Four Pilgrims

The earliest voyages were mostly travel journeys of pilgrims. Setting all fears and doubts aside, the travellers braved all odds and obstacles to reach their destination to further their devotion and faith. This book is a compendium of the travels of four such pilgrims: Hiuen Tsang, Saewulf, Ibn Battuta and Ludovico Varthema. The first is an account of the travels of Hiuen Tsang, the Chinese scholar, monk and traveller who travelled from China across the Himalayas to reach India in the seventh century?ad.

The second is an account of the travels of the English pilgrim Saewulf to Palestine. It was undertaken in the early part of the twelfth century ad.

The third chapter is an account of the travels of the indefatigable Ibn Battuta, the Moroccon explorer, who began his travels in the first half of the thirteenth century which lasted twenty-four years. It took him from Algeria?to?Peking?and?Turkistan?to?Timbuktu.

The final account of the travels is of an Italian from Bologna Varthema, who in the early sixteenth century was the first European to reach Mecca and then went further on to travel to India and Malaysia.