Top 10 famous explorers

In a time before planes, credit cards and the internet, travel was often as dangerous as it was exciting. Yet for millennia those with a taste for adventure have given in to the human impulse to explore the world, to discover new cultures and pave the way for others. The roll call of great historical travelers includes the well known and the should-be-better known.

Here are a select few, each of whom demonstrates that curiosity that keeps us exploring today. Born a Muslim, he was captured, castrated and converted by Chinese troops, before rising through the ranks of the Ming army to become a trusted adviser to Emperor Yongle. Driven as much by trade as by the travel bug he came from a family of merchants , he followed the Silk Road to China or Cathay as it was then known.

There he became friends with the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan and embarked on a series of journeys as emissary of the khan, which he subsequently documented in the Book of the Marvels of the World , a bestseller at the time. All these attributes and more belong to the Brit Gertrude Bell. Breaking into previously male-dominated areas of society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, she had already been stranded on a rope for some 53 hours while climbing in the Alps, circumnavigated the world twice and spent years exploring the Middle East before she was involved in drawing up the post-WW1 borders of Iraq, an area she knew well thanks to her love of archeology.

Famous explorers for kids

Hailing from Morocco , Ibn Battuta would, like his near contemporary Marco Polo, not see his home for many decades once he headed off on his travels. Deciding to go on pilgrimage to Mecca, he left his family and friends in Tangier in , following the North African coast in the company of camel caravans for safety and completing his hajj in Sometimes treated as an honored guest by those he encountered, other times as a hostage, as well as exploring new places he also found time to marry and divorce an astonishing ten times during his trip, before finally returning home for good and presumably a rest in By the end of May they had disappeared.

Whether they were killed by a local tribe or died of starvation is still unknown. But recent research has offered tantalizing evidence that a civilization just like the one Fawcett was looking for, did exist in the region and is known as Kuhikugu. Centuries before Marco Polo and Zheng He set off on their expeditions, an intrepid Icelander decided to sail west from his home to see what he would find.

His generosity proved disastrous, though, as so much gold flooded the market that its value dropped and negatively impacted local economies for around a decade after his trip.