His eagerness to embark on outdoor adventures germinated in his high school years, he says. He often followed his father, a geological explorer who prospected mines in Kashgar prefecture, to travel around the prefecture during summer holidays, and the picturesque scenery and diverse terrain he came across fired his desire to explore wilder places.

He put driving across Taklimakan Desert on his to-do list at that time.

In 2012 he planned to cease doing business and start prepare for a solo cross-desert journey.

"The expansive landscape, the rugged, complicated terrain, the soft sands and the harsh environment there together make it extremely hard to drive across the Taklimakan Desert," he says.

He began to hone his off-road driving skills and equip himself with the knowledge to ensure safety when dealing with challenging conditions, such as sandstorms or vehicle breakdown.

For adaptability training, he drove into the Kumtag Desert in Shanshan county of Xinjiang, the sixth-largest desert in China, dozens of times a year.

In the beginning he set out at 5 am every day to drive an empty vehicle into the Kumtag Desert, with an expanse of 1,700 hectares, to finish a 200-kilometer off-road return journey in a day.

Later he began to carry a load of more than 600 kilograms on the vehicle and then simulate different emergencies that could face him in a desert-crossing.