The worst places for highway travelers to be are highways in Guangzhou and Sichuan provinces and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, which are predicted to have the most crowded roads, according to a report from the Baidu search engine company.

Baidu data predict the most crowded times to travel will be the first and last two days of the holiday.

"Analysis of previous data shows that 8 am on Oct 1 and 4 pm on Oct 7 may be the peaks of the holiday rush by road," said Li Zhitang, head of Baidu Map.

The National Day holiday, from Oct 1 to Oct 7, is one of China's two Golden Week holiday periods, the other being Spring Festival, which usually falls in January or February.

While the huge migration in the spring is mainly caused by traditional family reunions, the autumn trips are increasingly motivated by tourism.

"Chinese people were celebrating holidays at home before, but now travel has gradually become a major way to celebrate holidays," said Wang Xiaosong, CEO of Lvmama.com, a major online travel booking service.

He estimated that the number of China's tourists during this Golden Week will again reach a record.

For some, however, the vacation period is not so golden for travel.

"I just want to stay at home and take a good rest. We rarely have a chance to enjoy such a long holiday and I don't want to waste it on seeing 'people mountain, people sea'," said Xu Jiayu, a white-collar worker in Beijing, using a popular Chinese expression for crowds.

Netizens also made jokes online about tourists rushing to popular sightseeing spots.

"Instead of seeing the beautiful Great Wall, you can see only heels and heads," one commenter said on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like social media service.