He reached India 29 years before da Gama. Then he forgot when Easter was

When

spring 1466

Map distance

580 kmat least, through the named places

By way of

Tver, Kalyazin, Uglich, Kostroma, Plyos, Nizhny Novgorod

He started from the church of the Holy Saviour, with the blessing of Prince Michael of Tver and Bishop Gennadius. He went down the Volga past the Kalyazin monastery, past Uglich and Kostroma, where he carried a letter to Prince Alexander, and reached Nizhny Novgorod with the Grand Prince of all Russia's leave to quit the country unhindered.

At Nizhny he waited a fortnight for the Shirvan shah's Tatar envoy, Hassanbek, who was coming with 90 falcons from Grand Prince Ivan. Vassily Papin, Moscow's envoy, travelled with the embassy. The letters and the embassy were supposed to guard them down the water. They never got the chance.

He gave himself the title, on the first page: his sinful wandering beyond the three seas. He even names them, in Persian: the Derbent sea, the Indian Sea, the Stamboul sea. The rest of the book is the reckoning of these three waters.

When

autumn 1466

Map distance

2,580 kmat least, through the named places, 230 km of it dashed

By way of

Nizhny Novgorod, Buyan, at the Volga mouth, Derbent, Tarki, Baku

Dashed: Derbent to Baku, by the Shirvanshah's horde at Koytul, whose site is unknown. The rest is stated road: the robbery, the storm, Tarki.

They were overtaken at Buyan. The small boat ran foul of fishing stakes and was plundered on the spot, with all his things in her. The large boat reached the sea, but grounded at the Volga mouth and was taken too, with 4 Russians in her, and the rest were dismissed bare and naked beyond the sea, forbidden to return home because of the news.

They went on to Derbent in two boats. A storm rose at sea, the small boat was wrecked ashore and the Kaitaks took the whole party prisoner. At Derbent they found Vassily Papin and the envoy safe, who interceded with the Shirvanshah, and the khan demanded his people back from his brother-in-law, the Kaitak prince, and set them free.

At the horde they prayed to be given the means to return to Russia, but the khan had nothing to give, they were too many. So they wept and scattered wherever their eyes looked: whoever had anything in Russia went home, whoever was in debt went where his eyes looked, some stayed at Shamakha, others sought work at Baku. He went to Derbent, then to Baku.

When

1466–1468

Map distance

1,720 kmat least, through the named places, 970 km of it dashed

By way of

Baku, Chebokhara, Sari, Amol, Damavand, Rey, Kashan, Nain, Yazd

Dashed: the Caspian crossing and the identification of Chebokhara, perhaps coastal Chapakur. From Sari to Yazd the road is stated, town by town.

At Baku he saw the fire that burns unextinguished, the naphtha springs of the peninsula. Then he crossed the sea to Chebokhara, where he lived 6 months, one month at Sari, in the land of Mazanderan, and one month at Amol. From there he went to Damavand and to Rey, the ruined city beside today's Tehran.

The count of months runs to nearly two years: one month at Kashan, one month at Nain, where he says he kept the first Easter, and one month at Yazd. He places the second Easter at Chebokhara, in Mazanderan, though on the road Chebokhara comes before Nain. This mismatch, in his own list, is one reason the journey's dating stays a reconstruction.

The Persia of the book is measured in stopovers: how long he stayed, what the cattle ate, what things cost. At Tarom he writes that cattle are fed on dates, at four altyns the batman. The robbed merchant rebuilds his accounts as he goes.

When

spring 1469

Map distance

3,280 kmat least, through the named places, 290 km of it dashed

By way of

Yazd, Sirjan, Tarom, Lar, Bandar Abbas, Hormuz, Muscat, Cambay, Chaul

Dashed: Sirjan to Lar, by Tarom, whose position is unknown. The rest is stated road, by land and by sea.

From Yazd he went to Sirjan and to Tarom, then to Lar and to Bandar Abbas, where there is a seaport, Hormuz, and the Indian Sea. Hormuz stands on an island, four miles across the water, and twice a day the sea flows around it. He arrived four weeks before Easter, kept the third Easter here and stayed a month. At Hormuz, he writes, the sun is scorching and burns man.

In the first week after Easter he shipped his horses in a vessel and sailed across the Indian Sea in 10 days to Muscat. From there 4 days further, past Gujarat and Cambay, where indigo grows, and in six weeks of sailing he reached Chaul. He left Chaul in the seventh week after Easter, for the interior.

The vessel, the horses, the six weeks: here you see the merchant, not the pilgrim. He carried live goods across the sea, to sell in India, and reckoned the road in sailing weeks, not in land stopovers.

When

1469–1471

Map distance

1,030 kmat least, through the named places, 410 km of it dashed

By way of

Chaul, Junnar, Bidar, Parvatum

Dashed: Junnar to Bidar, by Kulongher, which is unidentified. The rest is stated road, out and back, to Parvatum and home.

From Chaul he went inland, by Junnar, and came to Bidar on St Philip's day, the 14th of November. Bidar is the chief town of the whole of Muslim Hindostan, a large city, full of people. The sultan is a little man, twenty years old, in the power of the nobles: Khorassanians rule the country and serve in war. A Khorassanian boyar keeps an army of 200,000 men, another 100,000, another 20,000, and the sultan rides out with 300,000 troops of his own. Through the night the town is guarded by 1,000 men on horseback, in full armour, each carrying a light.

He sold his stallion at Bidar for 68 footoons, having kept him a whole year. He made acquaintance with many Hindoos, told them what his faith was, that he was neither Muslim nor whatever they were, but a Christian, that his name was Ofonas, and his Muslim name Khoza Issuf Khorossani. After that they hid nothing from him any more: neither their meals, nor their commerce, nor their prayers. About the streets of Bidar, he writes, crawl snakes two sajens long, fourteen feet.

In Lent they go to Parvatum, their Jerusalem: in Muslim it is named Koka, in Russian Jerusalem, in the Hindoo tongue Parvat. The description is a merchant's with an ethnographer's eye: naked pilgrims, bulls with brass-cased horns and 300 bells apiece about the neck, bread baked on dung. What he did not see with his own eyes he reports as hearsay, and says that he does: Calicut, the port of the whole Indian sea, Ceylon, Pegu, Shabat three months from Bidar. Here you see the text's craft: the seen and the heard stand apart.

Four great Lent fastings and four great days had already passed, but he no longer knew which was Easter, nor when was Lent, nor Christmas, nor any holiday, nor Wednesday from Friday. The plunderers had taken his books. A Muslim named Melik forcibly urged him to go over to the Muslim faith, and he answered in the local tongue and went on praying to the one God, in Persian, Arabic and Turkish, among the Russian lines.

When

1472

Map distance

8,890 kmat least, through the named places, 3,100 km of it dashed

By way of

Bidar, Dabul, the Somali coast, Muscat, Shiraz, Isfahan, Qom, Saveh, Soltaniyeh, Tabriz, Erzincan, Trebizond, Azov, Caffa

Dashed: the storm from Dabul to the Somali coast and the road from Tabriz to Erzincan, by Hassanbek's moving horde. The rest is stated road, with the days counted.

From Bidar he went down to Dabul, the last seaport of Hindostan, and embarked. For a month he saw nothing, then they descried the mountains of Ethiopia, and the shipmen cried out that God had devoted them to destruction. He stayed 5 days in that country and, lest the natives plunder their ship, dealt out rice, pepper and bread among them. From there he reached Muscat in 12 days and held the sixth great holiday here. In 9 days he was at Hormuz, where he stayed 20 days.

The overland road is an account of days, town by town: Lar 3 days, Shiraz 7, Yazd 8, Isfahan 6, Kashan 5, then Qom, Saveh, Soltaniyeh, Tabriz and Hassanbek's horde, where he spent 10 days, as there was no road further on. The khan had sent against the Turks an army of 40,000 men, which took Sivas, burnt Tokat and plundered Amasya.

Leaving the horde he went to Erzincan and to Trebizond, where he arrived on 1 October, on the feast of the Protection of our Lady the Virgin. The pasha annoyed him sorely and had his lumber searched, especially for writings, as he was coming from Hassanbek's horde. He agreed to be conveyed to Caffa for one gold coin, the food to be paid at the voyage's end. Here he came to the third sea, the Black Sea. A gale turned them back, they lay 15 days at Platana, waited 5 days at Azov and at last, with God's blessing, he reached Caffa on 4 November, nine days before St Philip's fast.

When

November 1472 – 1475

Map distance

1,110 kmat least, through the named places, 1,110 km of it dashed

By way of

Caffa, Smolensk (never reached)

Dashed: the whole road, from Caffa to Smolensk. He never walked it to the end: he died before he got there.

The narrative stops at Caffa, with a long thanksgiving prayer in Turkish. The rest we know from chronicles: Moscow merchants brought the text to Moscow in 1475 and reported that its author had died before reaching Smolensk, in the autumn of 1472 on the accepted frame. No one knows where he is buried, and no portrait of him survives.

What survives is the book: the first work of Russian literature about a commercial journey, not a religious one, written by a man who at the end prayed in three languages and no longer knew when Easter was. It also gives the reverse view: Bahmani India seen from street level, with prices, with snakes, with horses for sale, not from the height of courts.