Portrait of an LBX

A farmer in Inner Mongolia carries a harvest of grasses on his back to be put on a horse cart and taken into the nearby village.

Fields of sunflowers at sunset stretch to the horizon on our way into Wuyuan (五原縣), Inner Mongolia.

There's tough terrain out there, even in the flats. Making our way through the Inner Mongolian "grasslands" of Bayannur, we found ourselves in a flood drainage canal frequented by herds of sheep that had softened the earth into a dust through which we often had to push the bikes.

We finally got off of G110 in Bayannur, Inner Mongolia, and headed into the countryside again, where we zig-zagged our way through alternating fields of corn and sunflowers. It was a bit disappointing to see that what we assumed would be a vast grassland had been thoroughly cultivated, but we were happy to see that it wasn't already an endless field of coal-fired power plants. Here my dad and Evan pass through a small village in the late afternoon before we set up camp between the road and a field of sunflowers.

National Highway G110, which runs from Beijing to Lhasa, is not a fun road. We were forced to ride it for several days for lack of other options out in the desert, and we regret almost every moment of it. On our second day in Inner Mongolia, the pavement disappeared and we were left with dust, trucks and a driving headwind. Here, a masked Dave struggles with the final stretch before our expensive lunch in a concrete imitation yurt.

Sometimes the ride just grinds you down, down, down and right into the sandy desert ground. We fought a driving headwind all morning on our second day in Inner Mongolia, making progress at a snail's pace. In the afternoon, the pavement on the national highway disappeared, and we were left with desert dust, rocks and coal-carrying trucks. The headwind of course, never abated. Suffice it to say, it was a bad day. Photo by Pete.

When Pete's chain popped off, got caught on the pedal and ripped his rear derailleur apart, we were fortunate to be within striking distance of Wuhai (烏海). There we searched in vain for a bike shop with some spare parts, only to be mobbed by the largest gathering of looky-loos we've seen in a long time. Most people scatter when we turn the tables and point our cameras at them, but not this guy, whose hat reads "Wuhai Jewelry Shop." Fortunately, on our way out of town after MacGuyver-rigging the bike ourselves, we passed a Giant shop where we were able to switch out the part.

I often wonder if I could fully and accurately describe the soul-depleting nature of so much of the Chinese landscape to someone who had never been here, or someone who had just been whisked around to the tourist spots. My dad said only an old-timey coal miner who had lived in Pittsburg in its glory days could possibly form an image. This picture certainly does the scene little justice. For one, the scene went on as far as the eye could see in any direction, with coal power plants for 360 degrees. And somehow, the camera managed to capture a blue sky that didn't seem to be there at the time. Or maybe my eyes were just too covered in coal dust from the passing dump trucks full of the stuff. A sign a bit further down the road deigned to call the scrubby, industrial wasteland a "nature reserve" (自然保護區) and warned against illegally destroying "forest resources" (嚴厲打擊破壞森林資源的違法犯罪活動)!

Workers paint one of those brilliant slogans that the Chinese government is so well known for on a wall in Ningxia. This one appears to relate to the railroad.

Evan's tent sits among sand dunes in our first evening in Ningxia. A note to potential sand-campers: if you've been fighting a fierce headwind all day, don't set your tent up in the dunes. Evan and I awoke the next morning with an inch of sand in our tents that had blown in through the mesh the night before. Dad and Ellen somehow escaped unscathed.