Marco Polo leaves China

1292

After seventeen years in Kublai Khan's service, the Polos finally obtained permission to depart, charged with escorting a Mongol princess to the Ilkhan of Persia. They sailed from Quanzhou on a great Chinese junk, across the Indian Ocean, back toward the Black Sea. The journey home took over two years and cost the lives of hundreds of their fellow travelers to storms and tropical disease.