Looking in the same direction: a Chinese couple explores the world

After landing in Antarctica, Liang Hong put on a wedding dress watched by penguins.

She and Zhang Xinyu were going to be the first couple ever to wed in the frozen continent.

It was 2014, and they were nearing the end of a marathon journey to some of the most remote and inhospitable places in the world.

It had opened their eyes and opened their hearts, and brought on them international attention.

That day on the frozen continent Zhang surprised his bride by showing her the good wishes sent to them by foreign leaders.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had quoted a poem, which Liang still recalls: "The experience made us learn that love does not mean to look at each other, but to look in the same direction."

Shortly after Zhang, 38, and Liang, 36, finished a breath-taking journey that began in 2012.

They had done what no other person in China had previously attempted: they had traveled through strife-torn Somalia; wondered at the irradiated ghost city of Chernobyl, in Ukraine; shivered at Oymyakon, the coldest place in the northern hemisphere; and sweltered near the molten magma of Marum, one of the world's most active volcanoes.

Last year, they completed an 18,000-nautical mile odyssey by yacht, sailing across the Pacific Ocean and down to Antarctica before going along the coasts of North and South America.

The journey took them through many dangerous places and severe oceanic and climate extremes, but they never stopped.

In the next few months, they will drive themselves through the Middle East.