This is a visual storytelling of my 3-month residency and trekking in the uninhabitable Tibetan Plateau (China) in 2022. At The Yangtze River Headwaters, I lived in a place which doesn’t show on maps with public access. I shared drinking water with wild birds, brown bears, and yaks. I did tedious but therapeutic jobs: painting walls and counting about 5,000 wild birds per day. Then I encountered the ruins of the Guge Kingdom dating back to the 9th century whose civilisation was buried mysteriously in the forest of earth. In the Kailash Mountain Range, I finished the 60-kilometre trekking to the altitude of 5645m in 17.5 hours. The transformative torture and enjoyment are seen through Buddhism and bodily endurance when physical challenges are intertwined with spiritual revelations. Any advanced image making skills fades when facing the tremendously sacred landscapes and harsh environments. Thus, both the multi-sensory embodied walking and visual evidence contribute to the restoration of the original story.

This self-powered pilgrimage articulates emotional responses and visual interpretations of landscapes with ‘earth writing’ inspired by geopoetics. It encompasses a profound connection to the ‘Humanscape’ and environment, manifesting my worship for pristine lands and cultural and environmental preservation. By experimenting with walking as a research practice, this project opens critical reflections on contemporary landscapes with artistic expressions under the context of Anthropocene, restoring the significance of the walking movement itself.

In this pilgrimage, I saw nothing but myself, my whole life.