The Road to Asshai, or: you can’t get there from here

nobodysuspectsthebutterfly:

racefortheironthrone reblogged your post anonymous asked:You’ve said befor… and added:

No, I meant west to Asshai. Yes, it’s true that no one’s successfully made the trip, but look at the ships they’re sailing with – cogs, carracks, dromonds, galleys – they’re not super-big ocean-going ships.
Even the swan ships of the Summer Islands, according to their depiction
in the Worldbook (p. 279), look like three-masted carracks.
If
they’re going to make it across the Sunset Sea, you’re going to need a
ship big enough to hold a lot of food and water – your proper 18th
century ship of the line. And a maester who grows lemon trees in pots.

Um, I do think it would be brave and inventive of the ironborn to sail west across the Sunset Sea (with proper ships and lemons), but you can’t get to Asshai that way? I know you own TLOIAF, so for anyone else reading this:

(low quality image uploaded for fair use purposes; if you want to see the details, please get yourself a set of the maps, they’re awesome)
This is the known world. It’s unknown how much further Essos extends past Asshai, it could be thousands of miles. Ulthos is entirely unmapped and could be bigger than Sothoryos (also unmapped but reportedly at least as large as Essos but big north-south instead of east-west). Ulthos and Essos could even come around and meet for all the map-makers and maesters know, making the Saffron Straits more of a bay than anything else. And like GRRM said, this isn’t the whole world, there’s probably even a “new world” of continents east of Essos and west of Westeros.

Excuse me? “you can’t get to Asshai that way”? 

You don’t know that. As you yourself point out, this is the map of the known world. Everything else is speculation. Essos might extend past Asshai for thousands of miles, or it might not. Ulthos might meet, or it might not. 

In fact, I’d argue the evidence points the other way. For example, the fact that it’s called the Saffron Straights points against the two continents meeting – the people who live there have sailed east and they’d know the different between a bay and a strait. 

Likewise, descriptions of westward voyages describe “boundless grey oceans stretching on and on forever.” Not impassable landmasses blocking sea traffic. The Farwynds might be crazy, but they’re saying the trip is possible.

Now, it’s possible there’s an Americos, and it’s possible there’s no way around or through Americos. But neither of that knows that for sure.