The typical quality of roads towards the Chinese border... pretty rough.

4. First of all you have to get there and it's a long ride.

The 'Silk Road' team of GS riders at BMW in Beijing.

Mt. Everest shows itself in the distance…

Globe-Busting BMW bike ride reaches Beijing

A team of exhausted but elated BMW GS riders has successfully completed a 13,000-mile (20,000 kilometres) journey, having ridden from London to Beijing in China, defying revolutionaries, raging rivers, collapsed roads and corrupt officials.

The 'Silk Road East' expedition was led by Kevin Sanders, Double Guinness World Record Holder for Global Motorcycling and Co-Founder of leading motorcycle adventure specialists, GlobeBusters.

What made this particular journey unique is that the team rode their own motorcycles across the Tibetan Plateau, to Everest Base Camp and onto Lhasa. The admission of non-Chinese vehicles ridden by foreign nationals into China requires prior government approval and is tightly controlled.

Just to get to the Chinese border included the Pamir Highway in Tajikistan, bordering with Northern Afghanistan. Whilst a notorious drug running route, it was torrential rains that caused two roads to collapse which stopped the team in its tracks. Said Expedition Leader, Kevin Sanders, "We had no choice but to back-track and try the only other road possible - that presented raging rivers to cross and no bridges!"

The team should then have had an easy run through Kyrgyzstan, but the outbreak of ethnic violence meant another change of plan. "When we found out two people had been shot dead close to our hotel in Jalalabad, we were forced to change plans again and divert straight to the Chinese border," said Kevin. "It sounds easy enough, but changing your port of entry into China with vehicles is a massive red tape exercise."

The highlight of the expedition for the team was reaching Everest Base Camp at over 5,200 metres, after having ridden thousands of miles of difficult and unpredictable terrain through Europe and Central Asia to reach the world's highest mountain.

"Reaching Everest was a momentous milestone for all of us," said Kevin. "It was very emotional - we hadn't just flown in to get a picture - we'd ridden over 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometres) from London at that point. It's remote, wild and as far away from the modern world as it is possible to get and that's part of what made this expedition so challenging."

There was a tinge of sadness for the group at Everest as one of the riders only a few days before had succumbed to serious altitude sickness symptoms and had to be taken directly to Lhasa for treatment and then flown back to the UK.

The challenge was not over after Everest though. From there the riders had to face the notorious Sichuan-Tibet Highway, cited to be one of the most dangerous roads in the world by the Association for Safe International Road Travel - sheer drops, narrow tracks, landslides and altitude contribute to this claim. After the descent from the Tibetan Plateau, extreme heat, humidity, pollution, and millions of drivers on congested roads provided the final challenge for the team.

All the riders were greeted at BMW Beijing by Kin One Lee, Manager of BMW Motorrad China, who said "This is the first big international motorcycle expedition team that we have welcomed to Beijing, who have ridden from London. It is an honour to be part of this inaugural event."

Kevin's verdict? "It's been a huge achievement by everyone to get all the way to Beijing. I said before we started out that it would be one of the toughest motorcycle rides on the planet and it was harder than even I had imagined. To get here we have all had to ride through some of the most extreme conditions I've ever faced. The weather has been particularly harsh and road conditions at times seemed impassable, but everyone pulled through. We had to divert a lot from our planned route too. All credit to the riders, they've coped with treacherous terrain, remote living conditions, high altitudes and extreme temperatures - and pulled through!" 

            Find out more at the GlobeBusters Adventure Motorcycle Expeditions page on FaceBook or watch video footage on http://www.youtube.com/globebusters. For intrepid motorcyclists, a few final places remain on the Silk Road Expedition 2011. See http://www.globebusters.com for more details.