British travel writer Bradley Mayhew follows in the footsteps of Marco Polo. The first leg of his journey starts in Venice and travels with him through Israel and Turkey to the Iranian border. Bradley Mayhew explores the global impact of Marco Polo's journey, matching his original descriptions to today's reality. History well worth repeating!

"Marco Polo Reloaded" is a four-part documentary series retracing the route of Marco Polo. We accompany Bradley Mayhew as he discovers the countries, the people and their culture along this legendary route. This app contains a 52 minutes long episode of the documentary film 'Marco Polo Reloaded', along with short clips and many impressive photos and travel quotations.

Following Marco Polo’s route requires playing detective every now and then in an attempt to match up his medieval descriptions with the modern names and geography on the ground. The thing to understand about Marco's book is that it's not actually a description of his route, it's a 'Description of the World', some of which he visited and some of which he simply heard about around a campfire or a bowl of tea. Luckily generations of geographers and historians have pondered Polo's route in minute detail. My 'bible' on this trip was the green-backed 1876 edition that Luca found for me in Venice, featuring text heavily annotated by English historian Henry Yule.

A lot of Marco Polo's route took him through some politically volatile regions ruined by war and unrest which is still true today. Not long after finalising the Marco Polo films, mass demonstrations erupted across the Middle East, particularly in Syria, where we had several weeks filming in Homs and Aleppo.

I almost always travel alone, so one of the hardest parts of the trip was learning to travel with a crew. Getting used to working on other people's schedules is pretty tough for a footloose travel writer used to his own company! I'd never done any film work before so it took me quite some time to get used to being in front of a camera (I don’t even like having my photo taken). The directors got a perverse pleasure from asking me difficult questions while I was distracted by some complicated activity (dyeing silk, crawling through a mine, playing cards on a boisterous Chinese train…). It became a competition after a while and all part of the fun!“ – Bradley Mayhew

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