![]() ![]() And when it dawned on me that the Suez Canal was only built in the 1800s, I realised that da Gama had to sail down the Atlantic to the most southerly point of Africa (the Cape of Good Hope, near present day Cape Town, England 0 – 0 Algeria), then back up the eastern side of Africa past Madagascar and then across the Indian Ocean (the black line above – he was directed by a previous explorer to do that big loop out into the Atlantic to avoid a difficult area off the Western coast of Africa). When crossing the Atlantic, one can do a pretty good impression of a crow flying, but getting to India requires a trip across the Mediterranean, through the Suez Canal at Egypt, then round the Middle East and across (close to the green and yellow lines marked above). ![]() ![]() Even as the crow flies, we are looking at approximately 6,000 km to America and 8,000 km to India. For some reason my intuition told me that a trip from Spain or Portugal to America would be longer than one to India, but how wrong I was. Da Gama's route to IndiaLet’s take the first of these. ![]()
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