In fact, da Gama’s return journey was longer than the distance around the equator.ĭa Gama leaves for India in 1497So yes, technically a much greater feat than that of Columbus. 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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