Afanasy Nikitin · 1472 · overland

A merchant from Tver set off down the Volga in 1466 on a trading trip, was robbed at Astrakhan, and could not afford to go home - so he crossed the Caspian and kept going, spending six years in Persia and India and writing it all down. It is the first Russian book about a journey undertaken for money rather than God, and he died before he got back.

1. 1
   Tver

   Spring 1466, and a merchant sets off down the Volga with two ships and letters from his prince, hoping to trade in the Shirvan land - a commercial trip that will take six years and never make any money.

2. 2
   Nizhny Novgorod

   Two weeks waiting for the Shirvanshah's ambassador, who is carrying ninety falcons home as a gift from the grand duke - and Nikitin attaches himself to the party, which is how a lone merchant travels in 1466.

3. 3
   Astrakhan

   They try to slip past the Tartar khanate by moonlight and are caught and stripped of everything - and this is the hinge: with debts at home and no goods, Nikitin cannot go back, so he goes on instead.

4. 4
   Derbent

   Across the Caspian, the first of the three seas. He asks the local prince and the Muscovite envoy for help getting home and is refused - and we wept and dispersed, he writes, and those with debts went wherever they could.

5. 5
   Baku

   The eternal fires of the Absheron, and then south into Persia - where he spends the better part of two years moving between towns, learning the language and trading what he can to stay alive.

6. 6
   Hormuz

   The great entrepot at the mouth of the Gulf, where he hears that India has no good horses - so he buys one, the best he can afford, and puts it aboard a small dabba to cross the second sea.

7. 7
   Chaul

   Landfall on the Konkan coast at what is now Revdanda, and one of the first Europeans in India to leave a record - who notes immediately that the local people go about almost naked and that everything he was told was wrong.

8. 8
   Bidar

   The Bahmani capital, where he stays longest and writes best - the sultan riding out in state, nobles from Khorasan and Arabia living in luxury above a population in poverty, and a Russian pricing all of it.

9. 9
   Vijayanagara

   South to the great Hindu city and the temple at Srisaila, which he is the only European on record to have seen in its splendour - taken there once the Hindus establish he is a Christian and not a Muslim.

10. 10
    Trabzon

    Home the long way after six years: back across the Indian Ocean, up through Persia and Anatolia to the Black Sea - the third sea, and the last stretch of a journey he has by now been writing down for years.

11. 11
    Kaffa

    The Genoese port in the Crimea, where he winters and finishes the notes - and then dies near Smolensk in the spring of 1475, still short of Tver, with the manuscript carried on to Moscow by another Tver merchant.