J Murray £20 pp333

Few writers have the talent to pull off a notable trilogy in any genre. In travel writing, only Patrick Leigh Fermor springs to mind, and he is still at work on the third volume about a walk he made across Europe in the 1930s. So eyebrows were raised a few years back when Tim Mackintosh-Smith announced he wanted to write a three-parter that would take him from Morocco to China. His talent was not in doubt — Yemen, his first book, was an award winner — but his subject was unusual: an obscure 14th-century Moroccan called Ibn Battutah (or IB, as he is referred to here by the author).

In 1334, about 50 years after Marco Polo returned to Venice from China, IB arrived in India on his way east. Marco Polo had travelled in order to trade, and is credited, controversially, as the first European to reach China. IB left his native Tangier to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, continued east, was away 30 years and travelled three times as far as Marco Polo, some 75,000 miles. Both men wrote about their journeys, but while Marco Polo is a household name, Ibn Battutah and his The Precious Gift of Lookers into the Marvels of Cities and Wonders of Travel are unknown outside a small circle.

Mackintosh-Smith’s trilogy plans to rehabilitate IB by following in his “footnotes”. In the first book, Travels with a Tangerine, he journeyed with him from Morocco across Africa to Cairo and Istanbul. This second volume opens with IB’s arrival in Delhi at a time when much of India was ruled by Muhammad Shah, a man whose court was said to be graced by 1,000 poets but who was as noted for his cruelty as for his generosity: the streets of his capital were littered with body parts. Shah plays a crucial role in this instalment of IB’s travels, appointing him a judge in Delhi and later sending him on a high- profile embassy to China.

Mackintosh-Smith has elevated IB to the role of master or guru. They make an odd couple; both men have a love of life and an appetite for new experiences, but while IB often moved around in grand embassy style, his devotee travels more modestly in a retro-styled Hindustan Ambassador. And while IB was lured out of spiritual retreat by the promise of worldly goods, his follower seems to scorn the bourgeois side of modern India. However odd the match, the combination is fascinating.

Mackintosh-Smith’s plan is to reanimate IB’s time in Delhi and his journey to the coast of Kerala. To do this, he tries to visit places mentioned by IB. Sometimes this is easy (in Delhi, he makes straight for Muhammad Shah’s palace, the so-called Hall of a Thousand Columns). But there are twofold difficulties for the modern traveller. For one thing, many places have been ravaged by time — the hall is now a few pillars short of the thousand, and is being used as a public lavatory. But, unhelpfully, IB is often unspecific in his writing, being more concerned with noting the process of history than with sharing tales of everyday life. Whenever the trail threatens to go cold, Mackintosh-Smith finds assistance from one of a cast of larger-than-life characters. He clearly doesn’t care much for India’s “infotech age”, so his companions, unsurprisingly, tend to hark back to another time and include several holy men, a clutch of academics and a retired royal.

To get the best out of The Hall of a Thousand Columns, you need to have read Travels with a Tangerine. Having made that journey, Mackintosh-Smith now adds three things to this latest instalment. IB emerges from his adventures in India as a more rounded though still sketchy character, and the author appears as an enthusiastic researcher, a thirsty drinker, and a traveller who allows little to deter him from his path. But perhaps of greatest interest is the view he gives us of India. We are used to seeing the subcontinent during the time of the British or the Mughal raj. Thanks to IB, we get a glimpse of the country in the bloody, glorious 14th century, an age described as “the 1960s of Sufism”.

By this stage, any concerns as to the viability of a trilogy in the footsteps of IB have been banished: The Hall of a Thousand Columns shows just how rich and fascinating travel writing can be.

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