1

You might be interested in a tour I did years ago. I only went as far as St Petersburg but my cycle buddies carried on through Russia into Kazakhstan and through China. The travelogue and message board have some useful bits of info.

http://www.adamsprojects.co.uk/pedaltochina
http://www.adamsprojects.co.uk

2

China is probably the safest part of the entire journey.
From the 'Stans' east there are two routes, south and north Silk Roads. The latter is very busy with truck traffic I believe, the southern a great ride, if a bit remote at times. Did it 2010, mostly tarmac.
The biggest problem you will face in China is that of language. Outside the major cities, few will speak English. Visas can be renewed fairly easily, don't expect to be able to ride in Tibet.
If you ride in the States, east to west, then expect headwinds virtually the entire time!

3

I hope, given the time of year, by a fairly southerly route (and W to E would be a good idea as already noted). You can get some pretty wintry weather in the interior as winter draws in, even well away from the Canadian border, eg, http://www.weather2travel.com/climate-guides/united-states/colorado/ But if you keep close to the Mexican border as the winter draws in, it should remain pretty pleasant most of the time. eg http://www.weather2travel.com/climate-guides/united-states/texas/el-paso-tx.php

4

18 years of age? well done you will leave a boy and come home a well travelled man!

5

OP - you write - Does anyone have any experience cycling through China alone? It's the only part of the trip I wouldn't want to do alone.

Good luck on the first leg of your journey - the ride across the States. If you do that, and follow up with the ride across Europe, I am guessing that you will have accumulated enough experience on the road to handle whatever comes your way. As it is, China is so far away right now that it seems kinda silly to be worrying about that leg of the trip!

Best of luck in getting your adventure on the move.

6

climbthepeak, we're cycling in China right now. Although we've been here several times over the last 5 years, it's always been together so can't actually give you any specific information about cycling alone here.

What I can tell you is that we have a number of friends who have cycled here alone (one has cycled in 180,000kms China alone) and most of them have loved it. The Chinese are super friendly (too friendly at times for our tastes) so people who cycle alone here tend to like that aspect.

Can second what rogerrobot said about safety, crime towards foreigners is very low (unless you coinsider being ripped off a crime!) but the traffic is bad like all of Asia and that's what you need to be wary of most.

In regards to visas, things have toughened up considerably. In 2007/2008 it was super easy to get a visa, these days it's getting harder and harder although it depends greatly where you apply. Same with visa extensions, for our last application in Xining, apart from the normal stuff like photos & photo copies, we had to provide bank statements proving we had USD200 each per day for our stay. Even then they only would extend for 25 days not the normal 30. In Dali it was no problem, just had to prove our hotel registration. From what we hear it varies wildly place to place.

You can't cycle independently in Tibet but you can in the Amdo region and from all accounts this area is far more "Tibetean" these days than Tibet itself - we certainly loved it and it's by far our favourite part of China.

However, in China, things seem to change almost on a daily basis in regards to visa issues so as true_north says, don't worry about it until you get closer.