.

"I need to cross that?" I bewailed, before quailing further on spying the near vertical incline of the path up to the wall. You are sucking fitting me, I said to myself, or at least words that are somewhat similar.

I was hungry and apprehensive and so decided food would be required before embarking upon this adventure, as well as serving as a means of postponing it. I ordered a surprisingly tasty chicken dish, whilst a rather skinny cat sinuously wound itself around my legs. I never actually saw any chickens in this rather remote place. Come to think of it, after I ordered my meal I never saw that cat again.

My first hurdle, the dam, proved to be pretty easy. I was slightly concerned when I spotted an ancient peasant stepping onto the dam from the opposite side. He was carrying a huge bundle of twigs on his back that were about five times the width of the path. He looked a bit top-heavy to be on a path the width of a balance beam, so if push came to shove, so to speak, I felt that my lower centre of gravity would save the day. Well, save my day. But as I approached him, he expertly turned sideways, seemingly uncaring or oblivious to the three hundred foot drop just inches away from his feet. I gazed back at him and wondered what induced him to carry his own body weight in wood across that narrow path. Maybe he wanted to lend the scene some rustic charm.

On reaching the other side I looked up the "Somewhat steep incline" (there's that guidebook again. To me it looked somewhat vertical. If anything happened, I had to ensure my loved ones knew to avenge my death in the offices of the Lonely Planet, or at least write a stiffly worded letter of complaint.

I started clambering up, and up, and up. Occasionally, to relieve the excruciating pain, I'd stop, admire the view, and then throw up in the regularly spaced forts. Sometimes a rickety ladder would lead up to the ramparts. These ladders were of extremely dubious quality and, as I climbed, I was painfully aware that if one broke I'd be completely stuck. It was true that I did know a couple of words of Mandarin, but I couldn't imagine that standing on top of this desolate place shouting out "Thank You!" would precipitate a speedy rescue. I vowed to at least look up Mandarin for Help - if I should ever get the chance.

Yet as I stood on top of the ramparts, and as the wind whipped around me it seemed almost worth it. I felt a great sense of euphoria and freedom, no doubt brought on by the endorphins. This was quickly followed by a sense of dread as I spotted how steeply the path plunged down the other side. It was, if possible, steeper than the cliff face that I had just come up.

What remained of a very long four hours followed this pattern. Although I clambered up and down an estimated 5 km, it felt further than that. A lot further. Like distances-between-planets further.

I rounded one corner, and my heart almost stopped. The wall gave way completely to rubble. I stared in disbelief at the decidedly unstable looking sheer cliff that descended 6 feet in front of me. I had no option but to clamber down it. Heart racing, I inched very, very slowly downwards. Spying a couple below I cried out to them in the hope that they'd stay and give me moral strength or at least bear witness to my final demise.

Without their calming presence, I don't know how I would have conquered that hurdle. I repaid their aid by nearly killing them.

At one point a large boulder that was supporting me shifted alarmingly and I quickly moved my weight from it. Just in time. The boulder crashed down and caused a small rock avalanche. Ineffectively, I called "Look Out!" but the couple below didn't seem to realise their danger. With terror-filled fascination, I watched a small but nevertheless lethal rock bounce straight towards the pair. It missed them, but only just. As the girl moved her foot, the stone hurtled past the space that her leg had just occupied.

Maybe I'm just being paranoid but after that, for some reason, they were a bit unfriendly.

Obviously I made it down safely, albeit with an estimated metric ton of Great Wall dust clinging to my clothes. On the long exhausting journey back, despite being high on a potent combination of endorphins and adrenaline, I couldn't help but notice that the poor, but neatly turned-out locals looked at the state of my clothes with repugnance. You know things are bad when even the rural Chinese, who live a hard physical life but and - I can't really put this delicately - have a definite lack of access to sanitary facilities, don't want to sit next to you.

Still I had done it! I had truly climbed the Wild Wall (my own capitals there). And when other travellers spoke of their 'easy' trips to Simatai, I could now stare off into the distance as if remembering untold and traumatising perils, then look at them with that travel weary patronising air and say, "Really? I went to a really remote place." Pause for killer punch line, "Where the tourists don't go".

And to some, travellers, that's the holy grail.

Although, as I learned painfully through this dangerous, ill-advised, sojourn: if nobody goes, then there maybe a good reason. Oh. And to people who visited the wall in April 2002 in Huanghua, I'm truly sorry about the state of the forts. I hope someone cleaned it all up.

Feedback:
"This is a fantastic article written by a very funny person by the sounds of it - we want more!" Wendy Reid

"I just read (or I should say laughed-cried) my way through the article. I did so because I am visiting this next spring. The article is informative but better it is 'real life'." Natalina Sicilia

"I was just reading your article and I can totally relate. I just climbed that part of the great wall 3 days ago (19-20 Aug '03) and it is truly wild. We decided to sleep at the wall and it was amazing, but I will never ever go to that part of the wall again; it is so so steep and in a bad bad bad shape.... crazy crazy (as you know)!" Pia Gronbek