About
Local Hour
An independent publisher of working travel manuals. Few guides, written to be used rather than browsed.
Why “Local Hour”
The name comes from the only hour that matters when you travel: the one where you are. There is a precise moment, usually on the second or third day, when you stop converting time zones and simply start being there. Our guides exist to get you there sooner.
How a guide gets made
We start from a concrete question: what does a person travelling somewhere for the first time, organising it alone, actually need to know? Not “what is interesting to know”. What is needed. Then we check every price, timetable and procedure against primary sources, and next to every fact with an expiry date we print the address where you can re-check it.
The software is part of the book
A travel manual published in 2026 cannot be paper alone. Every guide ships with the tools it needs — an itinerary generator, a map with coordinates — included in the price, with no sign-up and no email harvesting.
Write to us
Mistakes, corrections, changed data, proposals: we answer everyone.
How we work
Few guides. All of them checked.
Primary sources
Consular portals, China Railway, official museum sites, ECB exchange rates. No blogs, no copy-paste, no “apparently”.
Every fact has a date
You know the month it was verified and where to check it again the day before you leave. Entry rules change on a few weeks’ notice.
No filler
No chapter on the dynasties to pad the page count. If you do not need it to travel, it is not in the book.
The tools come with it
The generator and the map are not sold separately, do not ask for an email and have no subscription. They are part of the book.
I am not asking you to trust me. I am giving you the sources.From the introduction to China 2026/2027
The catalogue
China — Travel Guide 2026/2027
The working manual for organising the whole trip yourself.