We moved on to our next major sightseeing spot: The Great Wall of China! Since we didn’t want to make the detour to Beijing, we went to Xinzhou instead, which was right on our route. The first attraction was quite impressive… let’s just say tastes are individual.

After the massive stone structure, we caught this interesting little theatrical performance.

At first, we weren’t particularly impressed with our visit to the Great Wall because we couldn’t really see it—it was completely swallowed in fog.

Gradually, however, the fog began to recede.

And we really enjoyed walking along this restored section of the wall, talking about what life must have been like back then, marveling at how long the wall actually is, and reading up on its history. It’s a mind-blowing story.

The restoration work seems like a never-ending process.

We also took a short hike along the historic and restored merchants’ trail.

We made it to the other side of the scenic area, believing that a shuttle bus would take us back to our parking area as usual. But a very friendly local explained that there was no bus running there. So, we hiked all the way back to Rosinante.

On the way to our next destination, we tested what it’s like to spend a night at one of the expressway truck stops. It’s definitely not recommended with a pop-up camper!

A urinal that tests your urine automatically.

Century eggs in the supermarket.

A century egg out of its shell. I didn’t think the taste was too bad, but I certainly didn’t become a fan. Racki refused to try it.

We continued into the Wanxian Mountains for our first rock climbing session in China! As always, the Chinese expressways were stunning engineering feats—built seamlessly around and through the mountains.

And the rock formations looked incredible!

When we reached the climbing sector, I was a bit disappointed: we couldn’t park Rosinante near the crag and had to stay at a large, albeit beautiful, parking lot instead.

To actually reach the climbing area, we had to pay an entrance fee for the national park plus a shuttle bus ticket to get inside.

There were many Chinese visitors at the national park and parking area, and quite a few were very curious about us, asking where we were from and what we were up to.

We did our best to communicate using Google Translate, which worked remarkably well. We had heard from other travelers that locals in China might not respect personal privacy at all, but that wasn’t our experience at all. Everyone was extremely friendly, respectful, curious, and welcoming.

Right next to the parking lot was a small pond with a bit of trash floating in it. The locals didn’t seem to mind, bringing their fishing gear to enjoy a good time fishing, practicing Tai Chi, and playing bamboo flutes.

We paid the entrance and bus fees and headed into the national park.

The cliffs were absolutely spectacular!

Small roads wound their way through the national park.

There were plenty of attractions along the way, such as these massive, highly artificial, but extremely safe-looking water slides.

After some searching, we finally located our first Chinese climbing crag!

Climbing! We enjoyed it a lot. See details about the Wanxian Mountains climbing area on thecrag.com.

Yet, it felt both strange and a bit disappointing. The area seemed to have been very popular in the past, but didn’t look frequently climbed anymore. We did several routes in the sector we found, but discovered two other sectors were completely inaccessible due to landslides. On the approach to the last sector we wanted to try, we decided to turn around because it was getting late and we didn’t have a machete to clear the overgrown path.

Still, we thoroughly enjoyed the climbing and wore our custom-printed t-shirts: Climber’s Life for Racki, and From Another Point of View for me.

After a day of climbing, we left the parking lot and headed south to try the next climbing spot. Along the way, it was time to give Rosinante an engine oil change. Other overlanders had warned us that certain maintenance tasks can be tricky in China because mechanics aren’t accustomed to diesel passenger vehicles—they know diesel trucks well, but diesel cars, not so much. At the first shop, the staff were visibly relieved when we left after they did not manage to find an appropriate oil for Rosinante in their software database (even though we tried pointing out that one of their oils met our specs).

The second garage didn’t rely on software to select oil, but only stocked unknown local brands.

The third garage, however, had a good oil. It was a lovely, family-run shop, and we had a great time with them.

We also inspected one of ours tyres because it had gone flat after parking Rosinante at the national park for a few days. Fortunately, the tyre checked out completely fine, no punctures or holes found…

Our border crossing from Kazakhstan to Russia at the small town called Mikhailovka went very well. We had to unpack a lot of boxes and stuff from Rosinante, but the border officers let us do it together and so it was an easy thing to do. And the officers really checked the stuff we unpacked and it didn’t feel like a useless action like it had before on other borders.

The officers were a pretty young team of women and men and even though they couldn’t speak English or German the communication went very well with Google Translate. We had a short and friendly interrogation and had to fill out a form with information about our family and stay in Russia, and our phones got briefly checked and our IMEIs were saved.

After about three hours we were in Russia and happy about the nice crossing.

On the Russian side, we went to the first climbing spot at the east shore of the lake Kolyvanskoye Ozero. You can see details in the allclimb mobile apps.

When we arrived at the location, we were first a bit disappointed because the whole area was fenced and the main gate closed. But while searching for a camp spot in front of the gated area, we met a very friendly Russian couple who opened the gate for us, called the owner of the area (which was a children’s camp), and got us permission to stay for a couple of days.

Our camp spot was beautiful and just next to the climbing routes.

The routes were all in very good condition and on limestone crags which were spread over the area. It looked very nice.

We got quickly into climbing on these crags even though the Russian difficulty ratings were, as always, very optimistic, and in the shade the rock was sometimes too cold to touch for a longer climb.

During our stay, we met a climber couple from Russia who drove about four hours from their home town to stay for a couple of days in that climbing area to camp.

There were very interesting routes. Some felt a bit like tufa climbing in Thailand and Malaysia. On two routes I was suffering a lot. Especially one pushed me past my mental limit. I couldn’t say why exactly, but at one moment in the route, I just got very stressed and angry. But I survived, and Racki and I did very good climbing.

We continued our transit through Russia and went in the direction of a town called Belokuricha. In the town, we went for groceries which was interesting: they had all the western brands in the supermarkets. A lot of special stuff. We thought that it wouldn’t be like that. Paying was only possible in Rubles, which we had organized in Kazakhstan. The locals we met were very friendly and some were interested in what we were about to do in Russia.

In the town, we met again with Merel and Leon, our climbing friends from the Netherlands.

The climbing crags were located in a very beautiful and dense forest. It was a very nice and natural place.

The patterns on the rocks were amazing!

And we all had a good time climbing, with some frustrations and panic attacks and lots of joy.

The mosquitoes were crazy and the only things protecting us were mosquito repellent from Thailand and smoke.

Merel and Leon left after one day and Racki and I continued climbing for some more days. This route was my favorite one. I was not so used to climbing slabs, especially not slabs of this level, but I managed to do this route without a break even though it was very hard and I had to make use of the smallest steps or “enough-things” as we call them, that I had ever used. “Enough-things” is a combination of “nothing” and “enough” and should be part of the official climber’s dictionary.

And we celebrated our BenDy (BENni + cinDY) anniversary with drinks and a nice view.

We met a cute little friend in the woods and off we went in the direction of the border to Mongolia.

On the way to the border, we did only one more proper stop at a sightseeing spot called Mars.

The weather was changing a lot and the rocks looked interesting.

Everything was prepared in the style of old spaceships and planet Mars expeditions.

We took my little astronaut friend Astrid with us for some photos.

She’s a climber as well.

And likes to chill.

At this Mars place, we met Tanja and Marcel for the first time in real life after Racki had already been messaging with them for weeks about traveling and our China trip, of which we would do the entry border crossing together as an agency-guided group. They were nice and we already shared some nice stories about life and traveling.