In the summer of 1961, Stanley Johnson, accompanied by Tim Severin and Michael de Larrabeiti, set out from Oxford on two BSA 500cc Shooting Star motorcycles to follow Marco Polo’s route from Venice to Beijing. Although they came tantalizingly close to the Chinese frontier, they were forced to divert to India. With one motorcycle out of action, the three of them rode the remaining machine down the Grand Truck Road from Kabul to Calcutta.

In 2023, Stanley set off again with his fourth son, Max, to finish the journey he had started sixty-two years earlier. With a brilliant camera-crew in tow, they followed Marco Polo's precise route across China, all the way to the Summer Palace of Kubla Khan in Xanadu and on to Beijing itself. This book tells the tale of an extraordinary dream come true.