After 16 days of traveling crossing China from the eastern-most point to the western-most one we could go, we caught a flight and (even if many hours later + Chinese airline delays) in a day or so we were back to good old Maastricht!
For Gruber and d’Orville it was not so easy to go back home.
Kircher tells us that, in total, they took 214 days to travel from Beijing to Lhasa. And from Lhasa to go back to Rome was still a long way, their trip in fact had just started! Our two Jesuits started off the greatest adventure of their lives on 13th April 1661 and touched the soil of the Eternal city only on 20th February 1664. It took around three long years! Much longer than what it takes today to get to the moon! Not even both of them made it till the end. Albert d’Orville in fact, older and exhausted by the difficulties of the trip, died in Agra, India on 8th April 1662.
Restless Johann Grueber, on the other hand, arrived in Rome in February and was already on his way back to China in May, with not eve enough time to get new clothes or to enjoy the beauty of Rome. He was already itching to leave again! A life always on the road, crossing unknown lands, surviving violent nomadic tribes, freezing cold and disabling heats is the kind of life Grueber was made for! Or perhaps, he feel in love with China during his stay there and wanted desperately to go back there. We will never know, as the Jesuits never wrote down anything personal in their travelogues.
In the end, he too had an unfinished journey like his compatriot d’Orville, and did not make it back to China, as the route was blocked by ongoing wars and eventually he got too sick to continue traveling. He died in a foreign land on 30th September 1680 in Patak, Hungary.
But perhaps his death was indicative of his life. He did not belong to any place, the world in its whole, was his home and he died on the road, just how he lived his life.
We never met Grueber and d’Orville but today it feels like we did.
After reading their stories, studying their travelogues, walking in the same places where they did, feeling the wind blowing on our faces on the top of a mountain and imagining them there as well, maybe reciting a Hail Mary, made us feel like they were traveling with us and it was amazing!
So Grueber and d’Orville, it was nice to travel with you and see you again in a next life!
