Silk Riders: On the Trail of Marco Polo

Silk Riders: Jo and Gareth Morgan's Incredible Journey on the Trail of Marco Polo was an interesting read. Jo and Gareth were avid motorbikers, and as they were finishing a ride high in the Indian Himalaya they started thinking of their future tours. A fellow rider tossed out the silk road and Jo and Gareth really liked the idea. The trip took two years to organize. In that time they had to figure out political details, travel logistics, cultural awareness issues, get and curry sponsorship, and of course figure out who among their friends could join them on their trip. BMW only provided at large discount 7 bikes and so the trip was limited to 7. 

The 7 were kiwis, but their trip would begin at the BMW factory in Munich where the new bikes recently broken in in the Australian outback and imported into Germany to begin the trip would get a total tuning in readiness for the multi-thousand-kilometer journey.

Then in 2005 the trip began. They were waved off in Munich by a single person, an English motorcyclist who journeyed from Yorkshire to Bavaria to see them off, and off they went through the lower reaches of Germany, into Austria, to the foothills of the Alps, and onward to Venice, the family home of Marco Polo. Despite the Polo family being one of the most prominent families of Venice and despite the since fame of the explorer, the 7 were surprised at the few memorials commemorating one of the city's most famous past residents. There is a library where Marco's last will and testament is held and the San Lorenzo church, in the yard of which he was buried in 1324. Near the site of his homestead is an area of little courts called 'Il Milione', which was Marco's nickname, 'the teller of a million tales'. 

Then off to the Balkans they sped. Few people are aware that Marco Polo was not a Venetian by birth but rather a Croatian. Marco was born on Korcula, an island of what is now Croatia. Of course the 7 had to go to the island, ferrying one of the bikes over for a picture with the iconic bike in front of what is said to be the house of Marco Polo's birth. 

To Serbia, Bulgaria, then Gallipolli, Turkey, which was very significant to the Kiwis as they recalled the Kiwis who died trying to claim the cliffs of Gallipolli. Onward to Istanbul where Jo started to having trouble as women were not to be seen in public, certainly not on a motorbike, and even though as she progressed further into Iran, the chador she wore just wasn't quite enough because it outlined her provocative bottom as she sped along. 

A disappointment to me in the book was the little attention given to following the trail of Marco Polo, as far as information on what they discovered in relation to Marco. Instead, the intent of the book was just to skim over the countries the 7 sped through and give mostly motorcycle commentation on the road conditions or visa issues. There were tidbits on culture but obviously the book was about a mad dash across Asia following a trail and not really picking up that many culturally rich experiences. 

That said, the highlight of the Iranian segment of the trip was the visit to the Valley of the Assassins, of which Marco wrote. The fortress of Alamut still remains, and as legend goes, an 11th century Hashish-iyun sect, basically an Islamic mercenary group led by a fanatical imam, had an unusual method for training young men to fight unconditionally. He would dose them with hashish and then turn them loose in a five-star pleasure garden stocked with milk and honey and virgins--all accouterments of paradise. After a couple of weeks, he removed them and cut off their narcotic supply. Finding themselves in a military camp they were told that they had been to paradise and if they hoped to live again in the style they had experienced in paradise, they would need to distinguish themselves in battle, and the imam of course provided that. These feared, driven warriors were known as Hashish-iyun, and the word 'assassin' derives from this group.

The Silk Riders only did the overland route from Venice to Xanadu (now Yuanshangdu) and down to Beijing. They didn't even attempt to follow Marco's route of 20+ years. 

To Tehran (the city that couldn't possibly have worse traffic, and motorcycles were forbidden in them for fear of drive-by motorcycle gunners) so their motorcycles were transported via truck. Lots of problems but eventually they were allowed to proceed onward to Turkmenistan, perched on the edge of the Karakum Desert across which they would have to travel. 

Then to Uzbekistan, the country that is the world's largest silk producer, and the country that was the half-way point of the 7 bikers' trip. Onward to Kyrgyzstan and most notably to Kara-Kul in the northwest where there are soaring mountains, alpine meadows and cooler temperatures. Close is the beautiful Lade Issyk-Kul, the second highest navigable alpine lake in the world after Lake Titicaca in Peru. Jo had swum in Lake Titicaca two years previous on another tour, and she attempted to take a dip in Lake Issyk-Kul in memory of her previous swim.

Of course they had chances to try the many exotic foods on the regions they passed through. In Kyrgyzstan is was the kumys, the fermented mare's milk popular among the nomads and which Marco had reported favorably that the drink tasted like white wine. The 7 heartily disagreed!

To China. One of the most amazing highlight in China was in Dunhuang, known for the famous Mogao Grottoes, or the Caves of 1000 Buddhas, which is a structure carved into a rocky cliff-face at the edge of the Lop Nor Desert. The Buddhas trace back to the first which was carved in AD366 when a Buddhist monk carved one Buddha figure into a rock. Over the ensuing 1500 years, more Buddhas were added, but not only Buddhas as the name suggests, but also the life of the local people. In the 20th century a chamber was discovered containing thousands of manuscripts which had been sealed since the 11th century. Unfortunately, explorers from England, Germany, Russia and more countries pillaged the place, dispersing artifacts around the globe but leaving the caves as empty shells, but ones which continue to whisper the reminders of great secrets from Chinese antiquity.

Continuing onward out of the desert great mounds of packed earth started appearing ... remnants of the ancient Great Wall which ended in the desert and which in their entirety were built over a period of 1500 years. This amazing wall eventually was over 10,000 kilometers in distance, but despite the great expanse, the beacon towers could relay a message of attack, fire, emergency from the furthest-most tower in the desert back to Peking in less than 30 minutes! 

Of course they cycled to Xian, the capital of China until Kubla Khan (Marco's Great Khan), the man who shifted the reins of command to Peking in the 14th century. They viewed the 2000-year-old, life-sized warriors guarding the royal tomb that was discovered in 1974 by a farmer digging a well. The 7 reckoned 300,000 workers were needed in this construction that took over 35 years to build.

From Xian to Mongolia, the end of the road. They headed to Shangdu, known to Marco as Xanadu and which, according to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan had his stately pleasure-dome. Once they got there, they were in trouble with the authorities as to their purpose in that town. And then they came to realize that Shangdu was not the old Xanadu but Yuanshangdu, 200 kilometers away, was. And off they sped to Yuanshangdu, where in 1275 Kublai Khan had received Niccolo and Maffeo Polo and Niccolo's boy, Marco. This was the town that marked the eastern limit of Kublai Khan's empire, which stretched right back the way they had come, to Hungary. This was the end of the Silk Riders enterprise. Since April, they had covered almost 20,000 kilometers, crossed two major deserts, dodged through a war zone, visited the three inland oceans of the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea, and traversed the entire distance from west to east of the Great Wall.

They saddled up and set off for Beijing, the city known as Khan-Balik, "the Lord's City", in Kublai Khan's day. Their journey culminated with a ceremonial banquet at the New Zealand embassy and well attended by members of the BMW owners' club. would be held in their honor for the completion of their journey.

For a 52:30 minute YouTube clip on their journey, watch "Silk Riders - Motorcycling tour in the footsteps of Marco Polo",  and their blog on their journey.

11 Endangered Traditions from Around the World

The sum total of all ideas, dreams, legends, rituals brought into the world by the mankind since the dawn of our time—this is our ‘ethnosphere’. This is humanity’s great legacy.

As Wade Davis, author of Dreams from Endangered Cultures and National Geographic explorer, describes, some of this legacy is expressed in physical objects or impressive constructions, for example the man-made wonders of the world. However, other aspects can be less tangible living cultural expressions that have been passed down through generations and contribute to our collective sense of identity and community. Whether these expressions take the form of rituals, festivities, skills, dance or knowledge—they elicit certain emotions within us or make us feel a sense of belonging. It is an unavoidable truth of modernity that, along with many of the benefits that globalization has brought to society, it is also causing some of our gloriously diverse cultural heritage to be lost.

The legendary anthropologist Margaret Mead said before she passed away that her greatest fear was that as we headed towards this blandly amorphous generic worldview, not only would we see the entire range of the human imagination reduced to a more narrow modality of thought, but that we would wake from a dream one day having forgotten there were even other possibilities.

“In the end, then, it really comes down to a choice: do we want to live in a monochromatic world of monotony or do we want to embrace a polychromatic world of diversity?— Wade Davis

UNESCO is currently safeguarding and attempting to preserve 298 traditions that the organization has listed as ‘intangible cultural heritage’. Below are eleven illustrations of very intriguing and delightful traditions from this endangered extravagant ethnographic record. Illustrating them here is a gentle reminder that there are an infinite number of ways of thinking and orientating one's self on this pale blue dot we call home.

1 | Vanuatu Sand Drawing

Long before Snapchat existed, the artists from the Vanuatu archipelago in the South Pacific were creating ephemeral messages—traced by a single finger along a continuous meandering line of an imagined grid to produce a graceful set of geometric patterns in the cooled ash of cooking fires over the volcanic black soil. Not only are they beautiful, these sand drawings possess several layers of meaning: they can be repositories of information, illustrations for stories, signatures, or simply messages and objects of contemplation. (source)

2 | Generational Vietnamese Gongs

Originating from the appropriately named ancient ‘Dong Son’ civilization, the belief systems of the communities form a mystical world where gongs produce a privileged language between men, gods and the supernatural world. Behind every gong there is a god or goddess, that grows more powerful as the gong ages. In the central Vietnamese highlands, gongs are a symbol of a family’s wealth and prestige; every family owns at least one to pass down through generations. In fact, no rite of passage in their lives, from sacrificing bullocks to victory celebrations, is complete without them. (source)

3 | The Hopping Procession of Echternach

If hopping alongside 13,000 people sounds like fun, head down to the medieval town of Echternach in Luxembourg on the Tuesday of Pentecost (a Christian religious festival) and join in the fun! It is a thoroughly light-hearted occasion, yet also served as a gesture of defiance in days gone by when foreigners threatened Luxembourg’s survival as a country. The secret to the harmonious hopping lies in the folded cloth held by the dancers in each row. Watch closely to notice subtle differences in the dancing styles, German pilgrims being more energetic in contrast to the relaxed steps of the Belgians. (source)

4 | Chinese Shadow Puppetry

A form of theatre in which the colorful silhouette figures, many of which have between 12-24 movable joints, are manipulated by puppeteers who are often also masters of improv singing and falsetto. The puppetry show isn’t purely for entertainment either, since it passes on cultural history, social beliefs and unique local customs. (source)

5 | Chinese Wooden Movable-Type Printing

One of the world’s oldest printing techniques, wooden movable-type printing, takes place in Rui’an County, Zhejiang Province. The men who draw and hand-engrave the characters by hand require intensive training—at present only 11 people over 50 years of age have mastered all of the techniques. (source)

6 | Croatian Gingerbread Making

Gingerbread has become a symbol of Croatian identity—not only is the process of making the gingerbread difficult, each craftsman will also decorate the gingerbread in a specific way with small pictures, messages, motifs and mirrors—no Croatian festival or wedding is complete without an ample supply of gingery deliciousness. (source)

7 | Turkish Oil Wrestling Festival

Since 1346, that is, for the past seven centuries (making it the longest-standing annual sporting event in the history of the world) ‘pehlivan’ wrestlers have travelled to Edirne in Turkey for Kirkpinar—a competitive oil wrestling festival. Each one-on-one oily battle is decided by the ‘pehlivan’ who can pin the other for long enough. When this happens, the winner will kiss the defeated as is the custom, and not unlike in a gladiator’s ring in ancient Spartacus, the testosterone-fuelled audience goes wild. (source)

8 | Tsiattista Poetic Duelling

Picture an epic rap battle... now imagine it’s in Greek-Cypriot poetry and performed with violin or lute in the background. The ‘Tsiattista’ performers improvise rhyming couplets on specific themes within strict time constraints and attempt to outwit their opponents to win over the crowd. (source)

9 | Tibetan Opera

Tibetan Opera has roots in Tibet’s pre-Buddhist era (the Bön religion), which in turn goes back even longer and incorporates elements from the pre-Bön era—when a shamanistic, animist-oriented religion was practiced. For this reason Tibetan Opera has been dubbed a ‘living fossil of traditional Tibetan culture’ and remains an integral part of the cultural identity of the Tibetan people. The opera itself requires a skillful combination of martial arts, singing, dancing, comedy and precise elocution, woven gracefully together into a story that shares everyday scenes from daily lives of ordinary people, all of which transform into nothing less than a universal statement about people's hopes, aspirations and the human condition. (source)

“Today, we are going through a critical period in time… protecting an ancient culture like this is the responsibility not only of the concerned nation, but also of the world community as a whole.— His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

10 | Yamahoko Moving Museums

On July 17 every year, the Gion Festival in Kyoto in central Japan culminates with a grand procession of yamahoko—floats known as ‘moving museums’, with gorgeous drape decorations. The floats are paraded through the main streets of central Kyoto, and were originally intended to summon the plague god, so that he could be transformed into a protective spirit through music, dance, and worship. (source)

11 | Catalonian Human Towers

Every year in Catalonia, Spain, there are festivals in which people come together to build colorful—and ridiculously tall—human towers called castells, meaning ‘castles’ in Catalan. These castells can be anywhere between six to ten levels high and consist of about 100-500 men, women and children—supported by nothing other than sheer strength and courage. (source)

Local Catalan photographer David Oliete is fascinated by these human towers and their capacity for evoking human emotion. He begun photographing the castells eight years ago and hasn’t stopped since. Explore the gloriously kaleidoscopic shots of human towers in David’s Maptia story: ‘The Human Towers of Catalunya’.

The above document is borrowed from 11 Endangered Traditions from 

Around the World as compiled by the Maptia team.