Walk the Voyages of Sindbad, from Baghdad to the seven seas
A poor porter rests outside a rich man's house and hears how the rich man got that way: seven voyages, seven shipwrecks. Your everyday steps follow Sindbad across the sea, and the tales unlock where they happened.
- 600 miles
- 11 stops
- Translated by Richard F. Burton
Seven voyages, seven shipwrecks
A porter rests outside a rich merchant’s house and hears of seven voyages from Baghdad, across unknown seas and fabulous islands, through shipwrecks, monsters, and fortune regained. Burton’s sixth volume gives the Seaman seven chances to leave home — and seven reasons to regret it.
Sindbad the Seaman tells his story to Sindbad the Porter in Baghdad, in the days of Harun al-Rashid. Each voyage starts the same way, down to Basra and out to sea, and each goes wrong in a new way. The passengers light a fire on an island that turns out to be a giant fish. A city's people sleep offshore every night for fear of apes. A river runs underground through a mountain, and Sindbad goes with it.
The tales come from The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, in Richard Burton's translation of the 1880s. The seas are fabulous and give no distances, so Bematist walks them on a hand-drawn map, from Baghdad out to Sarandib and home again. The six hundred miles are Bematist's figure for a deliberately compressed voyage.
- Distance
- 600 miles (965 km)
- Stops
- 11, each with its own passage and plate
- Map
- Drawn by hand
- Text
- Richard F. Burton; Project Gutenberg ebook #3440
Where it starts
There lived in the city of Baghdad, during the reign of the Commander of the Faithful, Harun al-Rashid, a man named Sindbád the Hammál, one in poor case who bore burdens on his head for hire.
Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the Landsman · translated by Richard F. Burton
This is the passage Bematist gives you the moment you set out. The other 10 wait at the places they happened, and the only way to read them is to walk there.
How long would Sindbad take you?
Sindbad went to sea seven times. You only need to go once. Choose when you'd like to be home in Baghdad and Bematist sets the pace from how much you already walk.
A rough guide, at about 0.75 m a step. In the app the pace comes from your own 30-day average in Apple Health, and stays fixed for the whole journey.
On the way
The words, at the places
11 passages, each waiting where it happened. You can see how far away the next one is, but not what it says.
Walk it with friends
Send a link and walk the same road together, each of you on your own streets, wherever you live.
No streak to lose
Steps come straight from Apple Health. A quiet day is just a short one, and your place on the road only moves forward.
More roads like this one
See the whole library, with a new book every month, chosen by walkers' vote.
Set out for the seven seas.
600 miles of The Voyages of Sindbad, on the walks you already take.
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