Photo Gallery: The Journey of a Lifetime - In the Footsteps of Marco Polo

December 2nd, 2008
Photo Gallery: The Journey of a Lifetime

View Denis Belliveau’s photographs from the journey from Venice to China and back.

A Tajik warlord in Northern Afghanistan who thought we were in the country to hunt for the giant mountain sheep called Marco Polo, named in honor of the explorer.

“The Tartars are of all men, the best able to endure exertion and hardship… They will go for a whole month without provisions and can ride a good ten days’ journey without making a ﬁre, living only on the blood of their horses.” — Marco Polo

The view from St. Mark’s Square, Venice, overlooking the gondola quay and Grand Canal.

In Tibet a cham or masked dance is held to commemorate the victory of Buddhism over Bon (the old animistic religion).

The Cham went on like this for hours, the crowd mumbling their prayers and kneading their prayer beads behind us. We sat mesmerized, in awe of the spectacle in front of us, ringside seats to a forbidden rite.

“They speak their own language and call themselves Tibet. . . . In this province coral brings a high price for it is hung round the necks of women and idols with great joy.” –Marco Polo

Behind us lies the famed Khyber Pass into Afghanistan in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, where if we didn’t get our visas for Iran we had concocted a dangerous plan.

This photo is one of our favorites. Not only because it captures the moment we landed in St. Marks Square two years after setting out from Venice but because it is candid and not taken by us. Most other photo’s of ourselves were self portraits, the camera sitting atop a tripod, a blank stare on our faces as we wait for the self timer to go off.

Here we are under the detailed Byzantine styled arch adjacent to the Polo family home not far from the Rialto Bridge in Venice.

The Chinese mu yu or slit drum is hollowed out from a solid log, usually in the shape of a ﬁsh, and it used ritually in Buddhist and Taoist temples.

The best-known parts of the Great Wall were built after the fall of the Yuan dynasty, when the Ming emperors determined that China would never again be overrun by the Mongols.

Venetian merchants, including the Polos, traded extensively in silk and, by the fourteenth century, the Italians themselves had learned the secret.

The inside of the tomb of Christ, or Holy Sepulchre, where the Polos obtained the precious holy oil requested by Kublai Khan, who believed it held miraculous properties.

Kublai Khan had requested that the Polo brothers return to him with one hundred scholarly priests, hand-chosen by the pope, as well as with holy oil from a lamp that the faithful believe burns eternally inside Christ’s tomb.

Erdene Zuu Monastery, Karakorum, Mongolia. Before Kublai embraced Tibetan Buddhism, the Mongols were shamanistic, worshipping heaven or the “clear blue sky.”

“There is not a bridge in the world to compare with it… It has 24 arches and piers and is built entirely of gray marble . . . on either side are columns topped by marble lions of great beauty and workmanship.” –Marco Polo

A young monk festively adorned for the Cham festival. Tibetans send their sons to the lamasery to be educated in Buddhist scriptures, Tibetan language, handwriting, literature and art as well as philosophy, logic and astronomy.

Our traveling companion, somewhere out on the steppes. After the fall of the Yuan, the Mongols went back to their old shamanistic ways before re-adopting Tibetan Buddhism in the sixteenth century.

The parasol is one of eight auspicious symbols of Buddhism. Its function is to cast a shadow, symbolizing protection from the heat, suffering, and desire of spiritually harmful forces.

“There are great numbers of maidens who are dedicated to amusing their male and female idols, to which they sing and dance and afford the merriest sport in the world.” –Marco Polo

Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, Kandy, Sri Lanka. A tooth of the Buddha is encased in seven gold caskets studded with precious stones, which have been given by various rulers over the centuries.

The ruins of Warangal where Rani Rudrama Devi ruled from 1261 until her death in 1296, the year after the Polos returned home.

Built in 1268, the Keshava Temple at Somanathapura is adorned with a riot of human ﬁgures that gave us a snapshot of daily life in the Hoysola kingdom at precisely the time Polo was there.

Interactives