Hitchhiking the four corners of China – No more walls

If you hitchhike from Hong-Kong to Germany and consider yourself as „almost home“, something might be wrong. You are still hungry to hitchhike. And there is a month time to do what you want. So why not hitchhike the four corners of China then? Operation

I guess this will be my last mad route, before I get into more quiet regions. From Kyrgyzstan into Iran it is not far anymore. There is only the wonderful Pamyr Highway waiting for me, which I am looking forward to hitchhike through since a couple of years. And from Iran I should be able to get back to Germany in one week relaxed hitchhiking. So I chosed my points in China more randomly, than by purpose. I could have challenged me more, by picking the really remote shit, but we don’t need to overplay this, I guess. The route is exciting enough.

From Hong-Kong my first way will lead me into the Yunnan region to Deqen. This is on the footstep of the Himalayas and populated by the Tibetan minority. Not Tibet itself, cause there I would have needed a special permit. But it will be an awesome region anyway. I will stay there for around two nights.

Afterwards I face a bigger pieve of this route, once across China into the far north-east corner, near the Russian border. On the way up there I would like to cross the Sidu Bridge, which is with 472m the highest bridge in the world. My next control point will be the „Große Hinggan-Gebirge“ (don’t know the English name, sorry). To be honest, I have no fucking clue, what I will await me in this place. But there is a road leading towards it and Google says it exists. So let’s take this point. Looks like a small town.

Then back 6400 km into the other corner of China, the Xinjiang region. First I thought there would be a special permit needed, to enter there. But I read that you should just avoid to mention it in your visa application, if you want to go to Xinjiang. This might cause some troubles. But I have my visa already. From there I go back up to the kazachan border. I could enter Kyrgyzstan directly from her, but the borders are not always easy in this region, as I heard.

And this is my China expedition. I think I might take myself some time till the 1st of June to do this. Around four weeks, depends when I manage to start from Hong-Kong. At the moment I am still preparing my trip and I am also a little sick, which I wait to pass.. I am also renting a VPN for having full, uncensored internet connection in China. Also I get myself a prepaid card, so that I can register in Line and WeeChat, which is kind of a Chinese Whatsapp. The good thing is, that I will have an automatic translation and this will help me communicate with the Chinese people.

And my most important piece of equipment for this expedition is also ready. Mette gave me a letter in Chinese. This explains what I do: „Hey I am Stefan, I like to travel by hitchhiking, please don’t bring me to any bus stop, but just drop me along the highway, where I can find the next car….“ To avoid cultural misunderstandings. I also heard that China might be a really good place to blast through. Thats why I took the chance to make myself a route here.

I got to say, this idea with the four corners sounded really nice in the beginning. But once I did the calculation I thought: „Holy shit! So far.“ Especially if you consider, that the last part of my expedition isn’t even shown on the map (cause Google can not calculate through the Chinese borders). I am shooting up to Astana, all the way through Kazakhstan and back, before I take my last checkpoint in Almaty at the border to Kyrgyzstan and have some rest while doing my visa for central Asia. Another 2310 km, but we don’t want to nit-pick I guess.