Jet-lagged and visibly tired, I walk back to the hotel when the lights of Xidan Street display a festival of coloured neon lights, the city and I coming to rest for the night, much needed for the day planned ahead.
The morning starts at the smell of a buffet breakfast at the hotel. Two fellow crew members from the Philippines and Sri Lanka have gotten the same thought in mind and, once we hire a taxi for the day, we venture out of the metropolis and leave the concrete jungle to merge in small roads carved in a valley of round rocks and small villages.
The sign reads Mutianyu. A stone wall with a large explanation of the site is the starting point to the chairlift journey up the hill to a station about two-hundred meters above the car park.

Behold, The Great Wall. Stunned, I paralyze and squint at the horizon of hills in which this architectural jewel seem to never end.

     ‘Once up there, you lose your breath ,the place is stunning . The Great Wall is really a world wonder. It goes up and down like a dragon sliding through the Northern China mountains. Some parts are impossible to reach nowadays and the Great Wall’s length is over six thousand miles. Unbelievable stuff.’

A feat to built some two and a half millennia ago, a feat to climb today. The steep stone walls are a physical challenge that, once conquered, deliver not only a view of an unique monument, but also questions the size of the human being. Grand enough to build such monument to mankind despite the smallness of its physical form.

We return to the car park through a makeshift steel toboggan, the thrill of the three-minute ride long enough to create a lasting impression of this particular gate, before returning to the depths of the urban conglomerate an hour later.

The return flight departs on the same night. The colossal airport resting from the daily routine, its corridors only inhabited by loner duty-free staff trying their chances at the last flights of the day.
Flying West is longer, and in almost ten hours, we dash across Asia and touchdown in Doha before sunrise. Relieved that the journey is safe, tired from the hike up ‘the Wall’ and happy with the two compliment letters I receive from two Egyptian passengers connecting to Cairo, I retreat to my apartment where minutes later my mobile rings at the ping of a text message.

It is the Rostering department again. It is love. The schedule shows the rest of the day off to relax from the unexpected Chinese adventure and a flight to Milan tomorrow morning. Ciao for now.