How to decide where to go?? China?

I spoke to a woman recently who's inspired me greatly. Specifically with her travels around the world, and currently with China in her sights after living in America for a few years. Compared to anyone I've ever met aside from my father who has traveled only for business reasons, she has been more places than everyone I've known combined. She speaks multiple languages from what I learned being English, Spanish, French, Romanian, and was learning Chinese also; so immediately in comparison to me I understand she is more well rounded. I've only learned bits of spanish for a few years in High School but as of recently I've been inspired enough to start to try and learn french during my free time, which has been very slow but I would like to eventually make it to France once my funds are a bit stronger so I am not in a huge rush at the moment.

Currently though, I am very interested in traveling affordably. She planted the seed in my mind that to go to China with roughly $5,000(USD) after buying a plane ticket isn't that farfetched of an idea. Especially if you were biking across the country according to her. Although when I look into traveling to China, it's massive and hard to even figure out where to start! The Himalayas are what interest me extremely being the most impressive mountain range in the world, and the different culture and world seems to be enough to make me want to book a plain ticket right now!

I currently am self employed as a glass artist with no real issue of providing funds quickly, although I am extremely tired of the life I have created for myself. I find the industry I work in to be very unmotivating as a life style and I am strongly drawn into the idea of backpacking and being as much of a minimalist as possible. After all, I have been living in my car since July simply because I got tired of paying for an apartment that I found to be useless for my personality type... I've loved this transition! Now at this point, I'd like to step it up and travel a new world to me. I am 24 (m) and enjoy the idea of traveling alone. Meeting people is always wonderful, but I don't like relying on anyone to travel with so if I can't do it alone I don't see why to bother in the first place!

Things that concern me though are that I do not speak any language fluently beyond English! This right here makes me want to cut my dream short and snap back into reality. Although when I mentioned this to her she said that there are plenty of back packers and that its no big deal.

I'm sure with endless searching I could find multiple places I'd be interested in, but I am not even sure where the best spot to start looking would be aside from being close to the Himilayas..

How did you decide where and how you wanted to leave? Did you have a predetermined select area and branch out from there? Or maybe you had a few and connected the dots inbetween? Did you speak their language where ever you went?

The mountains interest me the most really, although I'm not willing to claim to be up to par with going into serious treks into the Himalayas, mostly I'd be happy to see them from a far and hike the smaller mountains to the best of my ability. Different culture makes me very eager to search also considering I've lived in USA my whole life beyond living in Vancouver BC, Canada for 5 months of my life...

Edited by: ForeverMoving