Our Trip to China — Baggage (and Binoculars)!!

Disclaimer: Our trip to China spanned from March 15 – June 9, 2025. (Yes, 2025.)

There’s an order of events that Ross likes to joke seems to take place before any of our trips these days. It usually starts with Ross having some kind of seemingly absurd idea. In this case it was to take two babies to China for three months. And then me, being what I hope is some kind of voice of reason, saying all of the ways that is a bad idea.

I think I alternate through the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Denial. Surely you can’t be serious. Two babies on a three month trip to China?! That’s not happening. And then when he insists that it is, I find myself angry.
Anger. Kids thrive with routine. I’m not suggesting to never travel with kids, in fact I’m a huge proponent for the opposite. Travel with kids. Invite them along on your adventures. Involve them as much as possible. But a fast-paced, international birding tour is something VERY different. I’m not happy about this.
Bargaining. Soon I am pleading for some kind of stability. Can we please just stay in the same hotel for more than a single night at a time? Can we not pick up and move lodging every single day? Can we minimize the long drives where the kids will be strapped in their car seats? Ross tries to accommodate this but it’s not exactly possible on a birding trip where visiting multiple locations, often very spread out, is a must.
Depression. The depression phase is hard to articulate. I’m going on a trip. That’s something to be excited about. It’s not the same as true grief. I’m not exactly depressed, but somehow all I can focus on is how hard most days will be and how downright miserable other days will be. Ross likes to remind me on the particularly challenging days back home that this could happen anywhere. I’ve lost count how many times he’s attempted to comfort me while saying something like “see, this is really hard and it’s normal. We will have hard days traveling too but that’s okay.”
Acceptance. Soon though, I’ll accept my fate. In the case of China I’m not sure I had fully accepted it yet when our tickets were bought. But then there’s true acceptance. That’s when I say to him “well if we are going to be on that side of the world anyway we might as well go to Japan too.” And just like that we added 2 weeks to the trip just so we could visit Japan again.
Appreciation. Ross argues that there’s a 6th stage of emotion when it comes to a birding trip. He calls that phase appreciation. He still stands by the concept that once you do something like travel you won’t regret it. You’ll remember it forever. He argues that it will not be time wasted. And so far, he hasn’t been wrong. This has all happened before. I tried so hard to avoid going to Argentina after having been on the road for a little over two months. In the end I went and had the most amazing trip. It has always been worth it.

Just so you know, I haven’t always been this way. Any time Ross came up with an idea, I was his biggest cheerleader. When he said, “Let’s go to Thailand” in 2015, I was completely on board, even though it was our first time doing something like that. When he wanted to spend four months backpacking through Indonesia? Count me in. Do it again in South America, only longer this time? Great. When he suggested buying a truck in Africa and living out of it for ten months, I may have questioned him briefly, but ultimately I couldn’t wait.

But I didn’t have kids then. Back then, it was just two crazy young adults with no responsibilities, traveling on a whim. And I wouldn’t trade any of those trips for the world. They were some of the highlights of my life. (Seriously, if you ever have the chance to buy a truck, live out of it and overland Africa, I couldn’t recommend that more!)

Us at the airport just before flying out

With all that being said, we headed to China for nearly 3 months and tacked on a ten-day trip to Japan before coming home.

All said and done, we were on the road for 100 straight days. And I’m about to start sharing all of the details about that extended trip to China! I apologize it has taken me so long to get this out into the world. We made the absolutely terrible decision to leave our laptop at home. As a result we couldn’t publish as we went, like we usually like to do and then the publishing gets pushed aside until here I am, nearly a year later, getting ready to share all about it!

Here’s a few things I wrote BEFORE we left:

I’m excited. I’m nervous. I can’t wait.

I’ve run through the gamut of emotions getting ready for a trip of this caliber with a two-year-old and a seven-month-old, but ultimately, I’ve landed on feeling thrilled. I can’t wait to experience a culture I’ve never seen before. And I can’t wait to experience it through the eyes of a child, because as all parents know, kids teach us what life is really about anyway.

A lot of planning went into this trip. A huge thank you to Steven An, a local tour operator with China Birding Tours, who booked our stays in various hides, helped secure drivers (since we originally thought foreigners weren’t allowed to rent cars in China, more on that to come), coordinated an English translator for parts of our journey, and even took time out of his busy day to talk with Ross about the itinerary. Beyond that, he and his team (Elan & Xiaorai) stayed available throughout our entire trip as logistical support in the background, only a quick text or phone call away, an invaluable safety net for an adventure of this scale.

There are spreadsheets with tabs upon tabs detailing our upcoming adventure. Ross is nothing if not a logistical mastermind, but he wanted to double-check with someone who knows the ins and outs of traveling through China to make sure everything he planned was actually possible. (Steven, by the way, is an incredible guide, and if you’re considering birding in China, I’d highly recommend hiring him. We just couldn’t afford to have a top-level bird guide and still do everything else we wanted to do. So we used Steven to help coordinate and did the rest on our own.

This trip was on a budget… just not the kind of budget we usually stick to. More like a “Ross got a tier-one bonus at work last year, and we’re spending all of it at once” kind of trip.

Here’s a snippet of the beginning of our itinerary:

This trip to China might look very different without children, but it will be rewarding none the less. I like to think in some ways it’s going to be even better BECAUSE of the children. It is not lost on me that taking two babies on an international trip is wild. I personally know very few people who have done it. But taking children on an international birding trip? I don’t know anyone in my current circle who has done that.

As we were reflecting on going to Australia with a baby, we realized that the mind does funny things. For some reason the hard times are overshadowed by the good. I remember being jetlagged in Taiwan when we went with Roger, but just barely. Instead I remember the sights, the birds, the laughter. I remember hard moments in Australia, but only vaguely. Again, the good things, the perfect weather, the sights, the sunshine, the birds and little things we saw along the way far outweighs the bad. (I do fully remember dipping cassowary though, but that had nothing to do with having a baby on board.)

Here’s a few things I can say now that our trip to China has been completed.

1. We actually could rent our own vehicle. Ross managed to get a Chinese drivers license and that caused a whole cascade of changes to the original itinerary. We aren’t sure how easy this is to do, I’ll explain more about it in a future post.

2. In our case, the itinerary has always been more of a guideline than anything set in stone. We got ahead of schedule (surprise, surprise) and added birds we didn’t think we could get into it. We went to places that were never even on the radar when the trip started (looking at you, Xinjiang.) As per the BudgetBirders way, we were extremely flexible and willing to change things last minute.

3. We opted to do parts of China completely independently, with no driver, no guide, and no English translator accompanying us. Just two crazy kids and their two kids trekking all around Sichuan alone.