Christoph Rehage came up with the idea of walking from China to Germany while studying cinematography in Beijing.

Having already walked from Paris to his home in Hanover in 2003, he decided four years later to up the ante – Beijing to Hanover on foot.

He set off on his 26th birthday – November 9 2007, but he never made it to Hanover.

After a year of arduous walking, Rehage had crossed China and had enough. He may not have reached his goal, but Rehage's extraordinary video of the experience is an internet sensation. The Longest Way has been watched more than 320,000 times on YouTube.

“Did I want to follow a course that would alienate me from the rest of the world – from my friends and family,” he says, “I decided no. It wasn’t worth it – you’ll see in the video – the beard, the frenetic look in my eyes.

“Walking isn’t freedom – you are not free in the desert when you are pushing yourself day after day.”

At the start of the journey, Rehage set out to shoot one photo a day, but soon decided that having people in the background and some movement “made it more fun”. It took him four months to edit the video – painstakingly aligning the eye level of the 1,500 photos he’d taken and uploaded on the way.

He used Google Earth and the local knowledge of people he met to plan the trip – mapping out two week’s walking at a time, aiming to cover 400km on each stint.

Rehage spurns comparisons with Christopher McCandless, the American who hiked into remote Alaska in 1990 and lived alone off the land, shunning society and materialism.

“It’s not like Into the Wild [the film and book about McCandless]. There was a phone connection in places and I had transport and people if I needed,” he says modestly.

But Rehage never cheated – he never got on a bus. “I decided to do it on foot and it became more important to be than anything else – to keep walking.”

Like McCandless did en route to Alaska, Rehage met some extraordinary people. Rehage recounts the story of a meeting a man near Zhangye he calls Teacher Xie.

Teacher Xie drags his home behind him - a wooden cart - and has been walking across China for 24 years.

Rehage talks humbly about a man who has a liking for German philosophy and lost both index fingers while working as a carpenter. “He is the true walking master,” says Rehage, whose time studying Chinese culture clearly left him with Asian sensibilities – modesty, inner calm and a respect for providence.

Similarities with McCandless end there – the American died of starvation in the Alaskan wilderness aged 24, but Rehage’s story is a happier one - he is now back in Germany with his friends and family.

Is he planning another trip?

“Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan will still be there when I get older,” he says, “right now I want to sort my life out.”