Marco Polo was not the only merchant who traded and travelled ... cooling towers of Yazd, haze of Mount Ararat and hanging monasteries of Trabzon. We slept on floors, lived off kebabs and yoghurt, ...

The following is excerpted from Full Moon over Noah's Ark by Rick Antonson. Encountering Mount Ararat on his way to Asia in the latter part of the thirteenth century, Marco Polo wrote: "In the ...