Portrait of an LBX

Our arrival right back where we began, nearly 17,000km (10,000+ miles) and a week short of a year later -- what a trip!

Elderly men sit and chat near a market in a Hebei mountain village.

The donkey is the main beast of burden in northern Shanxi (山西) and Hebei (河北) provinces. Never have I seen so many donkeys!

Hebei served as the deserved butt of many a joke throughout the trip, but when we finally arrived in the mountainous northern part of the province three days before the end of our trip, we were pleasantly surprised. There we found blue skies, green hills and picturesque villages as unique and interesting as those in any of the remote areas we passed in the western part of the country.

In Shanxi (山西) province, the Great Wall is now only a short mound of earth connected by the earthen remains of guard towers. The outer bricks and stones were long ago stripped away to build other structures.

Old men sit and talk outside of a home in rural Shanxi (山西) province.

One of our last sights in Inner Mongolia was yet another coal-fired power plant, of which we saw a few. Like the U.S., China has vast domestic coal resources, and dirty, coal-fired power plants generate most of the country's electricity. Inner Mongolia is China's coal capital, and a nearly-two-thirds increase in coal truck traffic from 2009 to 2010 was blamed for the 120km (75 mile) traffic jam on G110 that broke up just a few days before our ride into Beijing on the same road.

The central government is trying everything to wipe out "backward" practices such as nomadism. Previously, we showcased the odd nomad-relocation developments we found in Qinghai. In Inner Mongolia, animals are not allowed to be set out to graze outside of certain, fenced-in areas. Hence, most cows are on leashes.

In the countryside everyone works, even if they need a crutch and a cane to do it.

A crowd forms to watch the foreigners eat at the window of a restaurant in Inner Mongolia. Not being able to blend in was one of the more frustrating aspects of the trip.