What will you say you did on your summer vacation?

Chances are, it'll be tame compared to what today's guests on travel with Rick

steves have gone through for the sake of a little adventure.

Ever since he was a boy, Harry Rutstein has been fascinated by the exotic journey Marco Polo wrote about in his 13th century travel memoir, Descriptions of the World.

Harry fulfilled his boyhood dreams retracing the fabled Silk Road trade route Marco Polo took from

Venice to China.

He'll tell us what it taught him in just a bit.

Richard Starks and Miriam Merckett thought they were setting out on a straightforward writing assignment for a British magazine.

Their task to document a strange river that seemingly defies logic by flowing uphill through the jungles

of Venezuela.

But what started out as a routine job quickly turned into a perilous adventure

complete with poisoned Yano Mamieros and the guns of FARC guerrilla kidnappers.

Intrepid adventures who broke the mold and lived to tell the tale in the hour ahead, on travel with Rick

Steve's.

Thirteen thousand miles overland from Venice to China, a thousand miles down a mystifying river in the jungles of South America.

Those are the destinations today on Travel with Rick Steeves.

Marco Polo was the first European we know about to actually trade with China.

Seven centuries after his death, an American named Terry Rutstein became captivated by the stories of that ancient traveler.

After years of research, three attempts and a decade of obstacles,

Rutstein succeeded in retracing Marco Polo's 13th century route

through the fabled lands of

warlords of Central Asia.

...