Canadian Ryan Pyle moved to China in 2002 and established himself as a freelance photographer, traveling the country shooting for a host of publications, including The Wall Street Journal. In 2010, he turned the lenses on himself and his brother Colin as the two set off on a 65-day, 11,000-mile Guinness World Record-breaking motorcycle journey that circumnavigated China.

The pair captured their journey on video and wrote a book documenting their exploits, ' The Middle Kingdom Ride: Two Brothers, Two Motorcycles, One Epic Journey Around China.' In 2011, the Pyle brothers tackled India, biking around its perimeter. The India Ride will be their next joint project.

China Real Time recently caught up with Ryan Pyle to ask him about the dangers of Chinese roads, brotherly bonding and seeing China through fresh eyes.

I was sitting with my brother Colin in Central Park in March 2010 and he told me that he needed to shake up his life and wanted to make some serious, game-changing decisions. So he quit his job, sold his house and decided to take a gap year and see the world. That gap year started with us spending 65 days riding motorcycles around China.

We have both enjoyed riding motorcycles for years, and when Colin told me that he wanted to come to China and explore the country and see the country through my eyes, we just naturally gravitated to this form of transportation.

As much as our trip is about adventure and exploring China, it is also a story about two brothers who have lived apart for over a decade and are keen to reconnect.

You were already very knowledgeable about China, including having spent a lot of time in rural areas. What did you learn on this trip that you didn't already know?

When we started The Middle Kingdom Ride I had already been living in China for about eight years, working as a freelance documentary photographer for mainly Western media. I had worked in all the provinces and felt I had a clear handle on what China was all about, but our motorcycle trip changed a lot of that. Traveling around China on motorways is really hard. What I learned on the trip is that no matter how great China's roads and infrastructure is, it'll never be safe out there. There are so many cars and so many trucks and so many donkey carts and so many people driving the wrong way on the road. It's a death trap.

How much of a factor Mother Nature played in our journey. When you fly from one city to another you just accept that the weather will be different, and prepare accordingly. But traveling by land over great distances it can be shocking how quickly things can change how often in 100 miles. The temperature would drastically change or rain storms would sweep in and cool us off and then the blistering sun would return. Of course on a motorcycle you are completely exposed to the elements, so every couple hours we had to stop and add or take off layers.

Colin had zero China experience, which is what made the trip so interesting. We were constantly comparing our impressions and opinions about what we were seeing and what it all meant. I believe fresh eyes are important and with me having already lived in China for so long, having a chance to view China again through Colin's eyes was a real treat.

Yes. Rolling in to Kashgar is a great example. It is a city that I've been photographing for over five years and I'm close to finishing a photography book on the region. So when we arrived I knew where I wanted to eat and what I wanted to see and it was like being back in my old neighborhood. Colin, on the other hand, was blown away by the contrasts between eastern China and western China. As he had never traveled through Central Asia, seeing the Uighur people and learning about Islamic culture was remarkable to him. I even think that the Id Kah Mosque in central Kashgar was the first mosque he had ever seen. It was a brilliant trip.

There is a highway that runs from China's northwestern Xinjiang province south to Tibet. It's known as the G219 Highway, and it runs for about 1,000 miles at an average altitude of 16,000 feet above sea level. We struggled along that road for four days -- it was perhaps the toughest leg of our journey, but it was also haunting.

Never in my life had I experienced such isolation and remoteness. Never had I had to tackle such challenging road conditions in such extreme weather conditions at such a high altitude. Some might call it a perfect storm of insane riding conditions, but for Colin and I it was the challenge of a lifetime. The days were long, the headaches from the altitude were sharp, but it didn't dampen our spirits because we were so in awe of the high altitude desert landscape around us.

When we finished our journey Colin and I decided to form our own television production company and focus on making adventure travel television in various parts of the world. When we began thinking of names for our company we both immediately thought that G219 Productions would be the perfect fit, in memory of our four days of the most intense riding of our lives.