In the spring of 2017 writer Matthew Crompton set off alone on a bicycle into the mountains of Tibet. Armed with GPS maps, a tent, a camera and a keen eye, he would spend the next four months exploring and documenting some of the least-visited and most fraught areas of China and Central Asia.

Over more than six thousand kilometers of hard travel, he'd tangle with police in the locked-down Chinese province of Xinjiang, accidentally sneak into a military base in Tajikistan, experience a reverse mugging in Kazakhstan, carry his bicycle on a crumbling goat track over a 14,000-foot pass in Kyrgyzstan, and be rescued from a remote mountain road in Tibet by a monk on a motorcycle.

Along the way, he would bring the experiences of the trip to bear on a central question: What is it that we're seeking when we travel? How is it that hard travel transforms us, and how can we be liberated by it?