How to organize your own trip to China

07 august 2018 • Travel time: with 30 April 2018 on 12 May 2018

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China alone

Traveler welcome! If you are reading this story, then perhaps you are preparing to embark on an unforgettable and grandiose journey. Here is some technical information about how we prepared. Dasha and I hope this will make your preparation a little easier. The story of the trip itself can be read here.

Install on phone and tablet:

Microsoft Translator. First, download Russian, Simplified Chinese and English offline.

Maps. me map with pre-downloaded cities in China.

Download in high resolution the current version of the metro map of the desired cities. It's not a program, it's just a picture. The map should have both Chinese and English station names.

Save offline the pages of the Chinese railway site with the desired dates and trains.

Save offline stories of bloggers describing how to get to places of interest.

We used Skype to communicate with relatives. It worked in full.

Install various VPN applications.

More things to do:

Be sure to print out hotel booking confirmations in paper form in Chinese and Russian. We pre-mark the hotels themselves on maps. me. In hotel confirmations, we check that there is no note that the hotel does not have the right to accommodate foreign tourists.

If your bank has partner banks, then find out their names and put partner ATMs on the map. If ATMs are located far from attractions or not near metro stations, then you can not apply. It will be cheaper for the nerves to withdraw money with a commission at other ATMs.

City names from the itinerary must be printed in Chinese. Printed titles will help when buying tickets.

Which won't work:

All Google services. Search engine, online and offline map. Play Market, etc. In cached areas, the Google map will have a very large GPS error.

Pictures and files by viber.

Visa

The visa was obtained independently in Kyiv. Embassy website here. The package of documents for a visa is simple. But for filing and receiving, I had to stand in line 3 times for 3 hours from 07:00.

Trains

Tickets for the first day were bought in advance on the site here, in our case, this site had the most low commission.

Then, in order not to pay a commission, the rest of the tickets were bought at the Beijing box office for all cities at once. See the timetable and train numbers here

Aircraft

Tickets for domestic flights were bought here 1.5 months before the trip. If it is more convenient to pay in rubles, then you can buy on the mirror version of the site here

Route

Day 1. Beijing.

01:30 Arrival in Beijing. Visit to the Temple of Heaven. Visit the walking street that starts from Zhengyang Bridge ?? ?

Day 2. Beijing.

07:00 - 16:00 Visit the Great Wall of China in mutianyu. Here well described how to get there Climbing the wall on the lift or on foot, we go down on the bobsleigh.

18:30 – 09:00 In the evening we take the night train to Xi'an

Day 3. Xi'an.

11:00 - 18:00 Watching the city. Bell tower with a concert (repeated often). Drum Tower and surroundings, Big Wild Goose Pagoda.

18:00 – 22:00 watching Tang Paradise

Day 4. Huashan

07:20 - 07:50 we go by train to Huashan. There, a taxi driver catches you and takes you to the ticket office of the park. From the ticket office we go by bus to the entrance

09:00 - 17:00 we go up on the cable car, climb the peaks of the mountains. We visit the trail of death. The queue to the death trail took 3 hours (Perhaps you should go there in the first place, then the queue can be shorter). We go down on the cable car.

18:50 - 19:30 return by train to Xi'an

19:30 We walk in the city. We walk along the Xi'an city wall.

Day 5. Terracotta Army

10:00 – 11:30 By bus to the neighboring town to the Terracotta Army Museum.

11:30 – 13:30 We watch the Terracotta Army and walk along the neighboring tourist street

14:00 – 15:30 Return by bus to Xi'an

21:45 - 23:10 Flight to Xi'an (XIY) - Zhangjiajie (DYG) ($258 for two people one way)

Day 6. Tianmen and Fenghuang

07:00 Ascent by cable car to Mount Tianmen. We had heavy fog. I had to go down

10:00 Descent from the mountain. If there is no fog, then you can walk there much longer

12:30 - 15:30 By bus to Fenghuang.

Buses Zhangjiajie - Fenghuang departed at 08:30.09:30.12:30.14:30.15:30.17:20. Schedule for 05.05. 2018

16:30 – 00:00 Walk around the old town of Fenghuang

Day 7. Yellow Dragon Cave

08:00 – 13:00 Bus to Wulingyuan

13:30 – 14:00 Taxi to Yellow Dragon Cave. You can also take the bus, it won't take much longer.

14:00 – 15:30 We walk through the cave and ride a motor boat on the underground river.

16:00 – 16:30 Taxi to Wulingyuan. We check in as close as possible to the east entrance of Zhangjiajie Park, it is a 15-minute walk from Wulingyuan Bus Station.

16:30 – 00:00 Free time. Gaining strength in front of the park.

Day 8 Zhangjiajie National Park

The entrance ticket to the park is valid for 4 days. Buses to the entrances are included in the price.

05:30 Get up.

06:00 – 17:00 We make the first route through the Park

Day 9. Zhangjiajie National Park

05:30 Get up.

06:00 – 10:00 We make the second route in the Park

10:00 - 10:40 Walking descent to the Golden Whip River

10:40 – 15:00 Walking route along the Golden Whip River and back (9 km). Along the route, we had a climb on one of the cable cars, to the rocks that are not connected by the standard route, but we didn’t see anything new.

21:25 - 23:30 Flight Zhangjiajie (DYG) - Shanghai (PVG) 23:30 ($248 for two people one way). Our hotel was near People Square. There is a night bus stop from the airport.

Day 10 - 11. Shanghai

I advise you to exclude this city from the itinerary, or reduce it to one day.

Day 12. Shanghai

18:00 - 22:30 High-speed train Shanghai - Beijing (345 km/h).

Day 13. Beijing

10:30 – 16:00 Summer Palace

17:00 – 21:30 Walk along the main street

Trip Information

Date of travel: 30.04. 2018 – 12.05. 2018

Duration: 13 full days

Flights: UIA + China Eastern Airlines

Hotels: Booking + on site

Excursions: All by yourself

Trip difficulty: 10/10 (most difficult)

Translated automatically from Russian. View original