One of the questions we get asked most frequently by the international press is: why Stefano Ricci Explorer? The answer lies within these pages, as well as in the SR Issues dedicated to Luxor, Iceland, and Galapagos. This research project sees our brand engaged in a dialogue between nature and the changing planet. There is much talk on the topic of sustainability, but to gain a better understanding of it, it is essential to experience the changing world first-hand. This journey led us to Luxor, where the local archaeological sites, with their intrinsic value, are defining the future of tourism.

The theme was further explored in Iceland, where we witnessed the melting of the largest glacier in Europe. The project continued in the Galapagos Islands; a pristine natural paradise protected by strict regulations. Here we decided to support the Charles Darwin Foundation in a project linked to the conservation of Giant Tortoises.

Today the journey leads us to Mongolia, in support of the national plan to protect eagles and their natural habitat. As we outlined this new mission, we took Genghis Khan, the man who built the largest Empire in history, as a starting point. A few years ago, my interest was piqued by a quote I read in the Washington Post that defined him as the Man of the Millenium since he “greatly enhanced the linkage between the civilisations of the East and West […] and pioneered global communications”. To us, Mongolia is the land of the Eagle Hunters, heirs to a Turkish tradition dating back to the 1600s. A story told through the daily life lived in the nomad tents, under an infinite sky, set in the Gobi Desert and its mysterious past. Before setting off on this expedition, we wanted to delve into the history of this land and the lives of two travellers: Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta. What we know today about Genghis Khan has been handed down to us through the tales told around campfires, in the caravanserais, where nomads, foreigners and merchants met. These men, encouraged by trade, were the very first explorers of fascinating exotic lands and later became guides to future generations of travellers.

Through their work, the West discovered the story of Temujin, son of Yesügei the Brave and Princess Ho’ Elun. The boy was orphaned at a young age (his father was poisoned as an act of revenge). According to legend, he was a descendant of The Blue Wolf. What we know for sure is that in 1206, during a meeting of the heads of steppe tribes, he was elected Genghis Khan – universal ruler – thus entrusted with political, military, and spiritual power over the “people who live in felt tents”.

He was able to unite competing powers, such as the Kyrgyz from Siberia, the Uighurs from Sinkiang, and the Kara-Khitans from Manchuria. All these groups under his rule rebelled against the neighbouring dominions. The Mongols (who took their name from the eponymous tribe) rose to power after the conquest of Beijing in 1215 and Samarkand in 1220. Genghis Khan’s vision united a territory spanning from the Yellow River to the Ural Mountains.

By reading the stories recounted at the time and some of the most accredited historical reconstructions, it is easy to recognise the ruler’s strategic abilities. He entrusted his “most talented subordinates” (Jebe, Kublai, Jelme and Subotai) with high-risk missions. What today experts would call “leadership”, was a system based on two essential principles: meritocracy within the army and promoting men based on their abilities rather than their origins.

Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, the Franciscan missionary who visited the Empire after Genghis Khan’s death, reported that the combination of strict discipline with Chinese technology allowed the Mongols to obtain knowledge about ‘machinery’ until then unknown. This added to the aura of terror projected onto the conquered territories. But, since I am not a historian, I believe there is one more aspect to consider.

His Empire re-opened trade routes, such as the Silk Road (in the North), that had fallen out of use in the previous centuries.

The Medieval manuscripts, the very first globes and geographical maps surprise us today due to the lack of knowledge surrounding Northern Asia, China, and the Indian subcontinent. Maps were left blank. The space between the West and the ends of the Earth was filled with stories about nomad shepherds who became known as warriors and who then turned into knights and archers by adapting to extreme climates.

It is extraordinary to think that their weapon of choice – the composite bow – was no different from the one used by the Scythians two thousand years earlier. Neither was the organisation of the army in multiples and submultiples, considering this strategy dated back to the 3rd century BCE.

However, the world had to wait until the end of the 13th century to learn about the mystery of these lands, through a text in Old French, Devisement du Monde. Rustichello da Pisa put in order the memories of a Venetian man, Marco Polo, who visited the court of Kublai Khan (Genghis Khan’s descendant). In the early 13th century, Kublai founded the first Yuan Celestial Empire, spreading from Eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan and all the way to China. This military-political unit, known as the Pax Mongolica, strengthened links between Asia and Europe like never before. Venice, a city deeply associated with trading with the East, certainly did not let this opportunity slip. Marco was able to set off on his adventure thanks to his father and uncle, who, years before him, had been received at the Kublai’s court. Upon their return, they were made ambassadors and charged with a mission to the Pope. The mission was sealed by a safe conduct pass, the “golden tablet”, known in Chinese as paiza and in Mongol as gerega. This engraved tablet allowed them to travel safely through Mongol territories. That is exactly where the seventeen-year-old Marco Polo wanted to reach in 1271.

The long journey started with the landing in Acre, in the Holy Land. The Polos travelled through Eastern Anatolia and Armenia with the aim of reaching the Strait of Hormuz and setting sail for China. They travelled this part of the journey via land, joining the caravan trails. We learn about their plans in the book known as Il Milione (The Marvels of the World), which is not a diary, but an account of what Marco Polo saw and heard, leaving out all minor details. His fascination with this world is clearly conveyed in some of his writings.

“And you must know that it is in this country of Armenia that the Ark of Noah exists on the top of a certain great mountain”, said Marco Polo referring to Mount Ararat. He described the Mosul realm as famous for its “silk, golden drapes” (he was referring to muslin – a fabric that had greatly contributed to the wealth of Venetian merchants). The Venetian explorer (whose 700th death anniversary will fall on January 8th, 2024) talked about Baudac (Baghdad), “which used to be the seat of the Calif of all the Saracens in the world, just as Rome is the seat of the Pope of all the Christians”. Once in Tabriz, he was stunned by “the finest and handsomest carpets in the world”. Furthermore, he mentioned Saba, where the tombs of the Three Wise Men are supposed to be, in “very large and beautiful monuments, side by side. And above them there is a square building, carefully kept. The bodies are still entire, with the hair and beard remaining”. He visited Yazd, a city grown rich by trading gold and silk drapes, and Kerman, where the “best falcons” were raised. And he travelled South, all the way to the Gobi Desert.

The meeting with Kublai Khan was an important moment: “He [Kublai] made them [the Polos] stand and showed great joy, and asked who the youth was standing with them”. This introduction led to the young man’s appointment as a government officialin the vast Empire at just twenty-one years old. This privilege allowed him to travel to Tibet, Burma, Cochinchina and India. He returned to Venice after twenty-four years away.  The old-world order had changed. So much so, that, as a Venetian, he was jailed in Genoa, where he met Rustichello, to whom he dictated Il Milione.

Around the same time, another individual from a different cultural and social background embarked on a journey that would later establish him as one of the world’s greatest travellers: Ibn Battuta. He left Tangier as a twenty-year-old to complete one of the five commandments of the Muslim faith: the pilgrimage to Mecca. He returned after twenty-eight years. During this time (one could even call it a lifetime), Ibn Battuta travelled extensively through North Africa and China, Southeast Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Russia, India, Kurdistan, Madagascar, Zanzibar, Ceylon, and the domains of Aragon, Granada, and Mali. Our knowledge of the world through Ibn Battuta is derived from his travel accounts, which were not written directly by him but were dictated to a scribe employed at the court of the Sultan of Fez. Ibn Battuta, he reported, was let down by the state of conservation of the famous Lighthouse of Alexandria, which was one of the Wonders of the World. We know that he reached Mecca in 1326. He ate and slept in beautiful palaces, thanks to the hospitality of sultans amazed by the tales of his adventures, where he cultivated a rapport with his Muslim brothers. The skills of the Tatar Knights deeply impressed him, and he bore witness to a cremation ceremony in India. Venturing to the “Land of Darkness” (Northeastern Russia), he encountered locals trading in stoats and martens. Traversing the Silk Road, he reached the Maldives, enraptured by its breathtaking beauty. In India, he marvelled at a rhinoceros, while in Ceylon, locals spoke of Adam’s footprint. He weathered the Black Plague in Syria, braved chilling temperatures in the Golden Horde territories (covering present-day Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan), remnants of the once mighty Mongol Empire. Upon his return to Morocco in 1355, he recounted his experiences in A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling, later renowned as the Rihla (The Travels). This is what inspired our research. The call for adventure and exploration. The desire to experience life in Mongolia.

Marco Polo journeyed through the Gobi Desert, where legend holds that a sea once existed, guarding a mystical White Island. Along the Silk Road, he observed the bustling trade of leather, fabrics, and gemstones. The ascent of Mongolia revived the trading routes that had been neglected due to tribal conflicts. Just how influential was his account? Two centuries later, Christopher Columbus carried a copy of Il Milione on his voyage to discover the New World. Inspired by Marco Polo’s writings, renewed interest in exploration emerged, bolstered by the financial backing of Western elites eager for new trade opportunities. While ships ventured westward, caravans took to the Eastern roads.

Mongolia is a nexus of these ancient tales. Adventurers, spurred by legendary explorers, sought lands replete with palaces of gold and diamonds. Many believed these to exist in Agharti, an underground realm. It is said that one of its entrances is located in the Gobi Desert. Agharti is often linked to Central Asian myths, and similarly, the Tibetan Buddhist Kalachakra tantra speaks of a realm named Shambhala. Such tales fuel legends. Yet amid these captivating stories, the enduring legend of Genghis Khan, the life of Temujin, remains.

While Europe was living through the Middle Ages, the steppes unleashed the Blue Wolf ’s power. A story told throughout history. A secret story. One that only the Eagle, undisputed queen of this kingdom, keeps and passes down through the generations, for the World to know the deeds and strength of the man who conquered the Earth.

There are few places as evocative of exploration as Mongolia, a vast country of stunning and largely untouched natural beauty. Mongolia’s landscape ranges from towering snowcapped mountains to the Gobi Desert to immense grassy steppes which seem to stretch on endlessly under what the Mongolians call the "eternal blue sky."

The Mongolian steppes and the nomadic people, who for centuries have inhabited this beautiful and forbidding landscape, have shaped Mongolian cultural identity and heritage. Indeed, Mongolia's rich history is inextricably linked to the nomadic lifestyle. It is a way of life that necessitates constant movement and exploration of new territories in search of water and fresh pasturelands. It demands an ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions, engenders a deep-rooted sense of curiosity and self-sufficiency. Mongolia’s early nomadic people relied on their deep knowledge of the land, weather patterns, and available resources to navigate and sustain themselves in an often harsh and challenging landscape.

Since the time of the Mongol Empire, Mongolia has been the initiator and the subject of exploration, leading to the exchange and diffusion of knowledge and cultures over centuries.

The Mongol Empire emerged in the 13th century, led by one of the most prominent figures in world history, Genghis Khan. He laid the foundation for what would become the largest contiguous land empire in history, stretching from Eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan, and from Siberia to Southwest Asia. The Empire's expansion was largely driven by its military expeditions, which were not only conquests but also exploratory ventures into unknown territories. His military campaigns opened trade routes that connected East Asia to the Middle East and Europe, enabling the exchange of goods, ideas, and knowledge. The Silk Road, a network of trade routes, was revived and strengthened under the Mongol rule, facilitating commerce and cultural interaction.

Under the protection of the Mongol empire trade along the silk road between east and west flourished attracting traders, scholars, explorers, and adventurers. The most famous traveler was the Venetian merchant and explorer, Marco Polo. In the late 13th century, Marco Polo embarked on an epic journey to Asia, spending seventeen years in the Mongol Empire. His travels and encounters with different cultures and peoples would later be chronicled in his famous book, The Travels of Marco Polo. Marco Polo's descriptions of Mongolia's vast landscapes, nomadic traditions, and unique customs captivated readers, opening a window into an unknown and exotic world. He described how the daily lives of the nomadic people he encountered were reflected in their nomadic lifestyle from the houses (Gers) they carried along with them to their cuisine and hunting methods. He gave a particularly detailed account of the Mongols use falconry and the practice of hunting with eagles. His narrative stirred curiosity and wonder among Europeans, driving a desire to explore and experience the distant lands in Asia. His descriptions of his travel to and through the Mongol Empire contributed to advancements in mapmaking and understanding of the known world. And his accounts contributed at least indirectly to the Age of Exploration, during which European nations began sending out explorers to discover new trade routes and territories. Marco Polo’s impact was so great, it is even said that Christopher Columbus carried a copy of The Travels of Marco Polo on his expedition to the New World.

The world’s fascination with Mongolia has continued over the centuries and even intensified in the 19th and 20th centuries. Its vast, uncharted wilderness served as a magnet for explorers and adventurers. The National Geographic Magazine contributed to the mystique of Mongolia with a series of articles beginning in 1904 and famously in a 1933 article titled Explorations in the Gobi Desert. The article was written by a flamboyant American explorer and paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews, said to be the inspiration for Hollywood’s Indiana Jones, recounting his travels in the Gobi Desert and discovery of new species of dinosaurs.

Even in the 21st century, when all the blank spaces on our maps seem to have been filled in, Mongolia continues to beckon. Although more accessible than in the past, Mongolia still has some of the most remote regions found anywhere on earth and the nomadic lifestyle and traditions first described by Marco Polo continue in many parts of Mongolia. Gers are still used by many Mongolians and in western Mongolia, nomadic hunters still practice the ancient art of falconry, hunting with golden eagles during the harsh winter months.

To walk this landscape, as we have done, is to experience one of the last frontiers of terrestrial exploration.

It is a journey filled with unique experiences and transformative moments. It is a reminder of the vibrant cultural heritage and diversity that exists in our world, and which continues to enrich and shape our lives. And it reminds us once again that the end result of exploring is to know oneself.

Mankind has walked the steppes of Mongolia since the dawn of civilization. After humans left Africa some 60,000 to 80,000 years ago, our ancestors made their away east across the continent of Europe and Russia and they hunted on the land now known as Mongolia. The journey would ultimately take some of these early nomads further east to cross the land bridge into the Americas.

Subsequent conquering Empires would sweep across Mongolia for centuries – but none were as well known, revered and feared as that of the great Genghis Khan in the 12th Century. He united the numerous fighting empires scattered from the Asian oceans to the Caspian Sea and the eastern edge of Europe and all the way to India and created the Mongol Empire, then the largest nation ever to have existed - with a population of over 120 million people. Even today, the modern nation of Mongolia is vast, the size of western Europe. It stretches across endless valleys and grasslands from the Siberian north where the reindeer people still live a nomadic lifestyle to the west where the Kazakh eagle hunters reside in the Altai Mountains to the sand dunes and camels of the desert south.

Mongolians have always been nomads and traders. When Genghis Khan conquered most of Asia, he opened up trading routes that included the famous Silk Road - camel caravan routes that reached the markets of India, the souks of Istanbul and the canals of Venice in Italy. With the creation of these vast travel networks connecting the East to the West came those seeking to understand and study the ways of distant lands. The Muslim explorer and scholar Ibn Battuta, born in 1304, spent most of his adult life traveling extensively in the lands of Eurasia and is considered to be one of the greatest early explorers in history. He logged over 73,000 miles of travel by camel, by sea and on foot, venturing into what would now be forty countries. The Mongol Empire was one of them.

Battuta’s book Travels in Asia and Africa, 1325–1354 featured some of the earliest illustrations of exotic landscapes and native culture and played an important role in bearing visual witness to places that most of his readers, and for that matter most humans alive at that time, could not have imagined and would never see.

Another great explorer to cross the Mongolian expanse was Marco Polo, an explorer, merchant and writer from Venice who spent most of his adult life travelling and writing about his experiences in central Asia. He earned the respect of the royal court of Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis and the fifth emperor of the Mongol empire. Marco Polo’s famous book The Travels of Marco Polo would fire up the imagination of European traders and scholars and heralded an era of remarkable exploration of the lands and cultures across the Asian Continent into Mongolia from Europe.

As a young boy, I voraciously read Marcos Polo’s book and studied the romantic tales of Genghis Khan. I dreamed that, one day, I too would travel to this magical and exciting land. Visions of its grassland plateaus, its rugged snow-capped mountain ranges and the famous singing sand dunes of the Gobi Desert danced in my imagination.

As an explorer and photographer, I had travelled to the icebergs of Antarctica and to then jungles of New Guinea, I had trekked the Himalayas and I had lived with the Tuareg tribes of the Sahara Desert – but Mongolia always beckoned to me. It would take me another twenty years to eventually arrive here – when, in the early 2000s, National Geographic sent me to Mongolia to photograph its culture.

It exceeded all of my expectations. I instantly fell in love with the heartbeat of this land - its beauty, its immensity, its emptiness. Of the population of just three million people, about half live in the capital city Ulaanbaatar.

The rest are nomads living off and at one with the land with their horses and herds of sheep and goat. Of them, none were, to me, more photogenic, more beguiling, more exciting than the eagle hunting community in the far West.

After my first visit, I would return to Mongolia time and time again. I was drawn to the lifestyle and power of the eagle hunters and their remarkable relationships with the golden eagles, their horses and their land. I would travel for weeks on end, living with the families in their traditional Gers. Being with them, time marched to a different rhythm and I always felt changed and somehow rejuvenated and refreshed by my reconnection to the mountains and grasslands, the raw primordial nature all around me.

On a glorious afternoon on one particular expedition, when we were at least five days from the nearest trail, I was photographing a proud eagle hunter holding his magnificent eagle aloft as the sun set high on a mountaintop. Before I opened up my camera, I took some photographs of the hunter on my iPad, as I often do in my photoshoots, and I showed them to him so that he could see what I was doing and could feel more involved in the process. He immediately smiled broadly and said that he really liked a particular image; could he have a copy? I went to get a notebook and pen out to write down his address, already wondering about how I would send it to him when I got home. From underneath his furs, the hunter pulled out an iPhone and, holding it out towards me, said in broken English, “Can you just Airdrop it to me now so that I can post it on Facebook?” I smiled and said, “Of course”.

What Mongolia teaches us - if we pause to understand and to learn - is that while its people live in the modernity of the 21st century, they remain steeped in rich culture and traditions, descendants of the great Genghis Khan. Even while texting on their phones, they have not forgotten the ancient ways of living on the land and they listen to the wisdom that lies embedded in the earth. It is a lesson that I will always hold close to me. I always return to the pulse of this ancient land. It is here that I continue to seek what is so rare in our modern world: a unique sense of authenticity and rich tradition.