With his gift for evoking historical figures in their full dimensions, Severin brings us directly into the remarkable company of men who discovered and recorded the realities of the fabled, mysterious East: Marco Polo, the first pioneer of the Oriental Adventure itself; the 16th century brigand-adventure Yermak, who made Russia an Oriental power with an astonishing land grab which eventually brought Europe face to face with China; the Jesuit geographer-priests who revolutionised Western knowledge of the Orient; Thomas Coryat, one of the first self-professed tourists, who epitomized Europe's awakened curiosity about the East; the officers of the Great Trigonometric Survey of India, who created an amazing network of native spies in order to survey the Himalayas and to penetrate the secret, closed country of Tibet; Marc Aurel Stein, scholar-traveller par excellence, who excavated many lost trade centres along the caravan routes; and Sven Hedin, one of the two last great explorers of Asia, leader in 1928 of the largest and most complex scientific expedition (nicknamed the `Travelling University) ever to have worked in Central Asia...