If you had a year in China, where would you go?
 

If you had a year to ride all over the China, where would you go? What roads you'd take? What landmarks would you like to see?

China
 

I had two months riding around in China on my own bike without a guide or agency .... had enough, was happy to leave and wont go back. Cant imagine spending a year riding around in China.



:mchappy: mika

Soo.. where did you go?

It's not really a direct response to your question, but the bits I saw in Western China back on my trip were Dali and Lijiang. Mostly internal tourist destinations, but still fairly interesting places. Took the overnight train from Kunming to Dali and a bus from Dali to Lijiang - my understanding is that they've since built a fast rail line out of Kunming to both of them.

If I had a motorcycle and the freedom to travel around? I guess Tibet would be the obvious choice, but also the karst areas in the center.

But yeah, out of all my Asia travels, China is the country I am least drawn to return to.

Assuming Tibet is not possible alone, I would cross West to East, starting in Xinjiang. Xinjiang is the only part of China I have seen in detail and it's absolutely magnificent, but I gather these days very hard to travel around. I don't think the southern road along the rim of the Taklamakan is open to foreigners, so would likely take the northern route.

I'd then figure some sort of loop taking in the southern part of Qinghai (which gets up onto the real Tibetan plateau without being in the Tibet 'SAR') and back up to follow the Hexi corridor and continue east along the Wall - Lanzhou, Xian to Beijing/Tianjin. Then probably up into Inner Mongolia and NE to Manchuria, looping around past the Korean border and down the coast a bit, maybe to Shanghai. Then west a bit to Yunnan/Sichuan and the other SW provinces, before ending the trip at the Laos border.

Where in Xinjiang would you go to? Any landmarks to suggest? I will be coming from Kazakhstan side, thx

Send me a DM to share contact info. Calling via FaceTime or whatsapp is easiest. I live in china and own a motorbike there. Probably I can give some first hand advise and I’m interested when you will come :)

I would follow the great wall from end to end. Ignoring the missing bits. Zhangjiajie National Forest Park and Tibet might be worth a detour.