Photography portfolio
Frames from these roads
Everything below was filmed by me, on the same routes these guides describe. Full, uncut POV driving films are on my YouTube channel.
TK's Travel Book · Western Sichuan · Qinghai · Yunnan
Photographer, and the one who handles the ground out here — the car, the route, the rooms, and the six a.m. call when the weather turns. This notebook is everything I've learned doing it: where to go, when the light lands, and what it takes to get there.
A short history of Kham — the three regions, the dates behind the frontier, and which of the stories you will hear along this road are legend.
Read the short history ▸A drawn field guide to what is standing in the temple: thirty-seven chapters on the building first, then the statues — and how to read them in a room with no windows.
Open the field guide ▸A Tibetan Buddhist monk passes through a series of gates, starting on the day of his tonsure. This is what he actually does inside each one.
A life in full ▸Three calendars on one road — the solar year, the lunar month, the Tibetan one — where the leap month goes, and why the fifteenth is always a full moon.
Check the calendar ▸Three scripts on one road — Chinese, Tibetan, and the Latin transcription you read place names from — and where each of them begins.
Say it as you go ▸Latest guides
Five days and twenty guest notes: day one out of Chengdu to Zhonglu, day two up the Donggu valley past Yala to Tagong, day three west along the G317 to Garze, day four south on the S458 to Kathok and on to Dêgê, day five over the Jinsha to Luoxu and north to Yushu. Each day has its own page.
Thirteen days, actually driven in 2022: the Terracotta Army, Qinghai Lake, the Chaka salt flats, the Mogao Caves, Mingsha Shan and the Yardang — plus two unhurried versions (9 and 13 days).
Five days, one way: pandas at Wolong, the Tagong grassland, Kathok Monastery and the Dêgê printing house — then the quiet southern road down the Jinsha into Yushu.
The easy loop: an old tea-horse town that emptied out when the panda crowds moved on, a mid-afternoon lunch at Ye Popo in Leshan, and the Grand Buddha right after — boat or stairs, pick one.
Photography portfolio
Everything below was filmed by me, on the same routes these guides describe. Full, uncut POV driving films are on my YouTube channel.
Every guide in this notebook starts from a trip I've driven myself — start from the places I know best.
Tell me where you start, how long you have and how you like to travel — I'll suggest a route.
About the notebook
I'm TK Chang — I handle the ground here in Western Sichuan, on the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, and I photograph these roads for a living.
I've spent years driving these mountain roads: the passes above 4,000 meters, the valley villages, the grasslands where weather turns in twenty minutes. I know where the light lands at sunrise, which bend gives you the mountain in frame, and when to stop the car — because I shoot these roads all year.
That knowledge is the whole point of this notebook. Everything here comes from trips I've driven and photographs I've taken myself, not from reading other people's lists.
I also publish real-time POV driving films from these roads on YouTube — uncut, what you see is what the drive actually looks like. Watch a few before you decide.
Guests often ask whether I'll photograph their trip. Honestly: the useful thing I bring isn't a second camera, it's knowing where the good shots are. If you shoot — or just want your phone photos to finally look like the place — I'll put you in the right spot at the right hour. If you'd rather watch the mountains go by, that works too.