Reddit reviews Adventure Cycle-Touring Handbook: Worldwide Route & Planning Guide (Trailblazer)

some links:

https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/

https://www.adventurecycling.org/

http://ultralightcycling.blogspot.com/

https://www.rivbike.com/pages/touring-camping

https://www.amazon.com/Adventure-Cycle-Touring-Handbook-Worldwide-Trailblazer/dp/190586468X/

Take some short tours, overnight or a few days. Everybody has a different approach. You can go very cheap or very expensive. Either way you'll end up improvising to solve unexpected problems!

For adventure cycling, this is get the Trailblazer guide.

https://www.amazon.com/Adventure-Cycle-Touring-Handbook-Worldwide-Trailblazer/dp/190586468X

> my initial idea was doing Xi'an to Shanghai, but I'm having a lot of trouble finding any documented cases of people doing that particular route, which makes me a bit nervous.

That's because it is a terrible idea. The route is 90% flat with very little scenery. You will be dealing with heavy traffic especially truckers too cheap to use the expressway. The region around Zhengzhou is heavily polluted. All in all it would not be a pleasant experience.

>Any ideas?

http://qixing.8264.com/

Open in chrome, right click, select Translate to English.

Most Chinese adventure cycling routes point towards Lhasa. There is the Yunnan Tibet road G214 and the Sichuan Tibet road G318, G317. As a foreigner you can not enter TAR without an expansive permit. So you can do about half of the route. Besides that, Xinjiang is also popular G312, G314.

Most Chinese cyclists will choose a National Road 国道. Since in remote locations, this will be the highest grade road outside of an Expressway

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_National_Highways

There will be a lot of elevation changes along the way, so you will need to be reasonably fit.

As a rule of thumb, if you have never done long distance cycling, it would be better to start in your home country.