In The Footsteps of Marco Polo

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

• 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...)

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"