Here he found favour with the emperor Mohammed Inghlak, who appointed him a judge, and sent him on an embassy to China, at first overland, but, as this was found too dangerous a route, he went ultimately from Calicut, via Ceylon, the Maldives, and Sumatra, to Zaitun, then the great port of China.

Civil war having broken out, he returned by the same route to Calicut, but dared not face the emperor, and went on to Ormuz and Mecca, and returned to Tangier in 1349.

But even then his taste for travel had not been exhausted.

He soon set out for Spain, and worked his way through Morocco, across the Sahara, to the Soudan.

He travelled along the Niger (which he took for the Nile), and visited Timbuctoo.