The Silk Road Page #3

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that Marco Polo had not intended.

The only verifiable piece of evidence

from Polo's life

his will reveals that

he died a wealthy man.

Yet his nickname"Il Milione"

the big one

mockingly referred to the size of

his imagination, not his bank balance.

Marco was defiant till the end.

When asked by his friends

on his deathbed in 1324

whether he had really been

to China, Marco replied:

"I have only told you half of

what I saw."

Marco Polo died

surrounded by doubters,

yet his influence on the history

of exploration is undisputed.

His controversial book became the

bible for a new generation of explorers.

The inspiration for

Christopher Columbus'

historic discovery

of the new world.

The greatest impact Marco Polo has

on later explorers is planting the idea

that you can go to exotic places

and write about them and become famous.

When you think about it nobody

before him is famous as an explorer.

So he becomes the first famous

explorer, adventurer.

Whether Marco Polo did make it China

or not, one thing is certain.

His dream of pioneering

a trade connection

between East and West

was never realized.

China again dissolved into civil war,

making travel in the East impossible.

The tantalizing promise of

the Silk Road

once again faded into the past

craving fulfillment in another age.

set out in Marco Polo's footsteps.

Unlike Polo, Sven Hedin was not

in search of wealth.

He was after something

far more elusive and dangerous.

Stockholm, Sweden. 1949.

Sven Hedin, the 84 year old explorer,

prepares a memoir of his life.

In his prime he heroically explored

the earth's final frontier.

He discovered lost cities

of the Silk Road,

bringing to life

a forgotten civilization.

Hedin, the ambitious adventurer,

had won the adulation of the world.

He was the Neil Armstrong of his day.

You know, Inner Asia was the moon.

And he went.

He was very famous,

a rock star at the time.

But his passion for the spotlight

led to a very dangerous liaison.

After the war, Sven Hedin was

obliterated from the memory of Europe.

He was a persona non grata.

Nobody wanted to touch him

after the second world war.

Sven Hedin was really a person

who you couldn't associate with.

In his memoir, Sven Hedin has

one last chance to redeem himself.

Would he exorcise the demons

of his past?

Or would he die a forgotten man?

April 24th, 1880.

his childhood hero returns triumphant.

Stockholm harbor is a riot of

pride and excitement.

Adolf Nordenskiold,

the Swedish explorer, has come home

the first person to sail around

Russia back to Europe.

Together with his family

he had climbed the mountains

overlooking the harbor of Stockholm,

from where he and thousands

and thousands of Stockholm people

watched the return of the ship.

A great national hero was created

and Sven Hedin really wanted

to step into his footsteps.

This dream of fame and adventure

would drive Hedin all his life.

It was in Berlin,

as a geography student

that Hedin developed his lifelong

obsession with central Asia.

At the turn of the 20th century,

Central Asia was one of

the last unexplored frontiers on earth.

the distant prize of aspiring

explorers and world statesmen alike.

For it was the center of

a brooding cold war:

a race between Britain,

Russia and China

to expand their empires in the region.

With the eyes of the world focused on

this remote land,

it was the perfect stage

for the ambitious Hedin

to make his name as an explorer.

At its heart, was a massive sea

of sand known as the Taklamakan.

When Hedin decided on becoming

an explorer, he wanted deserts.

Explorers should climb

dangerous mountains

and they should cross

dangerous deserts.

That's what an explorer should do.

So he found this Taklamakan

which according to him,

no one ever had crossed,

in living memory at least.

He wanted to be the first,

to walk on paths

where no man ever walked before.

Hedin was sure that beneath

the Taklamakan's shifting sand

lay ancient cities of

the old Silk Road

which had been lost to the world

for over a thousand years.

If only he could discover

the lost cities of the Silk Road,

Hedin believed his path to fame

would be secure.

In 1893, Hedin obtained funding

from the king of Sweden

to explore the uncharted extremes

of central Asia.

But his imminent departure

was bittersweet.

Hedin was leaving behind the woman

of his dreams.

Mille Bruman was beautiful

and very wealthy.

Like Hedin, she was a romantic.

He adored her.

"She was magnificent in her youth,

innocence and beauty.

She was blonde and had eyes of

the most beautiful color."

In Sven's mind, there was no doubt

they would marry when he got back.

Kashi, modern day China.

Once known as Kashgar, a key market

town along the old Silk Road.

Sven Hedin arrived here in 1894,

after a grueling year long journey.

Kashi was the obvious base

for Hedin's expedition

for it stood on the edge

of the Taklamakan

the desert Hedin had come to explore.

With thousand foot sand dunes

and 130 degree summer heat,

the desert is one of the most

forbidding places on earth.

Hedin began to make

careful preparations

for an expedition into the desert,

when devastating news arrived.

When he was sitting there

waiting for his camels there

came a letter from home

where somebody wrote that his love,

Mille Maria Bruman, was going to

get engaged with someone else.

And his whole world shattered.

And he writes about his desperation

that now nothing was worth anything.

He would do this absolutely

crazy thing.

He would just venture into the desert

and see what would come out of it.

Hedin was heartbroken.

Distraught and totally ill equipped,

he set off on a suicidal quest

to find a lost city in the desert.

He walked through the streets

and the people formed lines

and they cheered him and they cried

and they said you will go

to the desert of death

and you will never come out alive.

And he walked through the streets

with his laden camels

and people said his camels

are too heavy.

They'll not make it, he'll not

come back from the desert of death.

They walked out to the edge of

the desert and disappeared.

"One thousand heavy steps

towards the goal.

Not one backwards was my motto."

Stubborn and defiant,

Hedin had started a deathmarch.

Hedin realized his guides

had not brought enough water.

The expedition was now in the middle

of the deadliest desert on earth

with only two days of water left.

Should they turn back?

Or look for an oasis?

Hedin, as ever, chose to push on.

Straight into the Karaburan

an infamous storm that whips the sand

into a punishing frenzy.

His expedition was now lost

in the dreaded Taklamakan.

The name 'Taklamakan'

from the Uighur translates is

"you go in but you do not come out."

By 9 o'clock in the morning

having spent 2 and a half hours

loading your camels to get ready

for the day's march,

you could have drunk the water

by then,

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