Travel and Taste with Sara & Ale
We can humbly say we have now seen a few countries in the world and are quite skilled in managing cultural differences and travel hiccups.
If you are like us and you are planning a trip to China on your own then don’t just skip this post.
There might be a few useful info even to the most experienced globetrotters.
China is an amazing country but definitively needs some pre-travel preparation, and not only to plan the best itinerary.
Discover our survival guide to China
We decided to visit the Zhangjiajie natural park in August, during low season in the course of our long trip in China. The temperatures were quite high and we do not recommend to do the same if you have the chance to plan for a different period of the year.
You should always check that you are not visiting in correspondence to a national Chinese holiday or you will end up walking around with hundreds of people pushing each other and taking selfies.
Expect always many people in the park, but this guide in 7 steps will put you in the condition to find yourself alone surrounded by magnificent nature.
Discover how to walk the Zhangjiajie park in China in 2 days avoiding the elevator, the cable Car and many tourists
China has been on our bucket list for a long time but, let’s be honest, it is such a huge country that needs proper time to visit.
That’s why until this gap year, we had never really found the perfect break to devote our yearly two weeks holiday to it.
So it’s not a surprise that, with more time for travelling, we have immediately signed up for it.
Plus, we managed to do that as part of the mythical Trans-Mongolian rail trip.
Discover how we chose our itinerary in China
I landed in Bali alone, Sara was back in Italy to spend some time with her family and I did not want to go all the way back and then again head for East. Being by myself could already have been one reason not to like Bali, but it is not what I will be talking about in this post.
I decided for a hotel in an area that could allow me to explore both South and North of the island and I opted for the area of Kuta towards Seminyak.
After landing, I paid the Visa On Arrival fee as I wanted to extend my stay for more than 30 days and then made my way out of the airport
Discover why I did not like Bali, at first
How many of you have at least once dreamt about travelling to a very remote country, one of those rarely visited?
Pretty sure most of you have, and how many of you had thought about Mongolia?
We included it as a quick stop on our way from Russia to China and in truth, most of the Mongolian tourists pass by via the Trans-Mongolian route. The question we have received many times after we mentioned Mongolia:
Is Mongolia worth a stop when travelling the Trans-Siberian?
It has always been Sara’s dream to travel to Russia and cross the (huge) country on board of a train. But planning it in the average 2 weeks’ holiday time you get off from work would have meant a massive rush.
And this is something that definitively does not go well with long train journeys. So the immediate thought that Sara had when starting to plan this sabbatical was to finally head off to St. Petersburg and start the adventure from there.
How we planned our trip on the Transiberian railway and what we discovered
