Original subtitles

Let's have a look.

Let's see what we've got here.

Oh, yes.

When I was growing up, I dreamed of travel and adventure.

Bye! Thank you!

Then, one day, that dream came true.

This is it.

I'm standing on the top of the world!

For three decades, I've been lucky enough to travel the world,

making documentaries and sharing my adventures with millions of viewers.

Michael Palin set the tone for, I think, all travel TV today.

Ah - it's a bit like a very friendly steamroller...

He came at the right time.

He had the right daring qualities.

He has huge warmth,

and it's a warmth that spreads across all kinds of people.

Bye-bye, Sumantu. Bye-bye, Yusef. Bye, Muhammad!

It expanded my horizons to the rest of the planet.

All through my travels, I kept a diary.

I always felt when I've travelled,

it's really, really important to keep a record.

I mean, every day is precious.

You're seeing things you'll probably never, ever see again in your life.

Now, for the first time, I'm looking back -

revisiting my most memorable journeys, and opening my diaries

to find forgotten moments from my travels.

My way of looking at each journey as something different, new, special,

exciting, dramatic, and challenging,

was not really knowing exactly how it was going to turn out.

THEME MUSIC PLAYS

My first travel series, Around The World In 80 Days,

had proved that viewers enjoyed my adventures almost as much as I did.

So it wasn't long before we started to think about doing another

even more demanding journey.

You've clearly forgotten the horrors of Around The World In 80 Days

because you're about to go from pole to pole.

Someone suggested doing this route, which is North Pole to South Pole,

down 30 degrees east longitude.

It goes right down through Finland,

Russia, Turkey and right down through Africa, down the Nile,

the Rift Valley, all that, through South Africa to Antarctica.

And it just sounded, you know... too good to miss.

So I signed up.

Well, 80 Days, we didn't pit ourselves

against great physical obstacles at all.

It was all well-settled ground.

Here straightaway you're going to one, you know,

literally an end of the Earth!

Where are we now?

We're three miles from the pole.

We'll be there in one minute.

What are the chances of getting down?

I'd say they're pretty good. By the pole?

Yeah, well, we can probably land within at least...

..above or right at the pole.

They said to me, "The guys will fly,

"but we can't land till the sun comes out."

And I remember saying, "Oh, it doesn't matter about the weather.

"Let's just get this over with!"

They said, "No, it does matter about the weather because the sun

"will be shining down and it will reveal any ridges."

A lot of these ice flows had ridges

which can just flip a plane over just like that.

I can remember sitting up in that plane and thinking this was stupid.

This WAS stupid.

NARRATION: The first problem is where to plant your pole.

The North Pole is on a constantly moving sea of ice.

So where the pole is now may not be where the pole is in an hour's time.

That's why, as the Americans might say,

"Once you've got it, flaunt it."

This is it.

I'm standing on the top of the world

at the North Pole where the time is....

Well, the time's anything you want it to be up here!

The temperature is about -25 degrees centigrade,

so there's no point in hanging around.

What I'm going to do is make a journey from here to the South Pole,

which is...in every direction.

It's going to be a hell of a long journey but...

Well, let's go!

Standing on the top of the world, there's this incredible sense

of being enormously privileged because the world is literally

falling away at your feet.

Every direction is south.

And you're... You're in a place where very, very few human beings

have ever been before.

So that's... I mean, that's just...

What a way to start a programme.

South Pole, here we come.

Pole to Pole was just exciting world travel.

Beginning to stretch into the kind of Ran Fiennes territory,

and all these great Robin Knox-Johnstons,

the big travellers.

There's such a constant threat of peril.

It's actually a bit like watching a James Bond film.

It's got that thing of you know he's going to be fine,

But you still find yourself slightly worried at times going,

"Oh! How's he going to get out of this one?"

The idea was deliberately so engineered to try and get us

from North Pole to South Pole going through land most of the way.

Epic, I suppose, is a good word - Pole To Pole.

I thought if you really want to look hard at the world and places that,

you know, countries that I'd never been to, for instance,

then this was a greater challenge.

The challenge was important.

NARRATION: We drive on through the night -

though, at this time of year, the sun never sets.

It's still there at 3.00 in the morning

when at last we glimpse the first sign of human habitation

since leaving Ny-Alesund.

It's a trapper's hut standing on the shores of a frozen field.

The garden furniture is a bit grim.

A rack full of dead seals - meat for the trapper's dogs.

Our host, Harold Solheim, looks more like a rabbi than a trapper.

And he's lived here on his own for 15 years.

It's a very lonely life here, Harold, isn't it?

I mean, why do you choose a life like this?

Well, that was...

In the beginning, it was some sort of adventure about the whole thing.

It's not that any more.

No, it's just a way of living.

But, I mean, the idea of a trapper now is very, very unfashionable.

I mean, environmentally, the idea of people hunting and killing animals

is now much criticised.

How do you react to that?

It's OK. If they are vegetarians, then they could blame the hunters -

that I could understand.

But...

People that are going into shops and buying meat?

And, as far as I know, every meat comes from living animals,

and you have to kill them before you eat them anyhow.

If you were a vegetarian, how would you survive here?

Very badly I'm afraid!

We wave our goodbyes and hurtle on our way south to goodness knows

what problems and crises, leaving Harold Solheim's remote kingdom

surrounded once again by the certainty and comfort of silence.

My three weeks travelling across the Arctic

was like nothing I'd done before.

But ahead of us was an even more fascinating and in some ways

more mysterious destination - Russia,

and the other states that then formed the USSR.

following the line that we'd chosen, we didn't know quite what was going

to be happening along that line,

but it would take us through some very different places.

But what happened with the timing was quite extraordinary cos

that period, in 1991, when the world was changing incredibly rapidly.

SPEAKING RUSSIAN

I'm called Michael.

"For me, the first half of this pole to pole journey

"is dominated by Russia.

"It's Russia I want to know about, read about, experience, see.

"It is so strange, magnificent, mysterious, and flawed.

"I feel that I may have an uncomfortable time there,

"but somehow that's what I expect.

"That's what makes it so unusual and unfamiliar."

Going into the USSR was a real change of gear mentally

and, indeed, physically.

I just knew this was going to be the most difficult

of all the countries we went into because it was a communist country.

It was difficult to get permission to film there.

You weren't quite sure whether you were going to be able

to complete the journey through there.

They weren't particularly welcoming to a British film crew.

So there's a frisson.

As soon as you got to the USSR, everything meant something different

on different levels.

"The roads are in terrible condition, holed and pitted.

"The chronic shortage of petrol means that to be sure of supplies

"our regular drivers have to fill up at three o'clock in the morning.

"And the chronic shortage of glass is why every other windscreen

"in the city is cracked."

Michael is very good at conveying facts in an utterly informal way.

So, at the end of it, you find that you really know

quite a lot about that place.

He's like a really cool, chilled-out teacher.

You could tell that this was a country that was

of immense potential, but resources were very low.

The amount of food in the shops was fairly low.

It was very difficult to buy things.

There's enormous amount of bureaucracy.

You knew that something was wrong, that the communist system was not

working in the terms of giving people what they wanted.

NARRATION: Today, there's a bustle.

A consignment of Buffalo brand vodka has arrived,

and since the anti-alcohol laws, the bottle is a prized possession.

THEY SPEAK RUSSIAN

I have the money, but it doesn't seem to be that simple.

"Vodka by coupon!"

No?

Coupons?

Maybe I could buy a coupon from you.

Yes?

How much? I not sell.

No? No sale.

But while the state seemed to be crumbling, the spirit

of the Russian people shone through.

There was something really engaging about the way of life

of the people in the USSR.

For them, Russia meant something more than the communist regime.

It was a place where, if you made your own way,

you could be as independent as you want, which surprised me.

It didn't seem as cowed and as oppressive as I thought it would be.

We kept meeting these jolly people and they'd all drink a lot of vodka

and we'd be toasting and all that.

Everyone seemed very pleased to see us.

Here we go.

Mm!

By my count, that's number 23.

This is the...

..Leningrad TF Express, which is going to take us

about a 1,000km further south in 19 hours of travel tomorrow.

And the station is known not only for its fantastic nightlife,

but also because this was the station

where the last tsar of Russia, Nicholas II,

abdicated - or decided he was going to abdicate - in 1917.

So this is where the tsar decided to call it a day, give up.

And I can understand, having been here for an hour myself,

how he felt. So, er...

Better get on the train.

So should you - come on!

Well, just as I was having lovely dreams of breaking my day's fast,

we've had a bit of bad luck with the train,

and we're going to be stopped here in the middle of the forest.

This is a piece of Russian life that I think sort of sums up

what I like about the place.

For some reason, there was a problem with the engine,

and people straight off the train,

and going to the village, and getting water, vodka, and tea...

Suddenly, they found a pond nearby.

And so it's an impromptu sort of afternoon off.

MICHAEL SHOUTS

People all sort of swimming, jumping,

throwing themselves in the water...

You couldn't imagine this happening outside Didcot!

"After a swim, I returned to the train.

"I search the map and locate the spot in case I should not believe

"all this ever happened.

"As I do so, I notice that less than 100 miles to the southwest

"the name of the small town of Chernobyl."

The Soviet Union admitted this evening

that there's been an accident at one of its nuclear power stations.

The accident happened at Chernobyl in the Ukraine.

It sent a wave of radiation across Scandinavia,

which was recorded several hours before the Soviets admitted

that something had happened.

Now there's an exodus of children going on from Kiev.

Parents have been sending their children away

as their level of anxiety mounts.

It was now five years since the accident.

I was curious to see where it happened and what was left behind.

NARRATION: This plant is wormwood.

The Book of Revelations tells of a burning, poisonous star

called Wormwood which at judgment day will fall to Earth

infecting the waters.

The Ukrainian word for wormwood is "Chernobyl".

It grows abundantly here in Narodychi, only 40 miles

from the scene of the world's worst nuclear accident.

Michael, you carry this one.

If it emits a loud wail,

just get out of the area cos it means it's a hot spot.

No-one knows quite how dangerous this area is

but none of our Russian guides would come with us.

Only Vadim would join me.

Now, this is something which I look back on now

and I think this was a very audacious,

and possibly risky bit of filming.

NARRATION: The poison that infects these ghost villages is invisible,

but - as happened outside this old village shop - it can be heard.

DEVICE RINGING

This was a maternity hospital.

It was closed when the village it served was officially declared

unsafe for human habitation.

That was last year.

Four years after the disaster.

Equipment, notices, even medical records remain here untouched.

Tainted.

"There is still confusion and debate over the effects of the disaster.

"Flowers are in bloom.

"Yet scientists say it could be 700 years

"before this place comes back to life.

"Whatever curse lies over these villages is more frightening

"for being invisible.

"It's how one has heard the countryside would be

"after a nuclear war - benign, smiling.

"Deadly."

On our way out, we catch sight of the only two people

we've seen all day.

The old lady is 90.

SHE SPEAKS IN OWN LANGUAGE

TRANSLATOR: I would love... I wish I could die in my own house.

But my house is fenced off, and the windows are all broken,

and I can't stay there any longer.

We're the only ones left here.

This lady here who decided to stay.

Everyone else moved out.

She just wasn't going to move.

And that's that spirit - you tend to think of Russia as very conformist

and everybody just toeing the line.

But, in fact, when you look more clearly

there's a number of very eccentric and independent spirit

throughout Russia.

These are not documentaries which have a view or a thesis.

This is not Michael Palin's version of history.

He doesn't need to say, "I'm here at a historic moment."

What he's doing is he's capturing the reality

of history as it unfolds.

When I start thinking about the land, I...

It would be so rich if it were not for Bolsheviks, for Chernobyl...

As I continued south across Ukraine, which was then still part

of the Soviet Union, a chance encounter with a young Ukrainian

nationalist reinforced my sense that change was in the air.

I see Ukrainian history being revived.

I see Ukrainian culture.

You know, the culture which many people thought is gone forever.

Now we're getting back to some of our roots.

There is so much to do here.

If one feels Ukrainian, if one feels it's one's roots,

this is a very exciting period to live through

in the history of this land.

And he said, "You know, it may seem crazy, but I think

"if not in my father's lifetime, certainly in my lifetime,

"Ukraine will be a free, independent country."

And it was free and independent within the next three months.

He just seemed to be right next

to these incredibly historic moments in geopolitics.

And it does add a poignancy to the journey.

Really, after he goes through Russia

and just after he gets out the other side, there's a coup!

The Soviet Union is back under the control

of hardline communists tonight.

They took over the country with the help of the army and the KGB

before dawn this morning.

They said the country had become ungovernable

and was in mortal danger.

I could hear the radio going and our interpreter said,

"That is saying Gorbachev is gone.

"The Communist Party is going to be declared illegal."

Extraordinary.

We had spent 18 days crossing the Soviet Union,

followed by a few days in Turkey.

Then after a short hop to Cyprus, we docked at Port Said, Egypt...

..where I soon found myself back in the familiar melee

of an Egyptian railway station.

Excuse me, do you know the train to Luxor?

Luxor? Yeah. Number eight.

Number what? Number eight.

Number nine. Right through that art. OK.

It's eight. Eight or nine? Nine. Nine.

You say platform eight for Luxor.

Luxor? Yeah. Yes, one back over...

Platform 11. 11?!

Anyone else?

Luxor, 11, eight, nine.

Which is the platform for Luxor?

"Day 52.

"I think this is just Egypt,

"where confusion seems an essential part of everyday life.

"There's no feeling here that life is a series

"of problems to be solved.

"Rather, that there is a human state which is chaos,

"and that peace, calm and order is a heavenly state

"to which we wretched mortals may one day aspire."

But then, for our journey south down the Nile, we swapped Egyptian

trains for something a bit more sedate.

The tourist trail.

At this time in the early '90s,

the world was becoming more open to travel.

NARRATION: Cultural cruises down the Nile have become big business

in the last ten years.

But the Gulf War has scared customers away.

There are only 30 passengers aboard The Isis as we move

at a leisurely pace towards Aswan.

If you're going down the Nile, as we chose to do

on one of the Nile cruises,

they're for tourists - so you're going to meet a lot of tourists.

And there were two who were particularly wonderful,

a couple from Sheffield.

Do you like the guided bits of the tours?

As long as it's not too much.

Well, I think it's proven after 20 minutes,

the mind goes blank, doesn't it?

I mean, I proved that at school!

I remember her saying to me wonderfully one day,

"My husband can write 'National Westminster Bank'

"in hieroglyphics."

And I said, "Well, why would you want to do that?"

And she looked at me and said, "Because he works there!"

25?!

I bought one better than that for 20 on the boat!

Touch the scarf! Yes, it was, it was jolly good.

OVERLAPPING SPEECH

It's so Brits abroad!

10 Egyptian pounds...

OK, give me 20 English money...

The cheek of English people going to a market in Egypt

and saying, "Oh, I can get one of them better at Debenhams!"

It's not clicked on, Gerald...

But it just shows you how interested he is in people,

because not everyone wants to do travelling like Michael does.

So...he wants to show that.

And also, they're both equally valid approaches to travelling.

And that's why he's so good because he's not in any way snobby.

In Brazil, it's even better. You can sit in a cafe

and the shop comes to you - buy anything you like

sat in a cafe in Brazil!

Where HAVEN'T you been?!

DONKEY BRAYS

It feels like Michael Palin comes from a better time.

Where you felt lucky to go and do a big adventure

and you weren't just doing it to put it on Instagram.

And, unfortunately, that's how a lot of travel is these days.

Michael never did any of those things to say he did it.

He always went for a reason and to find something interesting out

about a person or the place.

When we got to Aswan, the cruises all go back north

because they can't go south cos there's a huge dam, Lake Nasser.

We went south on Lake Nasser into Sudan.

Totally different group of people.

MAN ON TANNOY SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

All migrant workers from Egypt crammed on the deck

of a very small ferry, chugging its way across to a town

in northern Sudan that no-one really had ever heard of,

and probably never had a film crew ever going there.

"We're on our way out of Egypt, at last.

"From tomorrow we shall cease for a while

"to be tourists, and become travellers

"in a country which my guidebook describes as - quote -

"'fraught with political turmoil, economic chaos,

"'civil war, drought, famine, disease and refugee crisis'."

The idea of going to Sudan, to someone who loves geography

and countries and names and all that was just absolutely enticing.

You didn't know really anything about what happened in Sudan,

who populated this enormous, great country.

It was a mystery.

NARRATION: Sudan, the biggest country in Africa,

is an overnight ferry ride from Egypt.

But life here is very different.

Sudan does not encourage visitors.

As soon as you landed off the ship at Wadi Halfa,

which is the northern Sudan -

the British had been stationed there

in the war and called it "Bloody Hellfire" -

and it wasn't a place with schedules and timings and all that.

For our journey across Sudan,

we had reservations on a legendary service that looked like

it had seen better days - the Nile Valley Express.

The train didn't leave on time.

The train left when there were enough people

to make it worth leaving!

No-one was rioting because the train left two days late.

Imagine that at Paddington or something like that.

"Excuse me, we've been two days on this train.

"Haven't we reached Reading yet?"

Bye!

Thank you!

SPEAKS IN OTHER LANGUAGE

NARRATION: There were 3,000 to 4,000 passengers

on the Nile Valley Express.

It's like a small town on the move.

The rate of progress is governed less by timetables

than by the needs of the townsfolk.

TRAIN HORN HONKS

Every now and then, the train would have to halt because it was a desert

line and the wind would blow sand over the track.

So people would have to get out and dig it out.

No complaints - people get off and a lot of people would do their prayers

to Mecca and all that sort of thing.

People would have food - everyone was prepared for delay...

..and would then get back on again and off we'd go.

MAN SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

Have you got tea?

Tea?

Chai?

Thank you.

A cucumber sandwich.

Roof Class have their own catering.

Everyone up here travels free, and there are plenty of punters

willing to risk sun, sand, and sliding off into the desert.

They were students going to university in Khartoum and all that.

Bright, intelligent, sort of interested

at the fact that we didn't travel on the roof in the UK.

So I had to sort of tell them about bridges and things like that.

Do you always travel like this on top of the train?

Yes, sometimes.

It's better than first class.

You know, you've got a better view.

And I thought, "This is all new."

This is what's so wonderful about that kind of travelling.

You are learning things all the time.

Bye!

See ya!

You're being taken out of your own set of preconceptions

about how things worked, have it all turned upside down.

And yet, it still seems to be working.

I think our job is all the time to be bringing you the things

that quite a section of the audience has never seen before.

Michael brings in and takes you to places you never heard of before

and takes risks.

Some of the most magical moments of any of my travels were sitting,

just watching the Sudanese desert go by and just the smell of sand.

And it was just wonderfully soothing.

And I felt, "I'm taken to a quite different place here.

"I'm experiencing something I've really never experienced

"anywhere else before."

And it's on a train which is two days late with an engine

which keeps breaking down.

You know, that can be a good thing!

We'd now been travelling for 67 days.

More than 5,000 miles.

With roughly 14,000 miles still to go to the South Pole.

Africa was living up to all my expectations.

This is what I'd hoped for -

a journey that would really open my eyes to new parts of the world.

I knew that, like much of the continent,

Sudan had been occupied by European powers for centuries.

When I arrived, the country had been independent for 35 years

and any colonial influence was fading fast.

You were aware that the British Empire had not faced its finest hour

in places like that.

That didn't inform what I was doing much except when we went

in the squash club in Khartoum where I meet somebody -

an older gentleman, a doctor, a very nice English doctor - who's talking

about food and what you should eat, and what you shouldn't eat there.

Certainly a generous plate... Oh, it's full of salad!

You know, I never eat salad.

Salad is one of the worst ways of contracting dysentery.

And also in this part of the world, hydatid disease.

Bring me one without salad.

Right, maybe possibly the same - I'm not keen to get dysentery.

So, I'll therefore put mine on the side here.

And I remember feeling a little bit uncomfortable

because there were echoes there...

You know, what he was saying, perfectly right - but the way

he treated the waiter was a little bit sort of colonialist.

I think that the best advice you could have about keeping fit

would be to eat only those things which are served hot.

Come from the...

..kitchen and are served hot.

Yes, the Scotch egg seems very traditional.

Is the chef English?

No, no, Sudanese.

A very good chap, too.

"Day 69.

"After a weekend of recovery from the journey into Sudan,

"it's now time to investigate how we're going to get out.

"This necessitates a visit to the Ministry of Information.

"The threat of violence is more real here than in any

"of the other countries through which we've travelled."

NARRATION: Here in the capital are the first signs of trouble ahead.

For the last eight years, the mainly Christian South

has been at war with the hardline Muslim government in Khartoum.

Unfortunately for us, the war zone lies straight across our path.

We've not been given permission to travel south through Sudan,

which is the route we need to take if we're going to stay

anywhere near 30 degrees. They've said it's not safe,

they won't guarantee our safety, and we just can't go.

Ayusha Travel, a transport company run by Eritreans

from northern Ethiopia, could solve our problem of leaving the Sudan.

So, which route would you take us?

From Khartoum direct mainly through the middle to Gedaref.

Yeah. From Gedaref to Metema, rough roads.

Rocky road, or...? Yeah.

This new route to the Ethiopian border, over 300 miles away,

took us around the current war zone.

But it was still risky as the conflict had left defeated soldiers

wandering the countryside looking for trouble.

NARRATION: The war may be over, but not everyone has surrendered.

This lonely countryside provides perfect cover

for bandits and privateers.

We're accompanied everywhere by soldiers.

The guns are loaded.

A lot of travelling is...seeing which way the wind is blowing.

You go, "Well, let's take that path."

You've got to have that feeling to it.

And I think Michael keeps the feeling of it like that.

There's always some slight element of danger.

That he would go off the beaten track - he doesn't seem biddable.

He doesn't seem to toe the line.

I can see risk, but for some strange reason

I've always been a complete optimist and felt we're going to be OK.

I'm glad I feel like that because I've been in some very,

very dodgy situations.

And if I'd known they were going to be dodgy -

THAT dodgy - I would have never gone.

"Day 76.

"At about midday, the scenery is becoming more picturesque

"and we stop to allow Nigel, the cameraman,

"to climb a low hill and get some shots.

"The soldiers become very agitated and order him back.

"Apparently, both these hills are full of armed men who will not

"hesitate to shoot on sight."

NARRATION: Things are now so bad, even the director has to push.

It looks like chaos, and was really chaotic.

This is the road.

And it's virtually impassable.

It's so deeply grooved and pitted, we keep having to stop

to pull vehicles out.

Even then, nobody seems quite sure where the border actually is.

So the combination of these two things, in the last half hour

we've probably covered about 5km

and we've been going nine hours or so, it's 3.45.

4.45, we have about another hour and a half of daylight.

Unless things get very much better, I think time time's run out for us.

We'll be...

We'll be picnicking in the bush.

It's rather fulfilling in a way cos you feel "I've negotiated something

"and I've learnt to live in a slightly different way" -

it constantly makes you sort of question how you live

at home and all that.

There are five-star hotels in Africa,

but to get the feel of Africa, I suppose something like that journey

across the border from Khartoum, sort of really don't get more...

..basic here, close to people.

NARRATION: In the busy little town of Shashamene

a moody walk through the streets becomes a major event.

As far as the locals are concerned, the circus has come to town.

OVERLAPPING SPEECH

Behave normally, just carry on.

Do whatever you're doing, and I'll try and play along, as well.

There's really nothing else to do but enjoy it as much as they are.

Where did you get THAT?!

Oh, there they are!

Hello... ALL SPEAKING

Could I have one?

25. 25.

No, no, keep it.

I'll continue my gentle walk through...

OK, now...

Oh, hold on.

Mm!

What to do here?

LAUGHTER AND CHEERS

It's the people that you meet on journeys

that really make travel special.

Hearing their all-too-human stories and experiences.

But just knowing they're out there on this enormous planet

with this ridiculous number of people on it.

Fundamentally, human beings are warm and welcoming and friendly.

I think that can never be said too much or too often.

It's... It's one of the key discoveries, I think, for anybody

who starts travelling properly around this planet.

But it is something you have to learn.

You have to get out there and try and experience

and you have to stumble as well.

There will be a few stumbles along the way,

but you trust your instincts,

you avoid the dodgy salad at the hotel buffet.

You always wear a seat belt and basically you'll be OK.

Thank you very much.

That's really good. Excellent. Thank you very, very much.

Thank you. Look at that.

Near perfection!

We're drawing very close to the centre of Africa -

not at all how I imagined it.

Lake Tanganyika, a place of romance and mystery,

can well be a Scottish loch - give or take the odd banana tree.

Journey's end, 27 hours after leaving Dodoma.

Well, this is a major milestone.

This is Kigoma.

So we've completed a huge month-long arc around from Khartoum

to get us back to 30 degrees.

We're on 30 degrees.

A little bit late, but not late enough to miss the boat,

which leaves very soon.

That will take me down on the next stage of the journey south at last,

a long way south down Lake Tanganyika to Mpulungu!

We'd now been travelling and filming for 103 days straight.

And that night in the hotel, the strain was starting to show.

Oh, no! MICHAEL LAUGHS

Oh, dear!

My wedding day!

There we are, right.

Now, let's try this.

MOSQUITOS BUZZING

I actually quite enjoy getting bitten while I'm doing this.

Hey!

I did it!

LAUGHING

LAUGHING: I've gone, I've cracked!

LAUGHTER CONTINUES

NARRATION: Next morning, I learned a few realities of life

from our taxi driver.

He also turns out to be the local doctor.

The chances of you are getting serious malaria when you come

to this area are higher because you don't have any immunity

to malaria because you have not been exposed to malaria.

So the exposure will prevent me, who is indigenous to this place,

from getting malaria.

But you will be at great risk of getting malaria.

And if we both get malaria anyway, you will suffer...

You stand a chance of suffering a more severe malaria

than I would to stand to suffer for the same number

of parasites in the blood.

This sobering thought couldn't dampen the excitement I felt

at being here - a place that only 150 years ago

had never even seen a European.

That day I did find myself walking in the footsteps

of two of the most famous - or infamous - British explorers.

"Day 105, take a boat to Ujiji a few miles down the coast.

"Once the centre of a thriving slave trade, it's also the place

"where Livingstone and Stanley met in 1871."

"A grey monument stands beneath two mango trees.

"On it is carved a map of Africa with a cross incised into it.

"It's a brutal and arrogant image."

It was on this spot under a mango tree 120 years ago that Livingstone

and Stanley made the historic meeting.

They were the only two white men within 1,000 miles of here.

They came up to each other,

doffed their hats, and the following conversation took place.

And I quote...

Stanley - "Dr Livingstone, I presume."

Livingstone - "Yes."

Stanley - "Doctor, I thank God I have been permitted

"to shake hands with you."

Livingstone - "I feel thankful that I'm here to welcome you."

It's amazing that such a boring conversation can be remembered

for more than a year, let alone 120 years.

And Stanley was apparently quite embarrassed that all the fine words

he had to say failed him at the vital moment.

Happens to all of us.

In the end, it was malaria that did for Livingstone,

while Stanley went to work for King Leopold II of Belgium,

as he embarked on his murderous pillaging of the Congo.

As we travelled, there was no ignoring the legacy of colonialism.

But as we continue our journey south, through countries

that had been part of the British Empire, we were welcomed,

time and again, with warmth and generosity.

Being immersed in this great continent was an experience

I would never forget.

"If all goes well, we should be in Lusaka by tonight.

"Then Victoria Falls, then Zimbabwe and South Africa."

"I feel a pain of sadness at the prospect of leaving

behind all I've been through these past months."

And then we went into South Africa.

And although Apartheid had just been sort of voted out,

there were still... The attitudes that sustained Apartheid

were still there.

And I can remember the swagger of the police at the border

and the sort of sticks they had,

and the confidence of the sort of pale, red-headed young men,

in a country of black people, you know, just made me feel,

"God, this is not good."

South Africa seemed to be... Well, it was the most like the West -

was the most organised, the most orderly, the richest.

You just felt that as you were going into the country.

And then we found out, you know, that's a very superficial thing.

And in fact underneath it all there there's great levels of poverty

in South Africa.

NARRATION: Soweto was set up in 1933 to house a cheap labour force.

Shanty settlements like this one, known as Mandela Village,

are the legacy of that decision.

These are the families of people who are not wanted,

and probably never will be.

You could try your luck in one of the hostels.

Jimmy doesn't recommend it.

How can you have, I mean, 16 men in one room?

There are 16 smells of food, just when cooking there...

Yeah. ..this one doing this, and then sometimes people want to rest -

you've been working at night-time and the other one has been

working during the day. Yeah.

Men in general put together. Yeah.

Yeah, these are the haircut - the barbers, street barbers,

moneymaking, of course. Yeah.

As you can see, it's connected electrically, from the battery.

Oh, sure. And that's how they get the electricity to do all this.

So that's just someone who's come in off the street to get

a bit of work here?

Oh, yeah, just a bit of work, cutting.

That Apartheid was officially over was to be celebrated,

but it was clear that South Africa's road to true racial equality

will be a long one.

As for me, my epic journey across the continent was over.

I'd finally reached Cape Town.

NARRATION: From the top of Table Mountain, you can see the point

where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet.

Beyond that, 2,500 miles over the horizon is Antarctica.

But the most poignant sight of all is down in the harbour -

a red hull supply ship we've chased through Africa to reach.

In the end, we made it, but our appeal for space on board

the Agulhas has failed.

And when she sails tomorrow, on the only voyage of the year between

Cape Town and the Antarctic, we'll still be here.

The journey, it seems, is over.

Except it wasn't.

I was determined not to fall at the final hurdle.

So, after making some calls, we found another route to the

South Pole - not via South Africa, but South America.

We have crossed continents.

We're now at the tip of South America,

and we're here on the appointed day for our departure from Punta Arenas.

The plane's behind us,

but the weather conditions round here are apparently

unlike anywhere else on Earth,

and the final decision as to whether we go or not rests with the pilot

and the weather station here at Punta Arenas Airport.

So there seem to be a lot of low-pressure areas on this map.

What do you estimate the chances at the moment?

50-50, at this time.

If you're a gambler I'll give you a little better odds.

I was apprehensive, to say the least,

about flying into Antarctica.

Day by day, we were made aware that the weather conditions change

very, very fast around there, and we could not get from Punta Arenas

on our plane into Antarctica unless all the weather conditions

were right for about 48 hours, because the plane had to go

into there and be able to come back.

So when we took off, I suppose that was one of the zones of fear,

in all the journeys.

I began to feel, "Why are we doing this bit?

"Why can't we just end here where we're safe, and go back now?"

What else is around this area here?

Any other settlement?

The next closest people would be at one of a scientific bases,

either out on the coast, or South Pole Station.

At least 600 miles to the next closest humans

from Patriot Hills, yeah.

The trip was in two stages.

First, this plane would take me and a few other intrepid travellers

to a base called Patriot Hills, 600 miles from the pole.

There, we were to be picked up by a smaller plane to take us

to the South Pole itself.

There's no airfield as such on Antarctica where we were going.

It's just blue ice.

And the pilot will have to land on this ice without skidding off,

tipping over or anything like that.

So everything was hairy.

CHEERING

And the next thing I remember is just getting out of the plane

and finding that...

..Antarctica was really slippery.

It's the bit we've all been warned about!

And I know why. Jesus.

It's absolutely like glass.

Ah, dear. Too late to go back.

There's something about the immensity of it,

of the ice and the cold. And just...

You feel so sort of small and insignificant in many places

in the Antarctic.

It is so spectacularly beautiful.

But there's also just a sense of the greatness of it and also

the possibility of danger at pretty much every step.

So, for me, I find that incredibly irresistible.

For Michael, he didn't look like he was particularly at his most

comfortable in that environment.

But I think that's also because he's...

He loves being around people.

And the Antarctic is a very wide open space, and it is a very,

very challenging place to be.

The first thing I learn is that, here in this ice desert,

even the most mundane human tasks take on an epic quality.

HE SIGHS

That is the most extraordinary view from any lavatory,

anywhere in the world.

I mean, it's just amazing.

I'm probably the only person sitting on the toilet

for the next thousand miles.

An interesting fact is that all human waste has to be removed

from Antarctica - you're not allowed to leave anything here.

So anything I may pass today will be air-freighted out to Chile...

..where it's made into models and sold!

This is interesting, because this is Notebook Eight,

Johannesburg to the South Pole.

"25 minutes into a flight to the pole,

"I discover I've left my notebook

"back at Patriot Hills.

"So this will have to be my polar journal."

South Pole, South Pole, South Pole.

Five Eight Juliet Hotel, do you copy? Over.

Five Eight Juliet Hotel, South Pole.

Ah, Roger. We're about 15 minutes out...

Roger. We've got that.

OK, have a good landing.

So we're brought down to Earth.

The goal of our five-and-a-half-month journey

is within our grasp.

But the radio conversation with the base is a reminder

of an awkward truth -

no-one really wants us here.

"Day 141, 1.10am.

"We can see the South Pole ahead.

"It's somewhere in the middle of a complex of buildings dominated

"by a 150-foot-wide geodesic dome.

"Vehicles and building materials are scattered about the site.

"It's the busiest place we've seen in Antarctica.

"No pretence of neutrality here.

"After travelling 23,000 miles, we have found the end of the Earth.

"And it is America."

The disappointing thing about it was it was very sort of...functional.

Underneath the South Pole itself there's this great base.

And you open a door and there are people having blackberry muffins,

and listening to Chicago on the sound system.

And this is at the South Pole.

And it's awful - it's just awful.

You know, my ideas of heroism and the great Greek travellers

and all that.

The Argonauts have come to this - you know, sort of ordering

cheeseburgers underneath the South Pole.

"Some 50 yards from the main pole is the ceremonial pole.

"The pole itself - a small brass tube, which looks like something

"should be about to be plumbed into it.

"Poor old South Pole.

"But I stand on it at 3.05 on the morning of December the 4th

"and thought of Mum and Angela and Dad,

"and what they would think of me."

Yeah.

At this point, all the world's lines of longitude converge

on my toe caps.

It is the end of the world.

It's also the end of our hare-brained migration

from north to south.

I think the omens are telling us to stop.

Just a while ago, the camera packed up because of the cold.

RASPS: And, as you can tell,

I'm beginning to pack up because the cold, too.

I think it's just that after five and a half months on the road,

the body is finally saying, "Pack it in."

It's much less settled, much less comfortable,

and much less predictable than Around The World in 80 Days.

And I think that, to me, I felt a real... Sort of much more of

a sense of adventure, that we'd actually gone into places that

I probably would've never, ever gone in my life otherwise,

and come out the other side.

Full Circle...

..had to be as stunning, if not more so, than the others.

This was a very, very long journey. Much, much longer.

In fact, I think it was, like, in the end, 50,000 miles,

something like that, which was longer than Pole To Pole and

80 Days put together.