A China itinerary of any length is mostly a sequence of joins. Chengdu to a Sichuan trailhead. Kunming to a Yunnan valley. Xining to the train that climbs onto the plateau. Each join is a half-day to a full day, and each one has a failure mode — a sold-out train, an airport two hours from the city, a driver who cannot enter the valley you want.
None of this is difficult once you know the order of decisions. It is only difficult when the transport is treated as an afterthought to the walking.
Three ways to move.
Roughly, the country divides into three tools. Trains for the trunk routes between major cities, where the high-speed network is fast, punctual and comfortable. Flights for the long diagonal hops and for anywhere the railway has not reached. Private cars and drivers for the last 50 to 300 kilometres, which is usually where the interesting parts of a trip begin.
- Under about 1,200 km, a high-speed train usually beats flying once you count the airport transfer at both ends.
- Over about 2,000 km, or any route without a direct fast train, fly.
- The last stretch to a trailhead, a village or a permit checkpoint is almost always a car.
The railway, honestly.
China's high-speed network is the best long-distance transport in the country and, for most travellers, the least familiar to book. The official channel is 12306, which now has an English mode and accepts foreign passports. Registering is the only fiddly part: you enter your name exactly as printed in the passport, and the identity check either clears automatically or drops into manual review, which published guidance puts at three to five working days and sometimes longer at busy periods. You cannot buy a ticket while verification is pending.
So register when you start planning, not the week you fly. Three further details matter:
- Tickets go on sale 15 days before departure, not earlier. On popular routes and around public holidays, the good departures go within minutes of opening.
- Your passport is the ticket. There is no paper ticket to collect and no QR code to scan; you tap or hand over the passport at the gate. Carry the same passport you booked with.
- Foreign cards are accepted but decline often enough to be a known irritation. A linked Alipay or WeChat Pay account usually works better, and English-language resellers sell the same seats for a small per-ticket fee when the official app refuses.
For most routes the fare depends on the class and the train rather than on how early you book, so the reason to be at the keyboard on day 15 is a seat, not a discount.
When to fly.
Domestic flights are cheap relative to Europe or North America and the network reaches almost everywhere, including the airports that serve the plateau and the far west. Two things to plan around. First, the airports are often far out — allow 40 minutes to an hour into the city, and do not book a tight connection between a flight and a train. Second, aircraft do not acclimatise you: flying into Lhasa or Shangri-La puts you at 3,300 to 3,650 metres within a couple of hours of sea level, which is exactly the pattern our altitude note warns against. Fly in, then keep the first day flat.
Drivers and the last mile.
Hiring a car with a driver is normal, affordable by Western standards, and usually the difference between a route that works and one that does not. It also solves the language problem at exactly the moment it matters — a trailhead junction, a village guesthouse, a checkpoint.
Two constraints. In Tibet, foreign travellers are required to travel in an agency-arranged vehicle with a licensed guide, so this is not a choice. Elsewhere, some valleys and reserve entrances restrict private vehicles, and a driver who does not know that will drive you to a barrier. Ask before the morning of departure.
Where the bag goes.
The underrated logistical question. Trekking packs go with you; the rest of the luggage does not need to. City hotels will store bags for a few days between segments, which is the simplest solution and costs nothing. Station lockers exist but are inconsistent and rarely large enough for a duffel.
For longer trips, courier companies will move a bag between cities and hold it for collection — useful when a route ends somewhere you are not returning to. Build this into the plan rather than discovering it in a guesthouse lobby with a 20 kg bag and a minibus arriving in ten minutes.
Sequencing a route.
The pattern that works on almost every route we plan: one moving day, one settling day, then the walking. Moving days are tiring in a way that is easy to underestimate — an early start, a station, a transfer, an unfamiliar bed — and putting a hard walk immediately after one is how good itineraries produce bad days.
Two habits make the joins behave. Keep at least one spare half-day per week of travel, so a cancelled flight is an inconvenience rather than a collapse. And arrange the route so that the longest transfer comes before the rest day, not after the hardest walk. Our trekking routes and destination notes are built with those two habits in mind; if you want the joins checked against your own dates, that is what an enquiry is for.
Booking mechanics and lead times checked 3 November 2026. Ticketing rules, verification times and app features change; confirm current practice on 12306 or with your booking platform before relying on a specific step.
Bring us the shape of the trip.
We will check the joins and the timing →