Reading path · 7 stops

Explorers and Travellers

Seven journeys that stitched the world together.

Before the world was mapped it was walked, ridden and sailed, often by people who had little idea what lay ahead. This path follows seven travellers whose journeys, and whose accounts of them, changed what the world knew about itself.

Suits the Navigator · the Chronicler

  1. 1 · Encyclopedia · Person · 602–664XuanzangThe Tang monk who walked to India for scriptures and came back a legend.
  2. 2 · Encyclopedia · Person · 1275–1292 in ChinaMarco PoloA Venetian in the service of Kublai Khan, whose book gave Europe its picture of Asia.
  3. 3 · Encyclopedia · Person · 1334–1341 at DelhiIbn BattutaThirty years and some 120,000 kilometres across the Islamic world and beyond.
  4. 4 · Encyclopedia · PersonZheng HeTreasure fleets to Arabia and Africa, decades before Europe rounded the Cape.
  5. 5 · Encyclopedia · PersonChristopher ColumbusFour voyages that joined two worlds and began a catastrophe and an age at once.
  6. 6 · Encyclopedia · Person · 1498Vasco da GamaThe sea road to India, and the gun-backed trade empire that followed it.
  7. 7 · Encyclopedia · Person · c. 1480–1521Ferdinand MagellanThe expedition that proved the world round by sailing it, though its commander never came home.

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