"In the middle of the night I crawled out of my tent into a silvery vastness truly unchanged since Genghis Khan and his hordes loped west more than half a millennium ago. There was no glow of city lights on the horizon, no ranger station at the edge of the next valley, no quaint general store, no paved road. There was nothing but space, unbounded and untamed. A brilliant moon lit the blackness crystal clear. Moonshadows of every blade of grass danced silently in the wildness. It was the emptiest, quietest place I had ever been. I threw my arms out wide and spun slowly around and around in the dazzling clarity of the night, the stars blurring into ribbons of light above me." Mongolia. It was Erika Warmbrunn's dream. To escape deep into parts of Asia inaccessible to tours and guidebooks, to abandon herself to the risks of the unknown. And so, with only a bicycle named Greene for a traveling companion, she set off on an eight month, 8,000 kilometer trek that stretched across the steppes of this ancient land, on through China, and down the length of Vietnam. Freed by Greene's two wheels from the tyranny of discrete points on a map, she found that the true merit of travel was not in the simple seeing, but in flowing with the unexpected adventure or invitation, in savoring the moments in between -- the daily challenges of new words and customs, the tiny triumphs of learning a new way of life, the daunting thrill of never knowing what the next day would bring. Wanting to ride a Mongolian horse and finding herself in the saddle for four hours, herding fifty head of cattle. Asking for a hotel in a Chinese village and being taken into a family's home to share their grandmother's bed for the night. Pedaling into the Vietnamese highlands and being stopped along the muddy road by a father asking that she join his two-year-old son's birthday party. Accepting a Mongolian village's invitation to stop pedaling and stay for a while, to live with them and teach them English. In the doing and the telling, Where the Pavement Ends is a much richer experience than any line on a map can show. Where the Pavement Ends is the recipient of the "Barbara Savage Miles From Nowhere Memorial Award." You can find out more about this author at her website: www.wherethepavementends.com

The only guide of its kind, China by Bike allows you to get close enough to everyday Chinese life to taste what natives call ren ching wei - the "flavour of humanness."

Cycle through the sights of Beijing with Lunzi as she searches for her best friend. One, two; yi, er. Side by side, two bicycles, Lunzi and Huangche, come out of the factory. Side by side, they watch the city of Beijing from their shop window. Then a young girl comes in and buys Huangche, rolling him away from Lunzi! With the help of a delivery boy, Lunzi begins an epic race to find her friend that introduces readers to all the sights and sounds of Beijing.

This is the true story of two twenty-year-old Australians who travelled for fourteen months on recumbent bicycles from Russia, across Siberia and Mongolia, to Beijing. It is as much a story about perseverance, passion and belief as it is about the people and remarkable landscapes of Siberia and Mongolia. Tim Cope and Chris Hatherly are fearless adventurers, willing and able to open themselves up to everything from the voice of the steppe to the Russian villagers and the nomads of the Gobi desert. From this, they draw an often funny, moving and inspirational tale of living out a dream.

"Martijn Doolaard traded in the convenience of a car and the distractions of daily life for a cross-continental cycling journey: a biped adventure from Amsterdam to Singapore. Leaving behind repetitive routines, One Year on a Bike indulges in slow travel, the subtlety of a gradually changing landscape, and the lessons learned through travelling. Venturing through Eastern European fields of yellow rapeseed to the intimate hosting culture in Iran, One Year on a Bike is a vivid chronicle of what can happen when the norm is pointedly replaced by exceptional self-discoveries and beautiful sceneries. Doolaard shares the gear and knowledge that made his trip possible." -- Provided by publisher.

The Sky Is My Ceiling: Biking China's Border is Yu Juanjuan's personal account of her bike journey around China's border from 1987 to 1989 and in the process changed Chinese women's history. It took her two years to travel over 40,000 kilometers, (25,000 miles) to complete this trip, the distance being equivalent to the circumference of the earth. Starting from Beijing with four team members, three dropped out early, leaving her with only one-team member. For the majority of the 22 month trip she faced most of the diverse challenges ? the demanding terrain, the reaction from natives of cities and villages she visited, the wildly fluctuating weather, the need for funding, and those arising from the fact that she was a young woman ? alone. Since then, nobody has been able to duplicate her feat, man or woman. The strength of this remarkable woman's story? a product of the intersection of Communist and modern China ? result in a compelling richly illustrated book documenting the enormity of her success. Richly illustrated with over 150 images.

The Great Ride of China is the story of Buck Perley and Amy Mathieson's 21,000-mile, record-breaking trip around one of the world's oldest and most diverse countries. Follow them on a journey that takes them through grass plains, sand storms, 20-mile traffic jams in the center of coal country, and to the Rooftop of the World in the Himalayas.

It's August 2014 when Claudio, almost thirty years old, decides to quit his stable job and take a year off to follow his greatest passion: travelling. He decides to travel from his hometown, Milano, to Indonesia, but there's a catch...he will achieve this without travelling by plane. He doesn't know yet that in the four years to come he will cross Asia twice more, always travelling overland, using all kinds of transport.He cannot even begin to imagine that he will make a living by working as a farmer in Mongolia, as an electrician in Australia and as a teacher in a Chinese public primary school.But above all, he does not expect that thousands of people will help him as he makes his way from one place to another, crossing borders on foot, meeting individuals whose input will change his life's direction forever.Vagabondiario (the WandererDiary) is a handpicked collection of anecdotes, events and fascinating experiences that Claudio recorded daily in a diary he kept during his four years of crossing Asia. Part of the proceeds from this book will be donated to Associazione culturale Tibetana, a non-for-profit organization. The Associazione Culturale Tibetana supports the "Tashi Orphan School" in Katmandu that provides care to orphans in the capital city of Nepal.Claudio Piani was born twice; the first time in Milan at "Buzzi" hospital on the 5th of August 1987, the second time in Quarto Oggiaro in the outskirts of northern Milan during August 2014 when he decided to change his life and start exploring the world. Two amazing lives, the first one spent on working as a basketball coach in his birthplace, Milan. His second life, travelling around the world, doing what was necessary to survive. According to a fortune teller, that Claudio met randomly in India, he will die in 2076.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE RBC TAYLOR PRIZE WINNER OF THE EDNA STAEBLER AWARD FOR CREATIVE NON-FICTION "Every day on a bike trip is like the one before--but it is also completely different, or perhaps you are different, woken up in new ways by the mile." As a teenager, Kate Harris realized that the career she most craved--that of a generalist explorer, equal parts swashbuckler and philosopher--had gone extinct. From her small-town home in Ontario, it seemed as if Marco Polo, Magellan and their like had long ago mapped the whole earth. So she vowed to become a scientist and go to Mars. To pass the time before she could launch into outer space, Kate set off by bicycle down a short section of the fabled Silk Road with her childhood friend Mel Yule, then settled down to study at Oxford and MIT. Eventually the truth dawned on her: an explorer, in any day and age, is by definition the kind of person who refuses to live between the lines. And Harris had soared most fully out of bounds right here on Earth, travelling a bygone trading route on her bicycle. So she quit the laboratory and hit the Silk Road again with Mel, this time determined to bike it from the beginning to end. Like Rebecca Solnit and Pico Iyer before her, Kate Harris offers a travel narrative at once exuberant and meditative, wry and rapturous. Weaving adventure and deep reflection with the history of science and exploration, Lands of Lost Borders explores the nature of limits and the wildness of a world that, like the self and like the stars, can never be fully mapped.

When Canadian brothers Colin Pyle and Ryan Pyle set out from Shanghai on a motorcycle journey that had never previously been attempted, they thought they had some idea of what lay ahead of them. It was a misconception that became evident by the end of Day 1. But, despite the many challenges they faced, 65 days and 18,000 km later they'd succeeded in circumnavigating China. In an expedition of extremes, Colin and Ryan visited the third lowest point on Earth and slept at Everest Base Camp beside its highest mountain. In their book, The Middle Kingdom Ride, Colin and Ryan take us with them as they travel through the diverse and extraordinary landscapes of China, from its border with North Korea, to the ancient Muslim city of Kashgar, across the vast empty spaces of the Mongolian grasslands, over the mountains and into the monasteries of Tibet.