[3] Mike Hale of The New York Times writes that the documentary includes how Belliveau and O'Donnell "encountered Mongol horsemen and hostile Chinese security officers and survived a firefight between Afghan factions.
[7] Denis Belliveau and Francis O'Donnell, of Queens, New York,[8] sought to retrace the entire 25,000 mile route of Marco Polo, eschewing aircraft and "going only by land or sea", even making a pact to return either “dead or successful”.
Belliveau and O'Donnell, however, initially faced difficulty from the Federal Security Service (the successor of the Soviet KGB) in crossing the Friendship Bridge into Afghanistan, but were able to do so after waiting approximately three weeks, forging their visas and paying a $100 bribe.
The leader of the Wakhi people, a living remnant of the days of feudal lords, Shah Sayid Muhammad Ishmael, told the travelers that they were the first Westerners to traverse the legendary corridor in a generation.
Belliveau and O'Donnell then crossed the Pamirs into Tajikistan on horseback, passing structures made of sheep horns (ovis poli), that guided the sojourners along the snowy trails just as described by Marco Polo and dictated by local custom.
Finally, from Hong Kong in August 1994, they sailed on a container ship to Sumatra, where they lived with the Mentawai people and O'Donnell received a tribal tattoo, according to local tradition.
At a celebratory banquet, the Venetian mayor presented them with the keys to the city and the next morning personally walked them into the Biblioteca Nazionale to view Marco Polo's last will and testament, which they had been denied access to before they left on their epic journey.