Expense Report – Season 4
Shishira and I left home on May 15, 2022 on this little adventure of full-time travel. Our first season of travel (as we like to call it) in South East Asia went on for 10 months and the second season across Central Asia and the Caucasus went on for about seven months. Our longest journey was Season 3 where we travelled from Nairobi to Cape Town covering nearly 25,000 kms across Africa! And we documented the costs we incurred along these three trips in Expense Report – Season 1, Expense Report – Season 2 and Expense Report – Season 3.
This report is about Season 4 – in which we set off on a crazy overland journey from Vietnam to Siberia!
Before we left home to travel full-time, I often looked for similar reports of people travelling long-term. And when I did find a few, I spent many hours reading one periodic report after another! And I figured – if I like it, so could many more travel nerds who might enjoy reading this! So, we began documenting every expense (like stay, activities, etc.) and decided to publish it here.
Yes, we are (were?) accountants – so we’re going to present this in a way that makes the best sense! But if you prefer a more insightful view, let us know in the comments section below and we’ll attempt to get it right.
Hopefully, you’ll find this full-time travel expense report as interesting as I do… anyway, here goes:
SEASON 4: East Asia (Vietnam to Siberia overland)
Before we get into the expenses, here’s a quick background of where we travelled in this season between May and August 2025. If you’ve been watching the travel vlogs from this season, you probably already know this.
To set the context, Shish and I agreed that future seasons of travel would be shorter than the last ones – especially because Season 3 in Africa was (amaaazing, but also) very long and exhausting. We also wanted to be back home with our parents and change regions more often. Among other reasons for the decision, we also had to return for a followup health check our Doctor insisted on in three months’ time. And thats how we picked this route.
We began this journey in Hanoi – our third time in the capital of Vietnam. After spending three months at home in Bangalore with parents, doctor visits, meeting friends and catching up on many tasks, we finally took a real break – not doing anything. But we did have to apply for our Chinese tourist visas which came through in three days. We spent the next week in the mountainous town of Sapa, in northern Vietnam and it was very beautiful! We had long avoided it because of how popular it is with every tourist who comes to Vietnam – but we enjoyed the scenery of the valleys there.
In early June, we crossed the land border from Vietnam into southern China. We were anxious about entering China (considering we’re Indian citizens and we’ve only seen negativity on the internet about the equation between the two countries), but it was a very welcoming experience! We travelled across the country over the next four weeks using the amazing train network – we got to see the Avatar mountains, the world’s largest city, Pandas (both white and red) and the Terracotta army. We also made it to Beijing where we visited the Forbidden City and saw a wonder of the world – the Great Wall of China!
After spending a couple of days at a border town, we finally crossed over from China into Mongolia, in the heart of the Gobi Desert. From there, we got on a soviet era Trans-Mongolian train that brought us to the capital, UlaanBaatar. We then spent the next three weeks exploring the least densely populated country in the world where we saw more horses than humans. Mongolians are super warm and friendly, always invited us to have tea, a meal, or stay with them for the night in their Gers – thats Mongol for a tent or yurt. Its funny how the name sounds like the hindi word ‘ghar’ which also means the same – home. Public transport in the capital Ulaanbaatar is good, but once we got on the Trans-Mongolian highway it became very challenging. So we decided to go back to the old ways – hitchhike! And we did – covering 2,500 kms over a fortnight stopping at the country’s biggest nomad festival, the ancient capital of Chinggis Khan, a camel farm and beautiful river valleys.
When we got to the Mongol-Russia border, we learned that the border was closed for a special event. We ended up befriending others who were stranded there too, went for a short hike, had dinner and camped at the border gate in a tent, in 4℃ weather, while everyone else slept in their cars in the long queue! The next morning, we were among the first to cross over, but ended up spending the next several hours through immigration queues and procedures. Eventually, by sunset, we reached a scenic little town where we spent our first night! Over the next two weeks, we made our way across southern Russia – more popularly knows as Siberia – where we saw how enormous of a swamp it is! Due to both internal issues and western sanctions on Russia, we could not get a sim card, nor swipe our credit cards, nor upload our vlogs from China and Mongolia on time.
But the new friends we made in Russia were soo incredibly helpful. They watched over us as we made our way from east to west visiting the Altai mountains, Novosibirst, Omsk, Tyumen and finally Yekaterinburg – our last stop on this journey. Over this fortnight, we got to experience southern Russian culture, hospitality and irnonically, warmth – something that we did not get to experience in our first visit to Moscow before covid!
This chart shows how much time we spent in each country on this journey – from May 19, 2025 to August 7, 2025.
This pie chart shows how much we spent across each category over the duration of our trip:
Here’s a more detailed breakdown of the categories. If you’re more interested to know the grand total, just scroll down the page to skip the details.
✈️ Flight: INR 72,345 / USD 842
In this season, we flew on only two routes:
The first one was from India to Vietnam (Bangalore to Bangkok, Thailand and then Bangkok to Hanoi, Vietnam) which was only about INR 13,000 per person on AirAsia. The second one was the return flight from Russia to India (Yekaterinburg to Sharjah, UAE and then onwards to Bangalore). We flew AirArabia and we had a 15 hour layover in the airport. Although we have a long-term visa for the UAE, we chose to stay in the airport (and hit the lounge) because of the intense August heat.
So yeah – just four flights! We did not take any other flights as we prefer to travel overland. We could have flown in China to avoid the long distances, but the trains do such a good job for a lot cheaper. Internal flights in Russia were more expensive than flights for leaving the country!
We usually book flights online by first searching on tools like Skyscanner or 12goAsia depending on where we’re getting the best deals! This did not work in Russia at this time due to sanctions imposed on its financial systems.
⛺️ Stay: INR 44,991 / USD 523
I know we couchsurfed A LOT in the last season. This time, we decided to spend a little more time by ourselves and enjoy some privacy!
On average, we spent about USD 10 per night for hotel rooms that we stayed in. They were cheaper in Vietnam and China and got considerably more expensive in Mongolia and Russia.
We stayed in Ulaanbaatar with an Indian friend. We used Couchsurfing only a little in Russia – until we discovered their own version called CouchBot! It helped us find hosts in the Altai region during Russia’s busiest travel season – where nearly all budget accomodation was sold out and we could not easily book stays online or contact by phone due to the language barrier!
But that was only a side-benefit of what was a more wholesome cultural exchange we had with so many incredible people and their warm families some of whom had been to India many times before! We haven’t quite considered all the gifts we gave them or meals we cooked after buying our own groceries here in this category.
The cheapest room we stayed in was at Sapa, in northern Vietnam – it cost us only INR 526 (USD 6.5) per night and it was located in the town centre, walking distance to everything and the friendliest manager! The most expensive one was in Beijing, China where we spent USD 15 for a night in a private room – it was 40 kms outside the city centre and was the only one available for the four days we planned to be in the capital city. Rooms under USD 30 per day were all sold out due to summer vacation at schools.
Shish says, the best room we stayed in was at a beautiful “couple” room in Zhangjiajie, China (probably because it came with a round bed). We paid about INR 1,000 / USD 12 for the airconditioned room, just one street behind the Wulingyuan gate of the Zhangjiajie National Park. She also enjoyed the lovely private Ger in Kharkhorin, Mongolia.
You’ll find these stays in our vlogs from those places. We’ve mostly used Trip.com in China or Booking and Agoda to find stays in Asia. Another popular website is AirBnB – many a times, you might find the same accommodation listed across all these websites.
🍕 Food: INR 55,471 / USD 645
Breakfast (sometimes), lunch, snacks and dinner; includes water too. Typically we ate two meals and a day and shared our food to cut costs. As a result, most meals costed less than INR 300 or USD 3.5. Whenever we stayed with our couchsurfing hosts, we nearly always had good meals.
Eating Chinese food in China (or as they call it there, “food”) was always good! Finding vegetarian food was not hard at all. It was definitely the culinary highlight of this season of travel – noodles, spiced bread, fried rice, dumplings, deserts and so much more – all with rich spices, flavours and seasoning!
Mongolia on the other hand was so stressful when it came to eating vegetarian food – in some eateries, we got served dishes that definitely had “something that looked and smelled like meat, for sure” many times. We thankfully did not eat it. We also learned from friends that milk tea contains animal fats there. We lost a bit of weight quickly there because of skipping many meals and eating only supermarket food, until we found Pizza in the last town.
Finding Indian food was not a problem in the capital cities. But we ate it only a couple of times when meeting some friends. Shishira also cooked a few homestyle meals for us and our amazing hosts in Russia!
🤿 Sightseeing and activities: INR 16,989 / USD 198
Its very easy to find paid attractions and spend lots of money on tickets. We realised pretty early on that spending money on every paid attraction would not be sustainable – so we chose to do a combination of the free stuff and classic ticketed attractions too.
While China does not always distinguish between locals and foreigners for ticket pricing, the cost of tickets to the national parks and historic sites were much higher than in the other countries. When we hiked to see the Avatar Mountians at Zhangjiajie National Park, it cost INR 2,500 / USD 32 per person (but the ticket is valid for four days) and we skipped the cable car and elevator add-ons.
Some other special sights included:
- Vietnam: hiking to the rice terrace fields in Sapa
- China: Yangshuo (so beautiful!), seeing Pandas at the Chengdu Panda Research Base, Sichuan Opera, The Forbidden City and Great Wall of China, Terracotta army and the cable car over the Yangtze river!
- Mongolia: Chinggis Khan Statue, Kharkhorin Erdenee Zoo Monastery, the drive across the Gobi desert on the south route of the Trans-Mongolian highway. We also attended the annual Naadam festival there.
- Russia: Altai mountains along the Chuysky Trakt, one of the most beautiful roads in the world!
Considering what I mentioned in the last three expense reports about spending more, I am glad we did all the paid sightseeing that we wanted to do here. If we had more time, we would probably have spent another week in Mongolia to see the northern lakes and also plan a Trans-Siberian train journey.
🚌 Transport: INR 37,925 / USD 441
We rode on the local city bus, metro and took a couple of taxi rides here and there. All of our intercity travel in China was by train – some slow, some fast. We also did an overnight sleeper train journey in Mongolia. And for the rest of our route in Mongolia and a majority of our way through Siberia, it was mostly hitchhiking. In such remote areas, hitchhiking is part of the local culture – nearly everyone from kid to babushka (grandmas) do it! Sadly, we did not hitchhike on 18 wheelers this time like we did in Africa!
Interestingly, it was also the first time ever, that we crossed two international land-borders which do not allow crossing on foot! We were invited into locals’ cars both time to make this crossing.
In Mongolia, people who gave us a ride when we were hitchhiking invited us to stay with them, helped us with a sim card, bought us a train ticket, out of their own interest – which was very unexpected.
We’ve documented all of these experiences on our vlogs!
🔖 Visa: INR 22,651 / USD 263
Visa anxiety is real. Especially if you own a weak passport – like ours. There’s always a lot of paperwork and uncertaininty around being able to visit a country. These days, visas don’t guarantee an entry either – its all at the descretion of the immigration officers.
The visa and immigration experiences were super smooth for Vietnam, China and Mongolia. While getting the tourist visa was straightforward, Russian immigraiton was very challenging. We were interrogated for an hour and questioned (politely) about our views on the war, illegal immigration and Goa.
- Vietnam eVISA for 30 days: USD 25 or INR 2,150
- China sticker visa for 30 days: USD 23 or INR 1,980 and an additional VND 690,000 or INR 2,300) for processing
- Mongolia eVISA for 30 days: Free (but processing fee of USD 5 or INR 450)
(on average the USD to INR exchange rate was around 1:86 during this trip)
🧾 Insurance: INR 4,516 / USD 53
We are a bit old fashioned about this. We got ourselves USD 100,000 worth of international medical and travel insurance coverage because we know how crazy expensive healthcare is outside our home country. We typically buy the maximum insurance coverage for six months before leaving home and extend the policy while out there for upto an additional six months – however, this time we bought it for a period of 3 months only. This policy would cover both of us as a family and hence that USD 100,000 is shared coverage. You’ll notice that this has remained somewhat steady across the three prior seasons too.
We recently found SafetyWing which provides new policies/coverage even after departure from your home country (our previous Indian insurer would only offer coverage starting from when in India, before departing).
💊 Others: INR 7,312 / USD 85
Misc. items like photocopies, soap, laundry, medicines and more. And Sim cards – we typically buy atleast one sim card in each country (sometimes two) and share internet via hotspot between ourselves.
We did not buy a sim card in Vietnam as WiFi was everywhere. In China, we bought a pricey ‘non-resident’ sim – and VPN just to stay connected to the world. In Mongolia, a kind woman gifted us a sim with a month of data. In Russia, we could not buy a sim card as foreigners (rule since Jan 2025), so we got an eSIM – cheaper and surprisingly reliable! Our Airtel connections in India now require a silly roaming pack even to receive SMS (bank OTPs, etc.) which used to be free earlier.
We also used a new debit card to withdraw from ATMs which has a small fee. The ones we used in the past have raised ATM fees significantly.
As far as medication goes, we did not fall sick anywhere during this journey *knocks the desk*. Shish bought a few clothes in China but not as much as she had shopped in season 1 and 2! We also bought souvenirs from the countries we were visiting for the first time which was not much!
And we also bought Postcards for our Postcard Club members and sent them across internationally!
🎁 Gifts: INR 4,646 / USD 55 (received)
This was a new and unexpected category that we began to “experience” in Africa. Although in Seasons 1 and 2, people we met along the journey expressed their kindness by gifting us something small, in Africa, this amount turned out to be a lot more. In fact, this is after turning down more than a thousand dollars from some.
A majority of those who gave us these gifts were Indian, but there are a few Africans who did that too! And this was all in cash – mostly in Angola, Namibia, South Africa and Botswana. If we had to quantify the transport cost for the distance covered in countless hitchhikes, stay cost saved due to couchsurfing and lunch invitations that made a difference to our budget, it would cross well over a few thousand dollars!
We could have skipped talking about this – but its a very heartwarming side of travel that we experienced so much of with people contributing to support this adventure and live vicariously through us!
So you can imagine how grateful we are to those watching our Youtube videos, commenting and liking, supporting us through our BuyMeACoffee page and Postcard Club. If you are one of those amazing souls reading this – we appreciate it so much!
Here’s a quick summary of how much we spent in each country on this journey:
I want to clarify that the costs for China look pretty steep compared to the others and thats mainly because of the extensive train travel there. We decided to not limit our budget here because we wanted to see as much of the giant country as we could in the time we had. We also chose to visit multiple ticketted attractions which had pricey tickets.
On the other hand, the cost of the flight back home from Yekaterinburg to Bangalore through the UAE is the big amount you see there under that country. In the last two seasons, entry and exit flight costs got apportioned over a longer travel period. This time, it was not so – thats why they stick out as large amounts.
THE GRAND TOTAL
Now that you’ve read every expense head in full detail, here’s the final total of how much money we spent travelling across this part of East Asia.
INR 257,554 or USD 2,995 (for 81 days)
This is what we spent across all the categories mentioned above, for both Shish and me. Our original budget was to keep our expenses under USD 30 / INR 2,500 per day. But we did go over that budget by quite a LOT – it worked out to USD 37 / INR 3,180 per day! We could have done it for a lot lesser had we stuck to a smaller region in China or stayed longer on this trip to apportion those large flight costs.
I’m curious to know what you think – was it a lot more than you expected? Or not too bad for travelling with a tiny budget? And if you want to read the expense reports from our future travels, you can subscribe to our newsletter called the “Sunday Memo” and I’ll send it over to your inbox when I write the next one!
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