Marco Polo - Greatest Explorer | Infographics Documentary

A young man looks over the wild sea and knows one thing. He's about to be abandoned. After all, the sea wasn't wild due to the storm, but due to men fighting and cannons flying. He briefly wonders what would happen to his family that was traveling with him, but then he abandons the thought. He was a discoverer, a soon-to-be author. He couldn't be scared of adventure anymore than he could be afraid of a pen and paper. This was the famous Marco Polo, one of the most well-known Europeans to travel along Asia Have you ever played Marco Polo, the discovery game? The real Marco Polo was quite a discoverer himself and penned down a book that inspired Christopher Columbus to explore. Polo was a citizen of Venice and grew up in a family where almost every single one of his male family members were well-traveled and went to faraway places like China. In 1271, there came time for a new journey for the Polo older brothers, but this time they took their younger brother with them. Previously, they had taken a famous expedition to deliver Kublai Khan's letter, the famous Mongol emperor, to the Pope. Now, they were traveling east on a new journey with many gifts from the Pope to give to Kublai Khan, and they were also accompanied by two other ships, which abandoned them when they reached a war zone. The Polo family pushed through regardless, traveling through Armenia, Persia, and Afghanistan. After that, they followed a route that went over the famous Parmer Mountains of Central Asia to reach their final destination, China. Strangely, the Polos didn't follow the same route they always did. They took a swing to the north and went to a great city of that time called Tabriz, the capital of Mongolian Empire at that time. Later in his book, Marco Polo described Tabriz like this, a great city surrounded by beautiful and pleasant gardens. It is excellently situated, so the goods brought to here come from many regions. From there, the second part of their journey began. The Polos left Tabriz to travel south and to Hormuz, a port of the nearby Gulf, in great spirits. They had intended to travel by ship to the Chinese coast. They didn't anticipate that ships available in Hormuz would be near to sinking. Marco Polo described them as wretched affairs, only stitched together with twine made from the husk of the Indian nut. So, they decided they would rather change their course than die at sea. The Polos continued to travel over the land from Hormuz to many cities like Here, Marco Polo got ill, so they had to stay in Badakhshan for a year to allow him to recover. Badakhshan had luckily emerged as an important trading center of the antique market. Eventually, Polo did recover and became well enough to travel, so they started their third part of their journey, over the Pamir Mountains and past the Taklamakan Desert. You can already tell it was a hard, hard journey. As soon as Polo could stand without fainting, the party went over the Pamir Mountains. Then they reached the edges of the Taklamakan Desert at a place called Yarkand. Here, locals were extremely prone to goiter, which he thought was caused by water quality there. In reality, goiter is an enlarged thyroid gland which is caused by an iodine deficiency. Polo also wrote about another peculiar province called Pem, which was rich in weird customs. In this province, when a woman's husband had to leave for more than 20 days, she was to be remarried, entitled by the local judge. Part four was a hard one. They had to go through a desert called the Gobi Desert. In Marco Polo's own words, the desert was reported to be so long that it would take an entire year to go from one end to the other end, and the narrowest point, it would take a month to cross. Surprisingly, this one-year journey was only possible because the route through the desert was very well established at this point in history. There would be just one city to cross before reaching Kublai Khan's court, a city named Suchow. Suchow was situated in an oasis that included a beautiful lake called the Crescent Lake. It was one of the most major stops on the famous Silk Road, which is half the legacy of Marco Polo and his travels. The southern Silk Road led to India, to Vialahasa, to Mongolia, and southern Siberia. Suchow controlled the entrance into a narrow corridor, which was basically a door between China and the rest of Central Asia. So it was quite a hustling, bustling city that must have appealed to Marco Polo's inner merchant. After thoroughly enjoying this city, the Polos decided they had better get going to Kublai Khan's court before the gifts rotted. Finally, Marco Polo reached Kublai Khan's court safe and sound. Having weathered many storms, they reached the Emperor's summer residence in Shantou in the year of 1275. Shantou was the Beijing of that time, a huge city with a lot of rich people and huge houses that belonged to them. Marco Polo had written a great deal about his first meeting with Kublai Khan. He said that they knelt before the Emperor and made their obedience known with the utmost humility. The Great Khan told them to rise and receive them with honor. He was apparently quite cheerful and asked many questions about their health and difficulties they had faced in getting there. Of course, their stay was not without worries. Not that the Emperor didn't like them, quite the opposite. He was fond of the Polos, but when an Emperor is fond of you, it is impossible to leave his presence, no matter what danger you find yourself in. The same happened with Marco Polo and his family. It would be many years before Marco Polo would be able to return home. Do you think Marco Polo felt trapped in the court of Kublai Khan? Please comment below.