Back in Beijing ...

On my last morning in Mongolia, I enjoyed a free breakfast at the Golden Gobi guesthouse before packing up and meeting my driver outside at 9:00AM. My next and final stop of this trip was Beijing, where I would be staying for two nights at a Holiday Inn near the Temple of Heaven.

My time in Beijing was cut short the first time around, so I was trying to see one or two more things that were on my list and the Temple of Heaven was one of them. The ticket gate stops selling tickets at 4:30PM and I thought I'd have enough time to get through the airport, taxi into the city and then walk over the Temple of Heaven.

Wrong. I forgot how massive and busy the Beijing Capital International Airport is. Also, with it being a weekend, the traffic getting into the city was insane. We were stopped on the highway for most of the journey. Time was ticking away as was my window for getting to see the Temple of Heaven. I made it to my hotel by 4:30PM. Sigh. I was having very little luck with sightseeing in Beijing.

Upon arrival at my hotel, I was starving and decided to treat myself to the buffet dinner along with an icy cold beer. It wasn't a terribly impressive buffet but there was enough of a selection that I found a few things I liked. Before arriving in Beijing, I had booked a driver with Mark's Guide and Driver Service online. After the quietness and remoteness of Mongolia, I didn't want to brave the crowds in Beijing. I had booked a driver to take me about 1.5 hours out of the city to the Longqing Gorge the following day.

The dragon escalator at the Longqing Gorge

I had read about the Longqing Gorge here before my travels and thought it would be fun and different! I mean, who wouldn't want to ride on escalators inside of a 258m long artificial dragon that sits on the side of a rock face?! While eating dinner that night, I looked again at the article and noted that it said as of August 2019, the escalator was no longer in use. I wanted to cry. I wasn't sure if I should cancel the driver the next day and find something else to do. I did want to get out of the city so I decided to go and make the best of it. Needless to say, I was a tad disappointed.

The driver picked me up the following morning at 8:00AM. It allowed me time to enjoy the free breakfast buffet before setting off for the day. The drive out of the city was lovely. I got to see many different parts of the Great Wall of China along the way. The driver spoke a little bit of English and we had a nice conversation switching back and forth between English and Mandarin.

When we reached the gorge, I had to buy a ticket for 5RMB to take a shuttle to the entrance of the gorge. The weather was fabulous, the air was clean and there seemed to be very few people around. I was pretty excited to be on this adventure! The entrance ticket was 140RMB and this included a boat ride through the gorge.

The Longqing Dam and the dragon escalator are almost the first thing you see when you go through the entrance gates. The head of the dragon was being refurbished but people were going inside. There didn't seem to be another way to get into the gorge so I went inside and much to my surprise, the escalators were running! Fabulous!

I giggled my way up the escalators, thrilled that they were working! I hopped on a boat which took us through the gorge. It was quite stunning! It being China, there was a lady with a loudspeaker telling us where to look and what to look at. She talked for the entire boat ride which was slightly annoying. We went through the gorge as far as we could go, did a u-turn and then got dropped off at another dock. There wasn't much to do there but walk through a not so great forest. One could rent small boats and row themselves through another part of the canyon but since I was alone, I didn't think it would be easy or fun.

The creaky cableway to the mountain top

I hopped on another boat which took me back to the start of the canyon. From there, one could pay 20RMB for a return trip up a tiny, creaky cableway. It was old and steep and I feared I wouldn't make it to the top.

Once on the top, one could walk to the right or left and take well marked stone trails along the top of the mountain. The views were stunning and due to the number of stairs, there were very few people at the top of the mountain. I was up there alone for quite some time and I used that time to rest and enjoy the silence and the beauty. I was quite happy with my decision of heading out of Beijing City for the day.

After a long rest, I slowly headed down hundreds of steps making my way back to the cableway. I took the cableway down and then found a tunnel that took me to the top of the dragon. It offered great views of the dragon escalator below. There were no signs to this place and it seems that the few tourists who were around missed this turnoff. The only reason I thought to find it was because I saw two people up there when I was coming back down the cableway.

I then backtracked to make my way through the 'Flowers Cave'. In the past one had to pay 10RMB to go through, but the price had been crossed off the board and it was now free. The cave was full of artificial flowers and animals and scenes. It was an odd place and definitely not worth paying any amount of money to see. It led people back to the main gates.

Rather than take the shuttle back, I decided to walk along the road for the 1.5KM walk back to the car park. I sent my driver a note to let him know I was on my way and he was near the shuttle area waiting for me. We got stuck in traffic on the way back and I arrived to my hotel around dinner time. I decided to have the dinner buffet in the hotel again and had an early night. I was scheduled on an 8:30AM flight the following morning back to Taipei and my hotel suggested that I be down at the front desk by 5:00AM to call a taxi. I hoped my flight would leave the airport on time! I was looking forward to getting back home to my cat and my apartment!