Today one can fly from Venice to Beijing, the Chinese capital—which under the reign of the Khans was called Khan-
Fourteenth-century painting of Marco Polo entering Beijing. Reproduced by permission of the Granger Collection Ltd.
Balik (kahn-bah-LEEK)—in a few hours; Marco's journey, by contrast, took more than three years. He spent more than a year of that time in the mountains of Afghanistan, stricken with an unknown illness. Perhaps it was during this time that his father and uncle taught him the language of the Mongols, which they had mastered on their earlier trip. Marco also learned Farsi, or Persian, a common tongue for travelers and tradesmen in the East.
Finally, however, the Polos were able to resume their journey eastward, which took them across the Pamir (puh-MEER) range between Afghanistan and China. The Pamirs are among the world's highest mountains, and the journey—dur-ing which Marco saw an animal that came to be called the "Marco Polo sheep"—was a difficult one.
Coming down off the mountains, the travelers entered China itself, and for a long way, the going was relatively easy. Then they came to the Gobi Desert, which is nearly the size of Alaska. It took the Polos thirty days of hard traveling to cross this extremely inhospitable region, even though they did so at its narrowest part. At night, the desert winds became so fierce they played tricks on the journeyers' minds, and Marco later reported hearing voices calling to him in the chilly darkness.
World History
