Portrait of an LBX

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

Evan, Ellen and my dad stand atop a hill overlooking the scraggly desert where we pitched camp in our last night in Gansu. Our last couple weeks have been marked by headwinds, great campsites and a rush to cover the distance back to Beijing in time.

After a horrendous climb, the newly expanded crew, including my girlfriend Devi, my dad and his girlfriend Ellen, set up camp in the green mountains well before sunset. We were worried that a nasty storm on the horizon would soak us, but it never materialized, and we spent a great first evening on the road with a bottle of Talisker 10-year scotch whisky from duty free. There's a mystery member to our crew in this picture: a Tibetan herder who sat down and watched us talk, eat and drink for more than an hour, turning down our offers of food and drink.

The view from the mountaintop overlooking the Suoke Tibetan Monastery and the divergence of the White and Yellow rivers. To the right side of the Yellow River snaking into the distance is Gansu Province; to the left is Sichuan Province. Under normal circumstances, we never would have seen this view, as getting anywhere close to the village requires a 50 yuan ($7.38) entrance fee. Fortunately, being with a local, we were able to see the area for free.

A horse and rider climb the mountain behind the Suoke Tibetan Monastery at sunset. The hills behind the monastery and village are covered with photographers waiting to capture the Yellow and White rivers at sunset.

Storms seem to come once day here on the Tibetan Plateau, and they can be seen dozens of kilometers in the distance. Sometimes we can outrun them, and sometimes we can't. This time the storm approached after we had already set up camp. Fortunately, beautiful sunsets come once a day too!

We've been riding through some real mountains lately. In order to avoid the under-construction national road (國道) from Lancang (瀾滄縣) to Lincang (臨滄市), we decided to take some back roads through the mountains. On this particular day, we rode on a ridge at elevations from 1,400 to 2,000 meters (4,600 to 6,500 feet), never dropping down into the valley. There was also not a restaurant to be found before our starting point in the morning and our ending point at night. Fortunately, we each pack a healthy serving of trail mix for such emergencies.

During my two rides through Yuanyang I have only been fortunate enough to see the areas directly adjacent to the S214 provincial road. There are many other beautiful vistas, but I think Tiger Mouth (老虎嘴) is certainly one of the most impressive! So impressive, in fact, that I had to make an extra-large version of this HDR shot of the valley to show all the detail! Click the photo to see it. The white dots are the tiny huts in which the farmers live during the planting and harvest seasons.

A girl rides home from school at sunset outside of Zhangxiang Town, Jiangxi province. Today we finally left Nanchang, heading south toward Fujian province. Another slow start and trouble with Alexis' cheap replacement rim kept us from hitting our distance goal, but if we can get Alexis' bike fixed early in the morning, we should be able to make it up tomorrow.

Kashgar Old Town, Xinjiang