During his gap year, Liu Yilang happened to come across a post on a social media app.
The poster, momo, was looking for a travel buddy. The plan was for two people to drive a single car along a loop following the country's western border.
The requirements were stricter than the standards for finding a match at the matchmaking corner in People's Park.
But when Liu Yilang checked them off one by one, he discovered that he met every single one.
Why wait, then? Meals and lodging covered, it was practically a windfall, so he immediately sent a private message to introduce himself.
It wasn't until the day they set off that he discovered his travel buddy was his high school classmate Jiang Mu, the guy who had always sat either in front of him or behind him in the grade rankings during final exams.
The two set off from Chengdu, following the 318 Sichuan-Tibet Highway to Lhasa, then taking the 219 Xinjiang-Tibet Highway through the high-altitude Ali region to Yecheng in Xinjiang. Maybe they'd continue north all the way to Kanas...
Reader's guide:
A healing road-trip story, with a travel blogger bottom and a top who quit his job as a programmer at a major tech company.
They're both ordinary people with their own flaws. They learn to get along, reconcile with themselves, and grow along the way.
Theme: Life is an open wilderness
