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Livingstone & Stanley: Journey into Africa

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Mid-nineteenth century saw multiple explorations of Africa by European explorers. Nothing obsessed these explorers more than the quest for finding the source of the Nile which, to this day, is under contention. One such exploration was led by David Livingstone in 1866, a veteran who had already spent twenty years in Africa and whose past adventures had sparked such awe and who exercised a strong influence on attitudes towards Africa in Victorian England. Livingstone did not succeed in this quest to find the origin of the Nile - John Hanning Speke had earlier claimed that honor - but this epic journey over seven years, intertwined with an equally audacious exploration by Henry Morton Stanley (more on it later), had such an impact on our understanding of Africa and provided a detailed journal on what an expedition looked like in the 19th century.  Livingstone was already a household name at that time and his disappearance early on during this mission sparked huge distress and many explor
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The Travels of Marco Polo

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What makes someone a great traveler? Some of the factors, in my humble opinion, include longevity of travel, cultural sensitivity, perseverance in the face of danger and failure, ingenuity to get out of tricky situations, level-headedness to take both good and bad experiences in one’s stride, being grateful for the opportunity to travel, and most of all, the sheer love for travel and discovery. Marco Polo personified all of this. In addition, he was lucky to chronicle his travel experiences in detail. Polo met with Rustichello da Pisa – in prison - together with whom he compiled “Livre des Merveilles du Monde”, in English commonly called “The Travels of Marco Polo”. The below map takes one through the journey that Polo took from 1276 to 1291. Click on the markers which will pop up to provide additional details and commentary. Notes: Each leg of Polo’s journey is highlighted in a different color. Polo did not visit Kharkorin and Baghdad listed in this map. The two places are only marked
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The Travels of Ibn Battuta

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Abu ‘Abdallah ibn Battuta, a pious Moroccan pilgrim, left Tangiers for Mecca – for hajj – in 1325 on a pilgrimage that would usually take a year to complete at that time. Little did he know in 1325 that he would travel for 24 more years before returning to Morocco, in the process covering, arguably, more distance than Marco Polo did a century earlier. His story, like many other great travels, is a story of perseverance, ingenuity, and discovery. Ibn Battuta visited some of the same places that Marco Polo did a century earlier. However, the similarities end there. They are different personalities from different backgrounds. One, a merchant from the famed Venetian business fraternity. Another, a pious sunni muslim, whose world revolved around Islam and whose life goal was to visit Mecca. Polo set out to establish a direct trade route between the East and the West. Ibn Battuta took advantage of favorable conditions in Dar-as-Islam – the wider Muslim world – by traveling to Muslim Kingdoms
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