"Tracking Marco Polo" by Tim Severin

Severin is an explorer and travel writer; other works of his include The Sindbad Voyage and The Brendan Voyage. In this trip he used motorbikes to follow the route of Marco Polo, comparing what he discovered with the account in Polo's famous book. His companions were Michael de Larrabeiti, a cameraman who later became a novelist, and Stanley Johnson who later became the father of the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Johnson, initially described as "a burly young man with an unruly shock of blond hair" (C 1), becomes a sort of expedition bludgeon who drives his motorbike (which he repeatedly crashes) where it is determined not to go.

Despite still being an undergraduate at the time, Severin showed that many of the features of Polo's narrative could be matched with things still to be seen. For example, he found a family of Armenian descent in a Turkish village still weaving a fine silk cloth that he interpreted as 'buckram', described by Polo. He also ate a nectarine which he believed to be what Polo had called one of the 'apples of paradise' and locates the Village of the Magi, complete with an ancient Zoroastrian fire-temple. There is one moment (in chapter 7), though, where he discovers a water culvert which plunges into a subterranean tunnel and he compares it with Marco Polo's description, seemingly unaware that this might be the reference that Coleridge turned into "Alph the sacred river" which "ran through caverns measureless to man."

The history and travelled are enlivened by the description of three young daredevils on two motorbikes, originally with sidecars, which they couldn't properly ride (they didn't even have licenses for the English section of the journey). By the most brazen good fortune, the expedition repeatedly overcomes catastrophe. This would make a great road trip movie!

There are also a number of passages of extraordinarily brilliant description:

• "The mineraliferous mountains glowed in their reds, purples, greys and browns, where the naked rock lay exposed to the long winter snows and the fierce summer sun. The road itself was little more than a rough stony path along which we twisted and turned the labouring motorcycles, leaving plumes of dust along the steep climbs and round the sharp shoulders of the rocky flanks. From time to time we skidded down into valleys and the track plunged sharply into a rushing stream. Then with the engines roaring wildly, we were forced to slither crazily into the ford, hoping that our momentum would surge the machines across before water was drawn into the bubbling exhaust pipes or we came to grief on a hidden boulder." (C 4)
• "The fabled lakes of Band-i-Amir ... amongst the highest in the world. In the clear air of the Hindu Kush, they lie like a broken ribbon of glowing tortoiseshell, caught between the peaks. The walls of the surrounding cliffs contract and expand, giving strange and beautiful shapes to the cold, clear waters which lie in basins, slivers and goblets of crystal. At one end of the chain, a gentle trickle flows in to feed the series. At the lower end, the same trickle re-appears, lapping gently out over a natural dam of rock. When this outflow spills away over the downstream face of the dam, the mineral deposits from the sheet of water have covered the rock wall with a glowing patina of mingling tints, reds, blacks and yellows. In the heady air of the high plateau with the snow-sheathed peaks gleaming at a romantic distance, the limpid purity of the lakes of Band-i-Amir with their sheen of many colours successfully isolate an unsullied shrine of beauty." (C 10)

Other great moments:

• "The driver was in such a state of intoxication that he kept on getting his arms entwined in the spokes of the steering wheel" (C 3)
• "The lives of ordinary people have always been ruled by the common factors of climate and terrain." (C 11)

March 2020; 164 pages

Other great travel books in this blog:
This is one of a number of travel books reviewed in this blog, of which my favourites include:
Classics:

• The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron: Samarkand etc
• Walking through Europe: A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor and its sequel Between the Woods and the Water

Travelling in Britain:

• By milk float: Three men in a float by Dan Kieran and Ian Vince
• Walking on the coast (all of it): The Sea on our left by Shally Hunt
• By bike from Lands End to John O'Groats via a lot of pubs: Mud. Sweat and Gears by Ellie Bennett

And others:

• The Incredible Mile by Harold Elvin: mostly the Trans-Siberian railway

"The Janissary Tree" by Jason Goodwin

This historical thriller cum detective story is set in Istanbul in 1836 and stars an investigator called Yashim who is a eunuch. In fact, there are lots and lots of eunuchs not to mention Preen the dancing boy and his 'girl' friends. There is also a wonderful Polish ambassador who no longer has a country but still receives an allowance from the Sultan, a clever modernising Sultan who is just a bid fed up of having to have yet another girl in his bed every night, a whole harem of beauties, the formidable Sultan's mother (a childhood friend of the Empress Josephine) and a fabulous wife of the Russian ambassador.

The plot concerns the New Guard who are being trained in modern warfare because the old Janissaries, the Sultan's praetorian guard, have become a state within a state. They used to select the new sultan, strangling the old one with a silk bowstring.

The plot is far fetched (artfully arranged corpses designed as a mezze before the main meal of insurrection) and there are various unsuccessful attempts at assassinating Yashim and his confederates (which don't quite work with the plot revealed at the end) but the power of this delightful book is the window into a wonderfully colourful and utterly bizarre world. From the arcane rules of the guild of soup-makers to Yashim's own cooking; from fighting fires to fighting assassins in the disgusting surroundings of a tannery; from dancing boys to eunuchs (of different types) to the harem; old Istanbul and her traditions explode onto the scene as a riot of colour and smell and flavour.

This novel created a world as rich and wonderful as Gormenghast (but considerably more colourful) with some fabulously strong characters. Great fun. October 2015; 329 pages