Here comes a blog post after a long break!
I always wanted to travel outside India and finally got a chance to travel with my husband when he had to head to Beijing for official work for a week.
Our journey started with lot of excitement of visiting a new foreign place, we were surprised to get welcomed by the unexpected cold breeze outside the airport.
Our room was booked in Hotel Crown Plaza, very well maintained hotel with very nice and spacious room.
On the first day my husband headed towards client location for work and I spent my time inside room browsing all the tourist places and subway routes to each place and marking in the tourist map to make it easy for us to visit the places.
I wanted to make good use of our stay so went outside alone the next day, roamed around in Hutong (Hutongs are a type of narrow streets or alleys, commonly associated with northern Chinese cities) and had lunch in a Chinese Vegetarian restaurant Xuxiang zhai.
My husband joined me after his work and we visited Yonghegong Lama Temple, Buddhist temple and monastery. Here they gave us a bunch of incense sticks for free to light it in a small chamber outside the temple hall and pray. Temple is very beautifully built, you will have to walk and pass through couple of halls where you can see various forms of Buddha statues. We were blessed by one of the lama and he gave us Apples(he didn’t give it to anyone else around ;)). Another lama was speaking to me in Chinese and broken English and wanted to know name of Buddha in India. I said Siddhartha but he said Shakyamuni which I didn’t know 😦 (I learnt it now :P)
One of the lama in Yonghegong Lama temple
Our hotel recommended a vegetarian restaurant Tian Chu Miao Xiang and we tried to go there via subway, after talking to few Chinese guys to know about the address, one of the guy helped by walking with us till restaurant as he couldn’t converse well in English. Food was really good and tasty.
Next in the list was Tiananmen square, Forbidden city and Jingshan Park.
Near the entrance of Tiananmen sqaure, we saw couple of soldiers doing march fast. We entered the beautiful Chinese imperial palace, we walked through each buildings which was used by the emperors of Ming dynasty in Beijing. Long walk through 100’s of halls leads to the end where we can see tower of Jingshan park from where we can get the entire view of forbidden city.
Beautiful architecture in Forbidden city
Very important to be careful about some scams which happens here like tea ceremony scam(art students, rickshaw scams) where some students talk very friendly and ask you to have some special teas for which you may end up paying lot of money.
From Jingshan park, we got nice view of forbidden city but because of the harsh light we couldn’t click much pictures and we could sight Stupa at the other side and headed towards that place.
View of Forbidden city from Jingshan park
The park was huge with many trees, frozen river, different type of stone structures, temples. White Pagoda(Stupa) is built inside Beihai park. It was less crowded, and we got awesome sunset view.
White Pagoda
Sunset view from Beihai Park
Top on the list was visiting Great wall of China. One of the nearest one was Badaling Great wall. After some research we decided to take public transport instead of taxi as they were charging hefty amount of 400+RMB. We had to go to Deshengmen Tower from where we could get direct buses to Badaling great wall(12RMB per person). After 90mins of journey, we reached the place and decided to hike. Badaling is 7,600 meters (4.7 miles) long. There were around 12 watch towers which we will come across in Badaling great wall. Some places were too steep to climb or slippery while getting down. With some breaks we could reach the top and get down from another direction. We got picturesque view of surrounding hills and got to see great wall stretched to long distances. We were astonished by the difficulty taken to built the great wall.
Couple hiking down the Great wall of China
After the tiring hiking trip to Great wall, next day’s plan was to visit Temple of heaven, also known as Tiantan park where mostly locals spend their time very early in the morning playing games in groups, exercising. We entered from east gate side. There are multiple religious buildings and long pathway to the temple. You will come across different halls where emperors used to pray for good harvest and rain, couple of museums showing the vessels used, photos of the Ming dynasty emperors, architectural details.
Temple of heaven
There is a echo wall , but we couldn’t hear any echoes 😛
There is a circular mound altar which is concentric circle of marble stones, emperors used to stand at the centre and pray for favorable weather. We reached the South gate exit.
Kids playing around Imperial vault of heaven
Many of the local old people spend time playing and chatting in Tiantan park
We shopped liked crazy at zoo market and Yashow market, got lot of jackets, sweaters, bags for much cheaper price.
We had to miss Summer palace due to time constraint but nevertheless we could cover many of the places possible and had a great time learning couple of Chinese words, being like a local roaming in subway, bargaining in markets, trying Chinese vegetarian foods.
It was a lovely experience and I recommend these places to everyone who plan to visit China 🙂
Life 