Faxian

Faxian was ordained a Buddhist monk as a child in northern China and spent decades studying before deciding, in his sixties, that the Buddhist texts and monastic rules available in China were incomplete and inconsistent. In 399 he set out overland for India, the source of the teachings, with a small group of fellow monks. Most of his companions turned back, died along the way, or chose to stay in India rather than face the return journey; he pressed on largely alone.

His route crossed the Taklamakan desert, which he described as a place where the only markers were the bones of those who had died attempting it, and then the high passes of the Hindu Kush and the Pamirs. In India he spent years visiting Buddhist holy sites, studying Sanskrit, and copying scriptures and monastic codes that did not yet exist in Chinese translation.

Rather than retrace the overland route, he sailed home by sea, travelling through Sri Lanka and enduring storms that nearly wrecked his ship before landing, by his own account somewhat off course, on the coast of China around 412. He spent his final years translating the texts he had carried home and wrote A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, one of the earliest detailed eyewitness accounts of India and Central Asia to survive from any traveller.