Road Trips in East Asia

Hokkaido is Japan’s great road trip: an island the size of Austria with long straight roads, few cars and national parks that buses barely reach. A loop of a week or more from Sapporo can take in the lavender and patchwork hills of Furano and Biei, the volcanic peaks of Daisetsuzan, the caldera lakes of Akan Mashu, the wild peninsula of Shiretoko and the port of Hakodate in the south. The Hokkaido Expressway Pass, sold only to foreign visitors with a rental car, gave unlimited expressway use for 7,700 yen (about 50 USD) for four days in a standard car in 2025. Drive in summer or autumn: winter roads are icy and snowbound.

In Kyushu, the grassy rim of the Mount Aso caldera, one of the largest in the world, is laced with scenic roads, and the Yamanami Highway runs east over the highlands past hot-spring villages to Beppu. Continue south to Kagoshima and the smoking cone of Sakurajima.

Jeju Island is Korea’s favourite self-drive holiday: a volcanic island with a coastal road linking black lava beaches, waterfalls near Seogwipo, lava tubes and the sunrise crater of Seongsan, with Hallasan always in view. Hire a car at the airport in Jeju City; three or four days is enough. On the mainland, Route 7 follows the east coast from Sokcho, gateway to Seoraksan, through Gangneung towards Busan, with a detour inland to the old capital of Gyeongju. Korea accepts International Driving Permits, and navigation works best with the local apps, Naver Map or Kakao Map, since Google Maps does not give driving directions there.

The east coast of Taiwan is one of Asia’s most dramatic drives. The Suhua Highway runs south from Yilan along sea cliffs, now largely bypassed by long tunnels but with the Qingshui Cliffs still visible, to Hualien and the mouth of Taroko Gorge. From there you choose between Highway 11 along the Pacific coast and Highway 9 down the East Rift Valley, with its rice fields and hot springs, to Taitung.

The Karakoram Highway leaves Kashgar for the Pamirs, passing Karakul Lake below Muztagh Ata and the Tajik town of Tashkurgan before reaching the Khunjerab Pass on the Pakistan border at about 4,700 m. The Hexi Corridor follows the Silk Road from Lanzhou through Zhangye’s striped hills and the fort at Jiayuguan to the desert grottoes of Dunhuang. In the southwest, the Sichuan-Tibet road, National Highway 318, climbs west from Chengdu over a string of high passes to Kangding and Litang and on to Lhasa.

Driving yourself is hard. China does not recognise International Driving Permits; short-stay visitors can apply for a temporary driving permit, which needs a Chinese translation of your licence and is valid only while your visa lasts, but rental companies set their own extra rules. Most foreigners hire a car with a driver instead. Xinjiang has frequent police checkpoints, and foreigners can only enter Tibet on an organised tour with a permit and guide, so G318 west of Sichuan is not a self-drive route.

Mongolia is a road trip without roads. Outside Ulaanbaatar and a few highways, tracks split across the steppe, and the standard way to travel is a Russian-built UAZ van or a Land Cruiser with a driver, a guide and a cook, sleeping in ger camps or with nomad families. The classic routes are a week or more south to the dunes, cliffs and canyons of the Gobi, west to Kharkhorin and the Orkhon Valley, and north to Lake Khuvsgul. Go from June to September; book through an Ulaanbaatar agency and agree the daily distance in advance, since rough tracks make 200 km a long day.

June to October is the best driving season for most of the region. Hokkaido and Mongolia are at their best in July and August, autumn colour peaks across Japan and Korea from October to November, and the Karakoram’s Khunjerab Pass is usually open only from about May to November. Avoid Taiwan’s east coast and southern Japan in typhoon season, roughly July to October, and expect snow and chains on mountain roads from December to March.

• Japan: you need an International Driving Permit issued under the 1949 Geneva Convention, or for a few countries such as Germany, France, Switzerland and Taiwan, an official Japanese translation of your licence. Rent an ETC card with the car for tolls, which are high on expressways.
• Korea and Taiwan: an International Driving Permit plus your home licence is accepted for short stays. Rental desks are at the main airports.
• China: a temporary Chinese permit, or a hired car and driver, which most travel agencies arrange.
• Mongolia: budget for a driver-guide and vehicle by the day, with fuel and food usually included in agency prices.