GANSU

I stand amid a jagged series of crags and peaks, enveloped in a reddish haze that tinges both the rocks and the sky an unusual shade of Mars. I might indeed be tricked into believing I’m on another planet altogether, were it not for the strip of dusky-pink road that snakes through the centre of the valley like a tongue and reminds me that others have traced their way into the depths of this mirage-like place before me.

The legendary Venetian merchant, explorer and writer Marco Polo was one of the first Europeans to set sail for these lands many centuries ago, journeying far from his homeland and into Yuan Dynasty-era China in 1271. His chronicles of 24 years of travels along the old Silk Road – a route connecting the ancient Chinese capital of Chang’an with the trading hubs of Persia, Arabia and Rome – introduced generations of Westerners to this mysterious and alien kingdom. “I did not write half of what I saw, for I knew it would not be believed,” he scrawled in his memoirs of the period.

— Shot for Suitcase Magazine