Taking a year off to hitchhike across Eurasia?

Its not that uncommon. Its good to be in a position where you don't have to worry about paying off loans or saving money for future expenses. As long as your parents can be your financial safety net, it sounds like a great experience.

If you actually hitchhike everywhere you go and camp/couchsurf, you can do it with a budget of 10euros per day. It is well worth it.

I traveled from Korea to England in 2009 by land. I flew from Korea to Shanghai, traveled across China for about a month, went from China to Central Asia for about a week.

The way out of Central Asia is tricky. I could've gone to Europe via Pakistan, Iran and then Turkey. This wasn't appealing for obvious reasons.

Or, I could've gone through Kazakhstan to Russia and then Eastern Europe. I didn't do this because I'm not white and didn't feel safe going all the way across Russia by myself.

A third option was to go through Central Asia to Turkey, but that requires going through Turkmenistan, which is essentially impossible for visa reasons.

I flew from Central Asia to Turkey and then spent another month traveling northwest across Europe.

This was a fantastic experience. The European part was a bit anticlimactic. The best part was traveling across western China, which is very rural and very remote, and then crossing into Central Asia. You get a great sense for how big the world is and how little of it is made up of places that we know (eg China is a lot more than Beijing, Shanghai or Tibet).

ming ding xiong wrote:

I traveled from Korea to England in 2009 by land. I flew from Korea to Shanghai,

I flew from Central Asia to Turkey and then spent another month traveling northwest across Europe.

So when you said "by land", you meant by air?

Two flights against about ten days of ground travel?

Do it. You won't regret it. Just be really really careful.

In 1968-9 I left my job in London, got on my motorcycle, and went out to India overland - Through Greece, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and around India - Nepal, Assam.....You couldn't and shouldn't try that route now, of course, but Central Asia is a whole lot more accessible now than it was then.

I had some good luck and some close calls, but all in all the difficulties of the route and the travel were over-rated, and it was a great adventure.

Coming back I went by ship from Karachi to Saudi Arabia, then across North Africa to Morocco, Spain, Portugal, France and back to England.

Trip of a lifetime, and I never even had a flat tire.

Thanks for the posts. The trip is far from concrete still, but it's likely if we do go, my fiance will be coming as well. I was wondering how safe a woman is traveling across the Eurasia. I am pretty muscular for a runner, but my teammate is skin and bones and probably wouldn't be much help in a fight, and I've heard stories that make a pretty uneasy about traveling with a woman. Would she be safe with me? If we do go, would it be a good or bad idea to carry a concealed knife (I would never use it unless I had to).

thanks again

ming ding xiong, that's a great trip and congratulations on having the courage to do it, but "by land" means just that. Even if you do one flight a trip is not "by land."

It doesn't diminish your trip, I've talked to people who have stuck to hard to the "by land" ethos to the detriment of their travel.

Can I come? I promise not to murder you and steal your money.

Also, traveling outside of the European Union is really tough because you need visas. You basically have to hire a lawyer to get a visa to go into Russia and even then you will have to pay a lot of bribes.

well yeah... wrote:

ming ding xiong, that's a great trip and congratulations on having the courage to do it, but "by land" means just that. Even if you do one flight a trip is not "by land."

It doesn't diminish your trip, I've talked to people who have stuck to hard to the "by land" ethos to the detriment of their travel.

You're right, but saying "I'm going from Korea to England" made it seem like I was just flying. I did use the phrase "mostly by land" when regaling unsuspecting people sharing a dorm with my life story.

I did meet people in the summer of 2009 near the Chinese-Pakistan border who were coming from Pakistan. I can't say enough amazing things about Kashgar, which Lonely Planet described as "globalized before globalized was a word".

About two-thirds of the amazing people I met in Kashgar, some went west to Kyrgyzstan like myself, and a couple were actually coming from Pakistan.

I thought that was stunning considering that I AM Pakistani and they were white. I would never travel through rural Pakistan, but they did, although one of them was just a visa technicality short of visiting Afghanistan. That was something I didn't have the guts for.

Tajikistan is also a great place to visit as you cross Eurasia. It has immense rugged beauty, but sadly is as poor as it is beautiful.

To the original poster, a female traveling with a male has nothing to worry about assuming sensible precautions.

I met quite a few Japanese girls traveling solo over the Silk Road in China and then Kyrgyzstan, with plans for places like Uzbekistan, Tajikistan or Mongolia.

I met a French woman who had traveled across southern India (different in many ways from northern India) without much problem, given that she dressed to blend in.

Traveling alone across China can be problematic in some ways, particularly in rural areas where being female can compound the problems of opportunistic scammers. A classic example is that of Chinese taxi drivers, who claim that the meter doesn't work and inflate prices. As a female, it might be weirder still.

Within Europe there's really nothing to worry about. I don't know too much about Russia, but a (presumably) white woman has nothing to worry about if traveling with another white man.

Arranging visas can be annoying, but really not that hard for most reasonable countries. Russia is tricky, but most problems with visas are the result of time and location (eg waiting for a Kazakh visa in a provincial Chinese city, worrying about your Chinese visa running out). Doing this in America is a lifesaver.