In the Footsteps of Marco Polo Virtual Travel Bug

In the Footsteps of Marco Polo Virtual Travel Bug seeks to duplicate Marco Polo's travels from Venice to China and back at the end of the 13th Century. The first stop, of course, is Venice! After that, is anyone taking a slow boat from Venice to Jerusalem?

Created in the spirit of a TB that expired in Asia, this virtual TB would like to visit virtual or actual caches along the route of Marco Polo. The dogtag number for this bug is 320317. You can retreive it as a normal TB and it can be deposited in any cache but only via A NOTE. LOG IT USING A NOTE ON A REGULAR CACHE.

From Venice, Marco and his companions found themseves

Sailing along the western coast of Greece
Sailing around the southern coast of Crete
Sojourning in Jerusalem
and in Turkey
and in Iraq (there is only one geocache is Iraq currently...) including Tabriz
A meander through the Valley of the Assassins in Iran (remember Freya Stark? -- She followed Marco Polo there)
A meander through Kerman in Afghanistan
A meander by Minab (Hormus) on the Northern part of the Persian Gulf
Back up to Balkh and Wakhan in northern Afghanistan
Thence to Kashgar through the Pamirs (or the Karakorum Pass will do...)
Thence to Xanadu (Shangdo) way across the Taklamakan Desert
And to Daido (Beijing) Whew! This is a good resting place, but not for long...
Here the route splits. Marco seems to have taken the Burma Road to Myanmar (or almost), then returned to Xanadu. Thence to
Yongzhou,
Hangzhou and
Quanzhou.
In Hangzhou, the Tracker seeks to visit one of his favorite places, Phoenix Hill, the site of the Palaces of the Southern Song Dynasty. Thence to Quanzhou. Thus ends Marco's China sojourn.
Marco returned via the South China Sea past what is now, at least, Singapore and stayed for a time in

Belawan in Sumatra. (A post card from here would be precious.)
Thence to Shri Lanka, and in India to
Tanjore (Thanjavur)
Kerala
Bombay (Mumbai)
Thence to Junagadh above Bombay
Thence to Minab again in the Persian Gulf
Up Red Sea through Suez (overland then)
And through the Aegean (but north of Crete this time)
to Venice! (though it appears that he was held in Genoa for a time...)

For a reasonble conjecture on the routing, visit the National Geographics's site on this at (visit link)

An actual Marco Polo Travel Bug is making its way slowly towards exiting the US to begin its journey in Europe. This virtual version should have a better chance at duplicating the route via virtual hyperdrive.