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‘All armies prefer high ground to low.”

So wrote Sun Tzu in The Art of War, and as the sun slips beneath the rugged hills north of Beijing I can see why. After nearly two hours of rigorous uphill hiking, I'm stretched out on a mat with two friends on the overgrown roof of a crumbling Ming dynasty watchtower – our home for the night – trying to imagine a passing Mongol army. We sip a tall can each of Stella Artois and admire the darkened silhouettes of the surrounding hills. We count nine watchtowers on their peaks.

There's a light breeze and thunderclouds loom. An almost eerie calm. Village lights are scattered in the valley below, but there's no sign of Beijing and its 17 million inhabitants. On this hill, on this stretch of the wall, there's just the three of us.

As night falls on the Great Wall of China, a thought creeps into my head: The life of a watchman must have been seriously lonely.

This, in fact, is the isolation we've come for. We're at a section of wall called Gubeikou, about two hours north of Beijing, where we plan to camp for the night and hike to three more watchtowers in the morning. With me are Carey Nourse, 32, and Dave Young, 41, Canadian teachers at an international school who have lived in Beijing for six and three years respectively. Each has put camping on the Great Wall on his to-do list before bidding farewell to the Chinese capital.

We've come in part to find a personal connection to what is sometimes called the world's largest museum, a feat of human ingenuity built over 2,000 years and covering more than 6,700 kilometres of varying terrain from the Yellow Sea to the deserts of western China. It was guarded by more than one million men, and several million people are thought to have died building it.

Unfortunately, the most popular areas – Badaling, Simitai and Mutianyu – are often overrun with tourists and hawkers. The wall kept out Barbarian hordes, but was futile against Chinese kitsch. Some sections include zip lines, slides and gondolas, and in recent years the wall has played host to wine tastings, fashion shows and raves. These restored sections have been reconstructed with little care for historical accuracy.

Hiking and camping on the Wild Wall – the unrestored sections, often overgrown and in ruins – is the best way to experience the wall's true majesty. There are over 600 kilometres of wall north of Beijing, and much more in neighbouring Hebei province, and it's remarkably easy to find a section to yourself. In fact, the wall's mysteries are still being revealed: A 290-kilometre section was recently discovered during a two-year mapping study.

Although the Beijing municipality enacted regulations in 2003 to dissuade people from walking on portions of the wall not designated as tourist areas, the rules are vague and scarcely enforced, and Hebei province has none. Dozens of tour companies offer multiday hiking and camping trips on the wall.

We meet on a Friday afternoon in the outskirts of Beijing and begin the two-hour drive to Gubeikou in Dave's small hatchback. We've got our packs, sleeping bags and mats, and enough food and water to make it through the night and the next day. The section of wall where we plan to stay is on a ranch belonging to Lohao City, a chain of organic grocery stores. The ranch caters to day trippers, and tomorrow we'll be fed a multicourse organic lunch after our hike.

Upon arrival (and after getting hopelessly lost on the back roads outside Beijing), we're greeted by Mr. Li, a ranch hand who gives us just two instructions: “Don't smoke. Don't make a fire.”

Done and done.

We gather our supplies for the night into our packs, and Mr. Li takes us on a short golf-cart ride to the tree line, where we begin our hike. The walk up is no joke. After an hour we're drenched in sweat and stop for a water break before the steep climb to the first watchtower, where we'll sleep.

“This is the hard part,” says Dave, who has taken students camping at the ranch – but not on the wall –for the past two summers. To make matters worse, Carey is hiking with a dislocated elbow, so he can't use both hands to grab the tree branches crucial for balance on the trail.

“I forgot my Percocets,” he laments.

Elbow be damned, Carey is first to make it up the hill. Just beyond the trees is the first watchtower, standing about 20 feet high by 20 feet wide. Inside, bricks and debris are scattered on the floor. We climb a crumbled staircase to the roof, overgrown with lilac bushes and small trees. Towers such as this one, once manned by roughly a dozen men armed with bows, crossbows and, later, cannons, were used primarily as part of a warning system. A mixture of wolf dung, sulphur and potassium nitrate was burned to produce a smoke signal that would alert adjacent towers of an impending threat.

We wonder what it would have been like to spot Mongol cavalry encroaching in the night, and what the Ming sentries would have done to pass the agonizing winter months.

“Let's start a fire and see how long it takes for drums to beat in the Forbidden City,” Dave jokes. “You guys hungry?”

We eat a dinner of sliced vegetables, baguettes, hummus and spinach dip, and once we're stuffed we climb back inside and begin removing bricks to make our beds.

Sleeping – or trying to sleep – in a dilapidated watchtower is not easy. As if sleeping on a bed of rubble isn't enough, around midnight a thunderstorm hits and a vicious wind blows rain through every opening. We're soaked. After scrambling to find a dry spot I eventually give up, throw a T-shirt over my head and fall into a restless sleep.

We wake to a crisp, sunny morning and a spectacular view of the surrounding hills. After a breakfast of bagels, fruit, cream cheese and cans of coffee, we leave our packs at the first tower and set off on the uphill hike toward the other three.

At our section of Great Wall there is actually very little wall. The hills are too steep and ridges too sharp for the type of construction you see at the more famous sections. There are traces of bricks and, at the bottom of the first hill, a gate that we're told was once used as a border crossing between two counties. But for the most part we're hiking a muddy trail. Some points are completely overgrown with trees, and we are forced to crawl on hands and knees through the muck. “This is a trail for hobbits,” Dave groans.

The watchtowers, however, make the hike worthwhile. Each tower seems to be in better condition than the one before it, and at every stop we are blissfully alone looking out onto empty hills. It's just us, the birds and the towers.

The fourth watchtower is the highest, largest and best preserved. We climb the staircase to the roof, which smells of lilac, and count 15 watchtowers on the hilltops to the north and south. The sun shines through scattered clouds and we watch hawks gliding in the wind above.

I ask Carey and Dave how they feel after finally spending a night in a 500-year-old watchtower, something they'd talked about since arriving in Beijing but never got around to.

“Makes me wish I'd done it earlier,” Carey says. “It's more than just a check mark off the list, that's for sure.”

“A big check mark,” Dave says.

* * *

Pack your bags

GETTING THERE
Air Canada offers direct flights from Toronto and Vancouver to Beijing, and Air China flies direct from Vancouver. Trips to the Great Wall can be arranged at any hotel in the city. Round-trip taxi fare to major sections is about $75. A 10-kilometre stretch between Jinshanling and Simatai is a popular area for hiking, and Huanghuacheng also has sections of well-preserved Wild Wall.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED
Bring enough food and bottled water (don't substitute tap water) to last the duration of your stay, unless you plan on stopping at a local village. Western groceries are available at Jenny Lou's (6 Sanlitun Bei Xiao Jie, Chaoyang District) or one of the many Carrefour stores around town, although an ordinary Chinese supermarket should do the trick. Remember to bring toilet paper.

WHERE TO STAY
Kempinski's Commune by the Great Wall Shuiguan, Badaling Highway; 86 (10) 8118 1888; www.communebythegreatwall.com/en. Features 42 classy villas designed by 12 Asian architects, four restaurants, a spa, kid's club and outdoor pool.
Red Capital Ranch No.28 Xiaguandi Village, Yanxi Township, Huairou District; 86 (10) 8401 8886; www.redcapitalclub.com.cn. A hunting lodge-turned-eco retreat, featuring rustic cabins with a view of the Wild Wall. Delicious, if overpriced, Manchurian cuisine.

WHAT TO DO
Dozens of tour companies offer camping and hiking at the wall.
Backcountry Beijing www.backcountrybeijing.com. Run by a couple of young Canadians; offers camping expeditions starting at $100.
Mountain Biking Asia www.mountainbikingasia.com. Leads a five-day, 40-kilometre trek in Hebei province (from $2,175).
China Adventure Tours www.cnadventure.com. Leads hikes from one to 24 days ($80 to more than $3,400 a person).

MORE INFORMATION
International Friends of the Great Wall www.friendsofgreatwall.org/english. Has regulations and preservation information.