Overland Through China.To do or not to do.
 

Hello everybody out there,
We have just finish our route through China and used Navo Tours to do it.
I am putting our thoughts for all of you out there as a referendum.
We had taken the 21 days Nepal to Kyrgyzstan via Tibet on a group that we put together of 5 vehicles (two of them motorbikes) and we were 10 people all together.
Unfortunately we enter on the 25th of April the day of the big earthquake.
We were forced to evacuate the area with out our vehicle but for this part you can read on our site at Overland Diaries � Blog Archive � Chapter 24/Nepal (Earthquake Strikes!!!!).
I am hear to talk about the rest of our experience. For our bad luck our car came back crippled from its clutch (Border Army had fun the 9 days that they kept our cars) so we had to move it to the next city by truck.
Following that here is our point to consider before the tour.
Point 1 : The Chinese government is forcing you if you separate from your group to pay for an extra guide something that can cost up to 120 euro a day.
Point 2 : In the part of Tibet Navo was forced to use local guides. This are some local people with a slight knowledge of either Mandarin or English that can hardly assist you.
Point 3: The actual company that took care of our group in the Tibet part were unhelpful and avoid any responsibility although the critical of the moment we were going through .Also avoid to tell us about their real identity trying to hide behind Navo.
Point 4 : The route after exiting Tibet and for the following 10 days(scheduled in the tour) is just a drive through with no actual sites and therefore can be done in a much faster paste witch would reduce the cost dramatically.
Point 5 : Although Navo did their best the restrictions in comparison with the cost of that tour makes you wonder if it worths it.
-All in all and beside our bad luck through the earthquake in our opinion the specific crossing should be consider as a last option on the overland route from Europe to Asia and vice versa.

I would have to agree, although my experience was several years ago, in 2008. We had about 8 motorcycles, with guide cars front and back. We simply drove from city to city and could not even stop for pictures if the guide cars didn't stop.

Honestly, it was far from fun and not my idea of what motorcycling is all about.

China is a fascinating and beautiful country but I won't be back on a moto until theн remove the requirement to have guides.

Thanks for the heads up. As I'm currently preparing for traversing China next year by bike & am having trouble finding some co-travellers (Loas-Kryg Apr-May 2016) will now try to find an interesting alternative & air freight charges.

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