The Marco Polo Expedition

Marco Polo's 13th century account of his family's great exploratory journeys to and from the court of Kublai Khan provided information on the Silk Road, that network of trade routes linking the markets of China with Christendom. In May 1987, Richard Fisher set out with four companions to drive from ancient Antioch in south-east Turkey to arrive four months and 22,500 kilometres later in Beijing. This is the account of their journey through Turkey, Iran, the USSR and China which took three years to negotiate and even so was not without official hazard. Fisher recalls how they reached Tehran on the day the British Consulate was under seige and how they were turned back at gun-point from the previously agreed Iran-USSR border post and sent back to Turkey. In Russia eventually, they became the first recorded foreigners to cross the frontier at Turugart between Soviet Kirghizia and Chinese Xinjiang. Along the way they crossed the headwaters of the Euphrates and the Tigris, digressed to circumnavigate Lake Van and discovered black market rates of exchange on the Caspian Sea.
They eventually entered Russia via Kars and explored the great Soviet Central Asian cities of Merv, Bukhara, Samarkand and Kokand. In China they travelled through the Uighur Autonymous Region of Xinjiang from Kashgar to Hotan, along the northern edge of the great Taklamakan Desert to Turfan and Dunhuang, then on through the Great Wall to Lanzhou, Xian and Beijing itself. Throughout their journey they recount their observations of Central Asia today, its people and places and its pride in its past, as demonstrated by restoration work to Islamic, Buddhist and Christian monuments along the route. Richard Fisher has written a biography of Joseph Lister and Tom Ang is associate editor of "Photography".