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One of the best. It sure shows the times of today. The original journy was one that would be hard to match.
If you like ancient, medieval, and modern geography, this is a must read. Grab yourself a hot chocolate, sit back, and travel down the silk road and through all the exotic lands Marco Polo traveled in the thirteenth/ fourteenth centuries. In the service of Kublai Khan, Marco Polo may have been the most travelled man in history and his "Travels" brought the culture and geography of far off-lands to medieval Europeans. The author writes in a very personal, sometimes humorous manner, rather than making it overly scholastic which gives the reader a "real" feel for what the journey was like and how the different places affected the authors. I have not read Marco Polo's "Travels," but, after reading this, it will definitely be part of my Christmas reading list. The two authors are the first to have traced Marco Polo's route just as he would have done it- without air travel.
If I could ask the authors one question, after reading this book, it would be which places they daydream or think about most. The authors trace Marco Polo's route, starting from his home in Venice, through the middle east, Asia, Southeast Asia, and back again. The best thing about this book is that it does not sever medieval geography with modern geography but attempts to give light to what Marco Polo would have encountered while documenting the modern day culture, religion, and poltical climate of these same places. They spend months crossing each country, detailing modern day culture and geography while drawing interesting parralels to passages from Marco Polo's travels. The text is accompanied by stunning photographs. Personally, I was very moved by their visit to Mongolia.
This is a wonderful tribute to Marco Polo and makes me want to read more about the silk road, as well.
In the complete absence of artificial light in the outback of Mongolia, at night, stand there. None. On November 16th, 2008, after briefly listening to the longwinded, weird & obnoxious comments of Kornheiser, Tirico & The Blond Blowhard, I bolted, switching over to a PBS station - & inadvertently stumbled into the greatest thing I've seen on TV in at least the past 20 years: the video, "In The Footsteps of Marco Polo."I didn't move for the next hour & cursed my luck that I had missed the first third of the program. That's how many I'd give this book.Oddly, the adventurers almost completely abstained from providing dates.
And other than my objection to being called a "knucklehead" because I'm not buying the global warning dogma - sorry, Dennis - I have no criticisms. It's a good thing ESPN has ruined Monday Night Football. Look up. And that aim for the reader would be ruined, & their story adulterated, if the text had included the dates of the journey's events in Turkey, Afghanistan, China, etc. Zero.IFMP is beautifully written.
How many stars do you see. Fortunately, the PBS video did feature two chronological facts: their journey lasted 712 days, & it ended on March 4th, 1995 (thank God for the dating systems in hand-held video cameras). The next day, I ordered IFMP, the book.I've now read it twice, enthralled. But this worked out perfectly. It obviously must have been edited with great care, even with love.
And the photographs - taken by Belliveau & O'Donnell during their trek that recreated the journey undertaken by Marco Polo, & which illustrate the story - are enthralling. Their self-elected determination was to imagine - as much as possible - that they, too, were travelers in the 13th Century. Their final day in Venice, as honored guests of the city, was also the eye-popping exact date of Pluto going Retrograde - the significance of which was revealed to this writer some thirteen years later.
Until earlier last century, those "white Jews" took slaves, converting them as "black Jews"; on Shabbat the latter had to sit on the floor of the shul. I liked the Karakorum setting, with haunting open landscapes you can see in their photography and their simple scenes among the Mongols. How can you resist any narrative that crosses Taklamakan, the sandy wasteland you can get in but not out of by its name, followed by the Desert of Lop. When I am gone it will remain." (177)A Cochin refuses to let them take pictures of the synagogue in India on Jew Road; the spice trade that made his people ancient merchants there has died out, and the congregation withers. However, the photos are splendid and the chatty presentation, with easily read type and shaded font for the excerpts-- rather few, so I suppose Marco Polo did tell his fair share of tall tales to fill out his book-- from the original account give modern armchair travelers a thoughtful way to gain instruction from the trail here. Among the Khotan dunes amidst a sandy sprawl the size of Germany, Denis comes upon "a shattered tree that had drifted these waves for eons." Halting his camel, he runs his hand over the softened grain of the wood. (178) Transience permeates this book, fittingly and poignantly. "Now we pray in public and socialize at home." (268) Suspected as CIA spies often, the travellers meet their share of difficulty, just as Marco Polo's party.
"In Xanadu, we found no there was no stately pleasure dome, no lush gardens filled with game, no sumptuous concubines. Hunters circle a felled beast, seeking its spirit's forgiveness. This can lead to slight confusion, as the maps as endpapers fail to show the direct routes taken, and there was in the Persian episode as they narrate some alteration of plans, and why this itinerary is not drawn on the maps appears an oversight that needed correcting. The pair realize that due to assimilation and globalization, the pressure of the Han Chinese majority on ethnic minorities (as they witness with the Uighirs and Tibetans) falls upon such peoples.
Every minute of every day the light changes and I see something different.but more importantly.it has helped me to realize that I am changing more than my subject. "These are the last days that Polo's descriptions can be witnessed," they lament. Avoiding airplanes, falling into the clutches of Afghan warlords, and enduring Canton's hellish train station, they recount their own share of adventures.What they find is how accurate "Marco Millions'" travelogue can be when tracing his route in desolate areas still largely the same as seven hundred years ago. Destroyed by the Ming so there would be no memory of the Yuan-- we stood there defying them, daring to remember." (166)In Sumatra they view the same act done by our primitive ancestors. footsteps, all 25,000 miles, two New York City explorers combine lovely photos with casual prose as they leave Venice, trek overland into China and back again. There was only a windswept plain and the remnants of an outer brick wall that once encompassed the Great Khan's summer palace. A Chinese professor in Xi'an paints a pagoda for years "and it's never the same.
They talk back to their churlish Chinese and Persian handlers, and they navigate more than one police state with aplomb. "Maybe a child climbed this tree thousands of years ago when it was alive," he muses. The first to follow in his 13th c. This may be the oldest ritual still alive today, in such remote fastnesses as found by the pair of adventurers. In Sri Lanka, at Adam's Peak, they see its shadow cast over forty miles of a verdant plain. "Maybe a monk meditated under its leaves when it stood in the courtyard of a Buddhist monastery of perhaps a mad Tibetan marauder was put to death and hung from his limbs." Their host, nicknamed "Grumpy" for his resemblance to a certain dwarf, "barked for his boys to start hacking at the bleached trunk, and I reflected on the tree's final demise.
They have trouble getting through Afghanistan as warned, and also in entering Iran. Also, I tended to lose track of how long it took them to get from place to place over two years, and I would have liked a detailed chronology on their map to keep up with their pace as it ebbed and flowed. On the Yunnan-Tibet Old Tea Horse Road, similar enchantment comes with the Naxi people, who now as then cap their teeth with their wealth, in gold. Overall, this book leaves, as Marco's did, half the tale out, I suppose. Denis Belliveau, who tells the story, cringes inside thinking of the irony of Passover seders there, but as many times, if not all, he keeps silent for his host.Other places, he and Fran O'Donnell, ex-Marine, speak out. "We used to pray in our homes and socialize in public," one student dares to tell them.
Tonight it would heat my bed and cook my food, completing its journey as it helped me on mine." (125)It's easy to see how such stories endure on such a trail, and how new ones emerge. As before, tolerance and hospitality, rudeness and danger, violence and threat fill the pages of another Westerners' journey to the Far East and all points in between.
I was truly sorry to put it down at the end and look forward to sharing it with family and friends. I expected it to be a coffee table book, when my daughter gave it to me, that no one ever looks at. But once I started reading, it was as compelling as any thriller I've read. I genuinely felt like a travel companion experiencing the same ups and downs, exhiliarating and depressing times as they felt. They brought Marco Polo's travels alive and the text and gorgeous pictures beautifully complimented each other.
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