Ten years ago, Xu Bin was a 22-year-old student at the China Academy of Art, making his very first trip to the Tibet autonomous region to complete a painting project for school.

The trip by bus from his home in Northwest China's Gansu province took more than 48 hours and he roughed it the rest of the way. "Traveling was a big challenge as there was no railway access to Tibet in 2004, and I made my way across the whole region by backpacking, hitching rides and trekking," Xu said.

Two years after that first trip, Xu shifted from a career as a painter to information technology. But his interest in Tibet stayed constant. He set out to establish a tourism company to bring others to the land of the high plateau, where the average altitude towers above 4,000 meters.