It always takes patience to hit the road on national holidays, especially when millions of your fellow citizens have the same idea. This was the hard lesson learned by tens of thousands of motorists stuck on a multi-lane motorway near a tollgate leading to Beijing on Monday.

Incredible pictures captured by drones showed the gridlock on the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macau Expressway, as holidaymakers returned home from some rest and relaxation to another kind of "R+R" - road rage - on the last day of the three-day New Year holiday.

China’s tourism industry has witnessed explosive growth over the past few years, with an increasing number of people with bulging pockets looking to enjoy some time out of town during public holidays, creating traffic nightmares across the country.

Figures released by China's National Tourism Administration showed that more than 120 million Chinese were on the move during the New Year holiday, generating a total revenue of 67.9 billion yuan (9.76 billion US dollars).