Kubla Khan a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge first brought Xanadu into focus. The poem dealt with a mythical exotic land where a king called Kubla Khan built a stately pleasure dome close to the sacred river Alph. The poem was written in a stupor as Coleridge was supposed to be an opium addict and is said to be incomplete. However, there has been a lot of recent curiosity about whether there was/is a real Xanadu or not. An interesting quest in this regard is that of William Dalrymple who travelled from Jerusalem to Peking in search of Xanadu.