Great Wall of China

Target Travel, Great Wall trek. If you are planning to be in the Far East, could Target Travel tempt you with this side trip? A year before Covid, China had instigated a ’Transit without Visa scheme’ to encourage visitors that wanted to stop on the way to another country, or on the way home. You are able to stay for 72 or 144 hours and without a visa. It’s pretty much hassle-free, you apply on arrival at Beijing Airport at a specific desk before immigration. Perfect if you fancy 2-3 days and this is easily done on your own, you don’t need a tour guide. One day to visit The Forbidden City or The Summer Palace in Beijing, then perhaps a day trip out to trek The Great Wall of China.

POST COVID- entry by Transit Without Visa (TWOV) and regular tourist visas are presently suspended, so the country is effectively closed to foreign tourists.

For The Great Wall, there are generally three main options, the first two are very busy and require you to accept a hard-sell style shopping stop in both directions, plus a (generally reviewed as ) crappy meal, both are just an hour away, the second has the bonus of a toboggan ride downhill. The alternative to these and what we recommend at Target Travel, the Great Wall trek to the Jinshanling Section. This is about three hours from Beijing, with no shops or meal stops. A much less visited place with some unrestored parts of the wall and requiring a proper trek, it less Disney and more authentic. However, you must Be prepared for the severity of the terrain. See the link below for my blog on the Target Travel, Great Wall trek.

Images- jinshanling section of The Great Wall of China

ADD HOT LINK, supplementary pages- AB Blog Great Wall of China, Sep 2019