Nicol? de? Conti did not write about his extensive travels. Our knowledge of him has been filtered through the works of two men to whom he recounted his adventures. A Spanish nobleman, Pero Tafur, was visiting the seashore near the monastery at Mount Sinai in 1437, when Conti arrived there, on his way back to Europe from Asia. Conti was accompanied by his wife, whom he had met and married in India, and by his four children, who were born in the course of his travels. Tafur travelled with the Conti family by caravan to Cairo and then set out for Crete. The wife and two children died in an epidemic in Egypt, and Conti returned with his remaining children to Venice, his native town. In 1439 he went to Florence during a papal visit to that city, and at that time he related the stories of his travels to the papal secretary, Giovanni Francesco Poggio Bracciolini.