| China expert tips... | |
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| Nov 25, 2007 11:59 |   |
| guest19177 | Hi, I am looking to travel to China summer 2008 for about 2 months. My places of interests are the Shanghai-Nanjing area, the silk road and the special chinese mountains. Is it realistic to plan a route that passes by Shanghai-Hengzhou-Nanjing-Keifeng-Shaolin-Xian-Lanzhou-Dunhuang-Turpan-Urumqi-Kashgar for about 2 months? What are the must see/do/eat/climb...on this route? Special tips at any of these areas? |
| Nov 30, 2007 03:20 | #1 |
 | oh.. i am so sorry to say that i can not give you any idea about because i have never been to china. |
| Nov 30, 2007 11:47 | #2 |
| Assuming you haven't change your plans and now want to go to Italy I will start the ball rolling - though I am surprised there haven't been others with more expertise post something by now. Your itinery sounds fine, but you didn't say how u plan to travel. Generally, I think you should do a bit more research first and then ask for info to fill in the gaps. You could start with Lonely Planet and abundant info you can get doing a web search - I have come across several that provide 'must see' suggestions. On your route I can offer some suggestions for Shaolin and Xi'an if you can provide more info . |
| Dec 3, 2007 03:05 | #3 |
| In two months you can do that. Research the places (a good start is to use the china guide section of this site) and plan out your itinerary, and you will come up with specific questions |
| Dec 6, 2007 01:02 | #4 |
| As an outline this looks fine and is definitely do-able in 2 months. The others have given the best advice, you need to refine your ideas about the places, how long you want to spend where etc and how you will be travelling from place to place. There's a lot of information on this site about the places you are going to. I've climbed lots of mountains in China, but your route misses most of them. So I can't help much. Yellow Mountain is the nearest "sacred" mountain to Hangzhou but you'd need a good few days "out" of Hangzhou to climb it. Around Hangzhou... well, it really depends on what you like doing ? Must sees are West Lake (but then it's hard to miss it if you're in Hangzhou). I'd recommend a visit to one of the tea villages there (I've written a review of this on TCG under Hangzhou). There are also many towers and pagodas and gardens etc. Anji County is close to Hangzhou and really beautiful. A place not many other "foreign" tourists go to, but I love it. Again i've written about it on this site. But if you don't like bamboo and natural scenery then it's not for you. There's a tiny water town called Wuzhen that is fabulous... tiny ancient town of canal-filled streets. Worth a day trip from Hangzhou to check out. Also there's Suzhou, worth popping into this city on your way from Hangzhou to Nanjing I'd say. Hope this gives you a few ideas. |
| Dec 16, 2007 19:01 | #5 |
| GUEST19177 | Thanks to all that responded. I first simply wanted an idea if the route was possible in a little more than 2 months, especially considering the long distances of the silk road. Obviously, there are plenty of tours that do it in 2 weeks, but I'm not really interested in taking pictures from my bus window. So now, I do have some specific questions about this plan... Back to the the silk road, I would really like to do the loop that takes the northern route to Kashgar and then south and back through the desert. But is it really worth it for so much distances? The mountains...I am planning on doing Huang Shan, Tai Shan, Hua Shan and possibly Wutai Shan. Any comments, suggestions or tips about that? And I would like to visit Shaoling as well, although I am feeling the touristic trap... |
| Dec 16, 2007 19:05 | #6 |
| GUEST19177 | As the my means of transportation, I am mostly shooting for the buses and trains considering there lower prices. But I am not throwing out the options of a few flights, especially a flight from Urumqi to Beijing towards the end. |
| Dec 20, 2007 21:35 | #7 |
| Choice of mountains is fine. The north+south loop for the Silk Road (only the Xinjiang portion) would take you roughly 2 weeks to do at a reasonable pace. Add in another week if you want to see Dunhuang, Jiayuguan and Xi'an as well. |
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