Meng Fanhua believes that the greatest achievement of his life was completing a two-day walk around the base of Mount Kailash, a holy mountain in Ngari prefecture, in western Tibet, last year.

"It was exhausting physically, but I have never felt better than after that journey. It was truly the greatest adventure of my life - and the most valuable one," the 50-year-old painter from Liaoning province said of his pilgrimage.

Meng undertook the adventure last year, one of the 470,000 pilgrims who visited the mountain during the Chinese Year of the Horse.