In The Footsteps of Marco Polo
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Owner:
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Carharty
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Released:
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Monday, January 27, 2003
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Origin:
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California, United States
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Recently Spotted:
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In My Deer
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In the Footsteps of Marco Polo Tracker 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?
It would be great to tag along with a traveler, especially an overland/sailing traveler, during the first long leg, say Venice to Jerusalem.
From Venice, Marco and his companions found themseves
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Sailing along the western coast of Greece
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Sailing around the southern coast of Crete
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Sojourning in Jerusalem
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and in Turkey
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and in Iraq (there is only one geocache is Iraq currently...) including
Tabriz
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A meander through the Valley of the Assassins in Iran (remember Freya Stark?
-- She followed Marco Polo there)
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A meander through Kerman in Afghanistan
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A meander by Minab (Hormus) on the Northern part of the Persian Gulf
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Back up to Balkh and Wakhan in northern Afghanistan
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Thence to Kashgar through the Pamirs (or the Karakorum Pass will do...)
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Thence to Xanadu (Shangdo) way across the Taklamakan Desert
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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
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Yongzhou,
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Hangzhou and
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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
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Belawan in Sumatra. (A post card from here would be precious.)
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Thence to Shri Lanka, and in India to
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Tanjore (Thanjavur)
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Kerala
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Bombay (Mumbai)
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Thence to Junagadh above Bombay
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Thence to Minab again in the Persian Gulf
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Up Red Sea through Suez (overland then)
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And through the Aegean (but north of Crete this time)
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to Venice! (though it appears that he was held in Genoa for a time...)
The exact routing, of course, is conjecture. One of my favorites is that of the
National
Geographic Society Study.
Since parts of his route are as problematic now as they were then,
the Polo Tracker is in the form of a Chinese signature stamp which can
authenticate documents in faraway places new to geocaching. These documents
may be post cards, or photos used as post cards, or whatever can be stamped
and mailed. The stamp or "chop" was made for its owner, Carharty,
in Hangzhou, China. Hangzhou is one of the cities that most impressed Marco,
so it is appropriate that the Footsteps Tracker, in the form of this stamp,
be from this city.
Where it is possible, the Marco Polo Footsteps Tracker would like to
hop from geocache to geocache (or even encourage the creation of geocaches),
but in the absence of of these, a stamp from the signature seal on any
old post card or local memorabilia will be fine. Send to "J. Carhart Manley,
Philosophy, Cal Poly Pomona, 3801 W. Temple Ave., Pomona, CA USA 91768"
Gallery Images related to In The Footsteps of Marco Polo
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Tracking History (9027.7mi) View Map
www.wheresgeorge.com placed it in Sour grapes
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California
- .46 miles
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Visit Log
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www.wheresgeorge.com posted a note for it
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Visit Log
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went looking for the grand central staion cache couldn't find it for the life of me...oh well. going to put it in a highly visited cache soon.
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www.wheresgeorge.com grabbed it
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Visit Log
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I found a suitable cache to put this one in... The grand central staion cache near LAX. I am going to try to make it out there this weekend.
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www.wheresgeorge.com retrieved it from Travel Bug Terminal
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California
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Visit Log
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I dropped off Tommy the tow truck and Headed south partner TB's hopefully they'll go somewhere fun. I was in such a hurry I really didn't pay much attention as to where this TB wanted to go, but I have it now so I am going to try to take it to a cache near LAX so it could grab an International flight...good luck thats a heck of a journey for a little travel bug...
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Carharty placed it in Travel Bug Terminal
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California
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Visit Log
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Carharty grabbed it
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Visit Log
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data on this page is cached for 3 mins
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