He walked to India across a desert marked only by the bones of the dead — then sailed home in his seventies, twice nearly lost at sea
The Chinese monk Faxian set out from Chang'an in 399 CE, already past sixty, crossing the Taklamakan desert and Himalayan passes on foot to reach India and Sri Lanka in search of Buddhist scriptures. He returned some thirteen years later entirely by sea — surviving one violent storm that left his leaking ship adrift until it reached an island (probably Java), and a second that blew him far off course to the Shandong coast of northern China, where he landed safely, an old man, with the texts intact.
How we know
Faxian left Chang'an in 399 CE (aged over sixty; born c.337) and reached the Chinese coast in 412 CE, about a 13-year journey. His own 'Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms' describes the desert crossing guided by 'the rotting bones of dead men.' The sea return was struck by two violent storms; the first ship reached Ye-po-ti (probably Java), the second was driven to Shandong.
One of many fact-checked wonders across eight traditions at The Spring of Wisdom.