SOME 700 years ago, a 17-year-old Italian boy's desire to experience new cultures spurred one of the greatest adventures ever undertaken and led to the publication of a book that became almost as popular as the Bible.
Marco Polo's 24-year expedition across Asia and his subsequent 13th century work - Description of the World - was the first evidence of an exotic and wealthy land decorated with fascinating customs, peoples and places.
Many of the places he visited, and sights and scenes he witnessed, still exist today, but progress, development and war mean they may not be around forever.
Two years ago, executives at the National Geographic television channel decided they would produce a three-part special retracing the footsteps of Marco Polo's epic journey.
Next month the series will premiere in Hong Kong. It builds on the success of Japanese photographer Michael Yamashita's images published in National Geographic Magazine in 2001, and focuses on some of the most culturally diverse and visually spectacular regions of Marco Polo's journey.
Critics say Marco Polo may not have travelled all the way to China, and that he may have simply made up a lot of what he wrote by interviewing people he met in west Asian cities.
In the series, which took eight weeks to shoot last summer, Yamashita revisits locations Marco Polo wrote about in an attempt to shed some light on the mystery.