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 all travel TV today.

Oh. Ah! It's a bit like a very friendly steam roller.

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, Kazmir. Oh! Look at that.

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

TAPE RECORDING: Laying her down in what must have been my old bed...

Oh, God!

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.

These are all the old passports. At one time, I had three.

Someone said only the Queen has three passports.

Oh, here we are, yes.

"Chile Policia Internacional."

I'd been around the world in 80 days

and I'd travelled from Pole to Pole, and after a few months at home,

I was getting itchy feet again.

But what journey could possibly top those two?

So, where to next, Michael Palin?

Well, I'm going to Cardiff next week. That's good.

In a sense, it sort of had to be done.

Everything seemed to be pointing at one more journey.

And so, the more ambitious it was, in the sense,

I felt that was necessary.

Actually, ambitious doesn't quite do justice to the journey

we had planned.

50,000 miles around the entire Pacific Rim.

This was twice as far as 80 Days and Pole to Pole combined,

and it would take the best part of a year.

The scale of it was part of the attraction.

It would give you an extraordinary variety of countries and landscapes

and environments united by the fact they were all dependent

on the Pacific.

And I suppose I saw it as the ultimate Palin journey.

There would be nothing to match this.

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

And we did start at a remarkable geographical location,

this island in the middle of the Bering Strait.

These are the Diomede Islands.

Over behind me is Greater Diomede, uninhabited and a Russian island,

and the one I'm on, Little Diomede, is American.

About 50 miles to the north is the Arctic Circle.

Behind me, in that channel there, runs the International Date Line.

On Greater Diomede, it's already tomorrow.

The locals are, frankly, unimpressed.

They've seen travellers here before trying to cross the

ice bridge between Russia and America, or on their way

in and out of the Arctic.

This is just one more crazy departure for a people

who wouldn't exchange Diomede for anywhere else on Earth.

So we say, farewell, Diomede.

See you in a year.

I suppose as I grew up and he wanted to do more adventures and find out

more about the world, it was interesting to see him dive

a little bit deeper and go into far-flung, really unseen,

sort of communities and put them on TV.

He's someone who has been a huge inspiration to me since

I was a little kid.

No matter what he did, he just went in and just was willing

to experience it, and I don't think many people are like that.

It was an adventure on a totally different scale.

It involved logistics that would be incredibly challenging now.

Trying to do that and for the length of time

that he did it was incredible and insane, I think.

You know, what must have been so far out of his comfort zone,

being so far away from his family, from home, for so long,

that had to have been really tough to do.

The thing about travelling was

you had to feel as free as possible.

You didn't really think about home that much,

except in the first week.

That was the odd thing, I used to get very, very, very homesick

in the first week.

Then after a bit, you just carry on.

This epic journey would take me through many countries

I'd never visited.

But from Alaska, I was bound for somewhere

I had been to before - Russia.

A country that, since the fall of communism,

had been experiencing enormous change.

The roads of Vladivostok are full of Japanese cars and the

midday bustle in the streets has an almost European feel.

It's hard to believe that the city was closed to foreigners

as recently as 1992.

It was closed because it was the home port of the mighty

Russian-Pacific fleet.

It remains their home,

but the fleet now goes on joint manoeuvres with its old enemies,

America and China, and is no longer mighty.

It was like Russia was now thinking like America,

it was becoming its own big, sort of, capitalist country.

And yet, you know, the infrastructure was still sort

of communist - pre-Berlin Wall scarcity,

people making do, shops that had not that much on the shelves.

There wasn't a feeling of confidence,

more confusion, I would say, in Russia.

Last time, I'd travelled through Western Russia, European Russia.

But this was the Far East, Siberia, infamous as the land of the Gulag.

Magadan was built by slave labour in the 1930s.

It was the administration centre for the mineral mines

of the nearby Kolyma region.

Most of the inhabitants of this bleak city are the sons,

daughters, grandsons and granddaughters of prisoners

and prison officials.

This is where Stalin sent the enemies of the people -

writers, artists, lawyers, anyone on whom his suspicions fell.

In the very heart of Magadan is the start of the long road

that led to the camps.

It runs for hundreds of miles.

It too was built on slave labour, laid literally over the bodies

of those who perished.

We're taking one of the survivors back to the remains of the Gulag

camps where he once worked.

His name is Ivan Yakovlev.

He's not returned to this harsh wilderness for 50 years.

These are the old uranium mines, where men worked in grim isolation

to extract the vital ingredients for Russia's first atomic bomb.

It was always officially denied that forced labour camps existed,

but Ivan Yakovlev shows us the remains of a cemetery

on the mountainside 200 miles north of Magadan.

There is clear evidence here to prove that someone knew

who was buried in these communal graves,

for each one is marked with an identification disc made

from an old tin lid.

F... No, that's a G,

Russian G, 24.

IVAN SPEAKS RUSSIAN

He told me that the main causes of death were overwork, radiation

and terrible hunger.

The grounds of this particular camp in the Gulag,

on all sides are these mountains full of rubble,

great black mountains, tips,

spoil tips they look like, from which the uranium is extracted.

A complete lack of almost any living thing when you look at

the mountains around. It must've been the most...

..most depressing,

most dispiriting.

It struck me as forcibly as anywhere I'd been in the world,

as a sort of place of pure evil, yeah.

They put people there because there was nothing

for thousands of miles around.

You were stuck there.

And many, many, many thousands died there.

What a sort of...

..horrific glimpse of what man can do to man.

The thing that, that really becomes apparent is that he wanted to not

just see it as a jaunt.

And he really wanted to get those stories and became much better,

I guess, as a journalist in a way. He managed to tease out stories

from people and some quite heartbreaking stories.

Everything felt like a new experience.

So that means you at home are sharing that experience.

That's an amazing skill to have.

You know, you're thousands of miles away from people, in a box

at the bottom of their room, but you're still able to connect

with them because you're on the same journey.

With the bleakness of the Gulag still lingering in my mind,

it was time to move on. A flight of less than two hours had brought me

to a country that could not have been more different

from post-Soviet Siberia.

"Day 25. So we pass from Russia to Japan. From the land

"where everything is difficult to the land where everything is easy.

"A free, open, affluent, sophisticated society in which,

"according to a recent poll, 87% of the population wants to look

"like everyone else."

I mean, Japan is beautiful to travel in because it's

extraordinarily beautiful and so surprising.

And the people, their way of living is a delight for anybody who's a bit

afraid of travel.

This is the Zen Buddhist temple of Buttsuji.

It's been a place of silence and meditation for 600 years.

When we're all sitting comfortably, nothing happens.

Once I've accepted that nothing is going to happen,

calm descends.

All I have to do is be.

BELL RINGS

Then, as calm is descending for a second time,

something finally happens.

HARD SMACK

Just as I'm wondering what it must be like to be hit so hard,

I'm offered the chance to find out.

HARD SMACK

And in the true spirit of Zen, I thank him.

I learn afterwards that this is the "keisaku", the warning stick,

a means of ensuring that meditation does not become an excuse

for a quick nap.

But for all it's a Zen-like tendencies,

Japan could be as aggressive towards its neighbours as any other

powerful nation,

as the next country I visited knew all too well.

I think getting on the boat from Japan to the ferry to Korea,

people are just much more relaxed,

just the way they were sort of sitting in chairs.

The Japanese were very neat and tidy.

The Koreans were sort of sprawling a bit more and you can have

a bottle of beer with them.

But it led me into realising that these countries

were quite different.

And Korea, who wasn't just another, sort of Asian country,

it was a country that had been oppressed by the Japanese,

who'd occupied the country for many, many years quite recently.

And it was also doing extremely well.

The economy there was beginning to build up and you could tell

that they could see Japan as their sort of competitor,

and they could produce more and better

of what the Japanese were producing.

What do the Koreans think?

Are they very proud of what they've done here in Seoul?

Yeah, they are very proud.

I mean, you figure, they've just gotten out of a war

just 20 years ago.

Who do they sort of measure themselves against, the Koreans?

They always look to Japan.

They always measure themselves against Japan,

because Japan was also

levelled by war and they rose out of the ashes and became

a great economic power.

So, the Koreans, naturally, look to their neighbours. Yeah.

Do they still harbour a grudge? Oh, yeah.

There's still a great deal of anti-Japanese sentiment

among Koreans, especially the older Koreans.

Japanese pop culture, music,

cartoons, things like that, are still banned in Korea.

Japanese cars are banned.

"Below me, the new high rises of Seoul sweep across the landscape

"like a steadily advancing army.

"In the face of this voracious display of power and industry,

"North Korea, I can't help thinking, doesn't stand a chance."

In front of them all,

there's the motto of the 506th Infantry,

some of the 37,000 American troops still stationed in Korea.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Freedom House.

Today's GIs double as guides, taking groups of foreign tourists -

no South Koreans are allowed - right up to the border itself.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the MAC Building.

The MAC building is where the four types of meetings essential

to the supervision of the ceasefire agreement are held.

Therefore, those of you on my left, welcome to communist North Korea,

while those you to my right are relatively safe in Republic.

If you wish to make across into North Korea, please do so at that end of the table.

And when those of you in North Korea wish to turn back to Republic,

also please do so at that end of the table. If you have any questions,

I'll be located at the southern end of door. ROK soldier.

Busy in North Korea.

Try and get over...

LAUGHING AND CHATTERING

I've been around a bit, but I've never known a more bizarre

way to enter a new country.

HE SIGHS

Crossing the frontier has been reduced to something

halfway between a parlour game and a visit to the house of horrors.

Nearly there.

Inches to go.

North Korea.

This is it. This is the end of the road.

We can't go any further into Korea without the risk of being either

shot or arrested.

It comes as a bit of a shock to find such a heavily fortified,

potentially lethal border in the middle of the open,

outgoing Pacific Rim area.

But I suppose

the immeasurable sadness of a place like this is that it's not a border

between two rival countries, it's a border that separates one

country...from itself.

Then, as now, the communist regime in North Korea could never

have survived without the backing of its big brother next-door -

China, our next destination.

Same slightly intimidating olive green uniforms and caps

of the Communist China, but enormous amount of building going on

absolutely everywhere.

Look at all the cranes there.

The change in China in what was seven or eight years was so clear.

China was seen to be investing enormous amounts of money

in recreating itself.

The East at that time was a growing force.

It was quite clear that China was changing and becoming

a world economic power.

For a communist country, China's trains have always

been conspicuously class-conscious.

Now the difference between hard and soft class seems to be widening.

Hello. Hello.

Taking pictures of Chinese eating breakfast? Yes.

VOICEOVER: In today's China, wealth, it seems, can be flaunted without risk.

As Deng Xiaoping himself said, "To be rich is glorious."

I'm invited to share a table with a businessman who honed

his skills in Canada and is now one of Shanghai's

many new entrepreneurs.

Do you find there any problems running a business in China

that you wouldn't have elsewhere?

Over here, there are problems.

The people are not used to the way we're running things.

They've been working for the communist kind of way

for the last 40 years.

But they're learning.

You could see just people working in the fields with bullock

carts and a wooden plough,

and then the next village you'd see a hotel would've have gone

up and there'd be some vehicles working and all that.

A new road would be, being laid out.

And I suppose, you know, the Industrial Revolution

in Britain was pretty fast.

But we now look back on it as being sort of 200 years ago.

Now in China, that was happening while I was there.

"I was last here seven years ago in the steps of Phileas Fogg.

"Then, it was a city of awesome scale bursting at the seams.

"Since then, old seams have burst and new ones

"are already under threat."

"The pace of construction is relentless, but we're rudely

"reminded that the wind of change blows only in certain directions.

"Economic liberation should not be mistaken for political relaxation."

What did you do during the time we call

the Cultural Revolution? What were you doing here in Shanghai?

Oh, I'm very sorry.

You see, I'm ragged from St John's and

that would be very troublesome.

What? Oh, I see.

To talk about it? Yes. So you would not have been...

20 years ago, you would not have been allowed to talk to me?

Sure. Right. Hello.

To them, I'm something wrong. I must be a rebel.

A what?

Yes, something would be wrong.

Yeah. OK.

But now it's diff...

It's different now, is it? Mm-hm.

A couple of chaps coming around

there in police uniforms, looking a bit uncertain.

But now it doesn't matter. They can't interfere.

We can talk freely.

I get the impression that my new friend is someone

I still shouldn't be talking to.

The job of the travel presenter is to draw out other people,

and he's a genius at doing it.

He doesn't just talk to people who are famous or have obvious

stories, but he will suddenly just bump into somebody.

The result is it's a real, human reaction.

From Shanghai, we headed inland where we boarded ferry boat,

the Oriental Star Number 1, for a voyage up the Yangtze River,

past the site of another huge construction project.

This is currently the most important and probably THE most

controversial point on the Yangtze River,

because you can see the workings

for the Three Gorges Dam, which will extend across the

other side of the river here so that everything

from here on that we're going to see, the gorges we're going to go

through, will, in 16 or 17 years' time, be totally under water.

The homes of over a million people will disappear beneath a lake

370 miles long.

The project promises safe navigation, cheap electricity

and an end to devastating floods.

The cost will be the loss of all this.

These towns look doomed.

Why change anything when in a few years all this will be engulfed?

We decide to stop here and look at the town.

It's called Wushan, a small, hard-working place of few luxuries.

For some reason, Wushan is full of hairdressers.

I decide to treat myself.

Can you do one of those like you're doing to him?

I don't think this happens very often in a town like Wushan,

judging by the audience.

People here don't really see any Westerners at all.

We've hardly seen anybody here.

The other sad thing...

..is that in seven years...

..this high street will be completely dead.

It will be evacuated.

And in a couple of years after that, about ten years from now,

it'll be underwater.

It's tough to watch that, you know?

And him saying, you know, this could all be gone in ten years

when talking about all the villages along the Yangtze

that were going to be flooded,

and you think, you know, what's gotten rid

of in the name of progress,

you think, "My God, how much culture are we erasing?"

As we journeyed deeper into China, we encountered more communities

for whom we were a distinct novelty.

Until we reached an area

that had been, until recently, completely closed to outsiders.

There are few places in the world as untouched.

We're probably the first foreigners they've ever seen.

Hello.

Ni hao.

Ni ma hao.

Ni hao.

Unlike many others in China, the Miao are open, friendly and curious.

Let's go in, shall we?

Here we are, barging in while you're having your lunch.

Is this some...?

CHATTERING IN MIEN

Yeah. Do they have a big meal in the middle of the day and then

go back to work?

SHE TRANSLATES

Yes. Yes.

Can you ask them if they've ever seen foreigners before?

Ever seen people from the west?

SHE TRANSLATES

What do we look like to them?

Quite different.

Quite Strange. Quite different.

How? Why? What do we...? Apart from...

With big nose, they said. Big noses? Yes, a big nose.

That's just me. Not everybody has a nose as big as this.

EVERYONE CHATTERING

It's like a forbidden world

that he's just entered into.

You know, culture, connecting with people,

it makes you realise that your way of living is just one way.

What a stunning privilege it is to be the first outsider

to walk into that community, into that village.

But what a hell of a responsibility it is.

But if Britain was to send an ambassador abroad,

I mean, we could do a lot worse than send Michael Palin out

there, couldn't we?

"Although the Communist Party was still very much in charge,

"the pace of change in China was dizzying."

"And as we moved on into Southeast Asia, this feeling of rapid

"transformation only grew stronger."

It felt on the Pacific Rim, certainly on the Asian side,

that a lot of history was happening very fast.

Vietnam was remarkable because I was sort of brought up

on the Vietnam War,

the colossal amount of damage the Americans had inflicted

on the country.

I'd expected to find a Vietnam that had been punched senseless,

a bit like Europe after the war, and it was more like

a Jack-in-the-box had suddenly sprung back.

Vietnam was, in a very, very short time, being transformed from

somewhere that had been devastated to somewhere that was working

perfectly well and had great potential.

The old imperial city lies on the Perfume River.

One of the fiercest battles of the American war took place here,

and the central span of this bridge was bombed

into the river.

Today, it's busy all day long, as is every other thoroughfare

in this crowded land.

These people were not sort of driven by anger or revenge or

even bitterness against the Americans.

As we draw closer to Saigon, we pass an extraordinary

relic of war.

These are the Cu Chi Tunnels, a 100-mile underground network built

to house guerrilla armies fighting the French and the Americans.

Despite being blasted with bombs and raked with defoliant,

they were never destroyed in 35 years of warfare.

How many people could be hidden underneath the earth

and these tunnels at any one time?

Normally, about 5,000 guerrilla forces can stay

inside a tunnel at one time.

Then I sort of realised that although history seemed to be

made in very short bursts,

these were very, very ancient civilisations

that had been through all this long before in many different ways.

This is a much, much older civilisation and much more complex

history than our own, really, where we're late comers compared

to what's been happening in China and Vietnam.

As we moved on from Vietnam to the Philippines,

we'd been travelling and filming for 100 days straight.

It could be tough going.

And on one particularly rough ferry crossing, I had a vivid

dream of home.

TAPE RECORDING: As the storm went on,

it was strange, comforting being there, lying in one's bunk,

and I had a dream, and Rachel was a baby and...

My daughter.

..wasn't very well.

For some reason, I remember we were at Whitworth Road,

my old home...

My old house in Sheffield.

TAPE: ..kicking around and laying her down in what

must've been my old bed.

Oh, God.

TAPE: When the rolls were particularly severe and pronounced,

I began to think, "This is it."

Funny that I had a dream about my daughter and me

putting her to bed in my old house back in Sheffield.

There must be so many things coming in there,

not only the family, who you weren't going to see for another

sort of four or five months...

..but also...

..insecurity, I suppose. as you're sort of rac...

rolling about, there's a genuine fear that you might not survive.

Full Circle,

he was nearly away for a year,

best part of a year from his family, and it was a very tough challenge.

Watching it nowadays and you think we're so reliant on mobile phones,

we're so reliant on planning everything out, and then you think,

"God, they didn't have mobile phones."

He must not have spoken to his family for weeks,

if not months, at a time. That's really, really difficult.

Because of the length of it, the time we were away, it made

you very vulnerable to whatever might have gone wrong at home

or the whole feeling of being away from home.

So it was a big shock when I got to Kuching in Sarawak and my wife,

Helen, rang me up and said, you know,

"Don't panic. Sit quietly.

"But I've been diagnosed with a benign brain tumour."

We had this long conversation, I said, "I'll be back.

"I'll come back straight away."

She said, "No. I'm going into hospital in three days' time.

"By the time you get back, you know, I'll be aware

"of you being in complete panic.

"I'm being really well looked after.

"A surgeon is going to do the operation."

She said, "He's very happy to talk to you," and all this sort of thing,

so she played down, tried to play down things,

cos I don't think she wanted me to panic.

That was very... It was a very difficult period, that.

I never really seriously thought we would abandon the journey,

but it came very close to it.

With Helen on the mend, my determination to see the journey

through was renewed.

We still had over 20,000 miles to go.

Our route now took us round the east coast of Australia...

Oh, my God.

I tell you, I've never done anything like that in my whole life.

..across to New Zealand...

..and then on to the most dramatic landscape yet - South America.

I honestly knew far less really about the South American countries,

so I went with a completely open mind.

Let's... We'll see what it's like.

Let's see what it's like along the way.

It was more rugged.

The whole experience was much more down to topography and landscape,

and, of course, the Andes sort of dominating all the way we went

up through South America.

It was very odd the South American side, it was like being in a story

somehow, you know, a magical world.

And there's a lot of magical realism with the writers there and all that,

and you kind of know why they do it.

It was almost like it hadn't been tamed, like the sort of

Asian side had been tamed.

Getting a bit hungry now.

Asado? Ooh.

Oh, a little tasting first.

Mm.

Perfectly done. Mm.

Pas cinco. Very good roast lamb.

Can I have a little bit? It will be very good.

Don't worry about them. It's me...

Roast lamb in brown paper. Oh, thank you.

Complete Sunday lunch.

How much? Cuanto es?

Cinco. Cinco. Si.

There we go. Don't bother them.

Hey! Ooh, that's...

MICHAEL LAUGHS

"We went as far into Peru as possible by train,

"then further on by road, and finally, in the manner of

"explorers from another age, on the 450-mile long Urubamba River."

"There's no way north of here except by river.

"Over breakfast, I study a satellite image of our river route.

"It shows clearly the line of a rocky ridge

"through which the river cuts. To get through,

"we shall have to descend the fiercest of all the Urubamba rapids,

"the Pongo de Mainique."

When I started going down the Urubamba, I'm not making a big thing

of it, but I was a bit scared that morning, to be honest,

and when we were on these boats, we could so easily have tipped over.

They're very shallow boats and it was a very, very, very fast,

very fast foaming current.

And, you know, there's a kind of, "Well, here we go.

"Nothing I can do, perhaps I shouldn't have signed up for this,

"but hey, let's go."

Conditions on the river can change quickly from

docile to lethal.

If there's too much water flowing, the boats can be swept

out of control.

If there's too little, rocks and shoals close to the surface

can flip us over.

Wow. Just missed a rock by the skin of our teeth there.

The water starts moving very, very fast

as it flows literally out of the Andes and into the Amazon plain.

And there we are, into boiling water,

I was pretty nervous at this point because we seemed to be heading...

There we are! We're heading straight for what seems like a sheer

wall of rock.

Glistening granite walls loom ahead

like slowly closing doors.

It's a tricky one, Barry.

Yeah, it's going to get it just right here.

If he messes up here, we could be into that rock or into that rock.

Very narrow now, isn't it? This whole river just squeezed in.

It's squeezed in. It's getting narrower up ahead too.

This must be just incredible in the rains. Yeah.

It's the fact that the rock is black,

the weather's clouded over, it's beginning to drizzle,

it's like... Someone described them as the gates of Hell.

I expected the Pongo to be dangerous, but never

to be so beautiful.

Rocks, which look as if they've been blasted apart, rise from the river

like the buttresses of some half-submerged cathedral.

The way he describes it, what is it? "The buttresses jetting up,

"you know, like cathedrals,"

it, like, puts incredible images in my mind.

And often when I'm travelling and sighted people will describe

things to me,

and I feel I'm the lucky one because it's almost like I get

the book version instead of the film version. And as we all know,

the book's always better than the film, right?

LAUGHTER

I feel sorry for you sighted folk.

After the noise and chaos of the rapids, the river has fallen

still and quiet.

The only sound is from the water pouring out of the jungle, carving

a weird and wonderful architecture on the canyon walls.

Travelling doesn't get much better than that.

I must have read things like that, when I was growing up,

endlessly in books, because that's all I read, books about adventures,

different parts of the world.

And there it was all happening, just in that little section there.

That's just pure adventure.

I remember thinking, "You know, I wouldn't mind staying here for

"the rest of my life."

After three weeks on the Peruvian river system,

we've now reach a crossroads.

We have... The Amazon here has brought us to Peru on this side,

Brazil over there and Colombia over there.

We can't really carry on with the Amazon.

It goes on 2,000 miles into the Atlantic.

So we're going to head north through Colombia and back

up towards the Pacific.

Wherever that is.

Bogota was, in a way, a bit of a paradise after nights and

nights going up the Urubamba River.

We're living just in tents on the riverside,

there was lots of bugs around and all that,

and it was very hot and uncomfortable.

So when we flew to Bogota, it was just wonderful.

We were booked into a four-star hotel.

It was just amazing.

You know, and it had sort of sheets on the bed and little chocolates

and things like that.

And I felt, well, suddenly we're back in civilisation.

And then you realise how tenuous the word civilisation is.

Colombia's capital is the biggest city

we've seen since Sydney.

It has a reputation for being one of the most violent places on Earth.

To try and find out why, I go to see Tim Ross, a British journalist

living and working here.

I'm told you do a great city tour.

Well, the city is great.

I think it's fun, but it's not a city exactly with tourism.

That has ended here because of the problems and dangers.

A city with one of the world's highest per capita homicide rates,

like, 100 murders per 100,000 population here.

Like, 50 times the British murder rate.

I think I had developed, after two series,

more of an appetite for information.

I was beginning to realise that you didn't have to sort of joke

about where you were or find some eccentric thing to show

that you were having fun and a good time.

There's more of a responsibility to sort of note what's

happening in rather more sort of serious areas.

Tim is well-known around here.

He's reported on these streets for 20 years.

Death squads work this area consistently.

They come around at night killing people.

Now, this next street ahead here, they've actually put posters up.

But who are the death squads, who do they compose of,

and what justice are they dealing out?

Justice - bullets in the head. Yeah.

It's shopkeepers, off-duty policemen, private security guards.

Sometimes simply people who've been mugged and are fed up with it,

go back with a gun and kill street people, particularly...

So they're sort of vigilante squads. Vigilante squads, yeah.

And do they kill people? They do. Regularly. At what rate?

Sometimes three, four, five, six cases a week,

two or three people a night killed.

Back in the car, we head for the most notorious street of all,

Calle Cartouche, "Bullet Street".

If they see someone like this going through, do they see

it as a target or something to rob...? Yes. Yes.

They're already yelling insults at us.

ROCK HITS CAR

Now they're throwing rocks.

MORE ROCKS HIT CAR

Yeah, they've already started getting hostile, which is normal.

They assume we're either death squad or police or something.

Stabbings are frequent.

They use broken bottles on each other's faces.

A squabble can start for nothing.

A squabble over 50 cents' worth of marijuana.

I mean, I generally feel that somehow we're going to be all right

because why would anyone want to shoot us?

But then you don't know. There are many reasons why they might want to shoot you,

or they might just miss the person they're shooting at

and it hits you if there's bullets flying and all that.

There's definitely this feeling that unless you had a weapon,

you were probably going to end up a victim.

You weren't tempted to get a weapon though?

I wasn't... The BBC didn't allow me to get a weapon.

They allotted the contract.

So, this isn't glossy travel here.

Even just showing the existence of this has a power.

"I'm not interested in filming a holiday brochure."

I think it's incredibly important, but just more interesting

as well to show what I, slightly pretentiously,

call the light and the shade,

but it's basically, for me, showing the glory of a place,

but also the issues as well.

Armed police patrol neighbourhoods reduced by the

drug trade to war zones.

Tim knows many of the casualties.

TIM SPEAKS SPANISH

It was a knife stab. Right.

They had to open it up to stitch him up inside. Wow.

THEY SPEAK SPANISH

It touched the heart. Who did that and why?

TIM TRANSLATES

Up on Seventh, the main street just to rob him.

But he's a street person, a drug abuser, I mean...

Those are the stains of drug use, marijuana and basuco,

that bright, bright orange.

You're lucky to survive that.

TIM SPEAKS SPANISH

Look at the scars.

That's typical of the transvestite male prostitutes,

the self-mutilation.

He has AIDS. He has AIDS.

He has to go back to the foundation which deals with AIDS patients here.

Accept that? Will he do it? Yes.

He wants to persuade his friend. The trouble is persuading the friend

to come in with him, cos he doesn't want to leave him.

Ah, dear.

HE SPEAKS SPANISH

I've only got a small bill, that's all I have. OK?

Going to Colombia was something that really stuck out,

and meeting that poor young man who had AIDS on the street,

and he just was so compassionate and so willing.

And there's never any judgment there of any different cultures

or what people are going through.

Of all the places I've been in the world, Colombia was the one

place where local people were not happy that I'd been there.

There were actually some complaints, you know, saying this was not a fair

portrait of their city.

I'm always aware that we go to places where people have to live

with things which are not always nice.

But I don't want to fall in a trap of saying, "This is a bleak area,

"you'd never want to go there."

There's nowhere on my journeys I wouldn't go back to again.

Even the really rough places,

I'd say, "Well, you know, I was wrong. This is lovely."

Our journey through South America was at an end.

After leaving Colombia, we flew across Central America to our final

destination en route to the USA.

Mexico.

At first, Mexico felt more prosperous than some places

on this leg of the journey.

But as we approached Tijuana, the sheer inequality of life

in the Americas came sharply into focus.

This is the US border,

a ten-foot high steel barrier made from landing strip sections

from the Vietnam War.

It's called the Tortilla Curtain.

Those who cross illegally are known as "pollos", chickens.

If you're determined to go, the Tortilla Curtain can look

a very flimsy obstacle.

What's the view of the Mexicans of this, of a defence like this?

They think, should it be there? Very, very sad, you know,

because, don't forget, all this used to be Mexico.

On the Mexican side, you had people, a lot of whom had

very little to lose,

and on the other side, the American side, just a few yards away,

was a sort of paradise.

Everything was more settled, it was more comfortable,

there was more money,

so the starkness of the difference between Tijuana and San Diego

could not have been greater.

When will these guys go, do you think? Ooh, they're going now.

Yeah, they go now. If there's a way, they cross.

I mean, I could get under there, I suppose, and go to America. Yes, sure.

I could... You can go if you want.

Look right, look left.

Here I am.

This is America.

That's America.

No passport, no papers... Nothing. ..no queues at Immigration.

We are pollos already.

Vehicles patrol along here,

so are we being observed at this moment?

You think somebody's keeping an eye on us? Of course.

I think we'd better leave the land of the free

pretty quick just in case. Yes. We'd better go.

Last year alone, over half a million people were arrested for crossing

this 60-mile stretch of the Tortilla Curtain, but still they go.

It was people at the end of their tether trying to break

in to America.

Prepared to take terrific risks with their family and their children

and all that, just to get in and enjoy the way of life

in their rich neighbour.

The privilege is that you're able to move fairly freely

between countries, but the privilege is also that you're able to get

the story from both sides.

What's your feeling about the people that you pick up?

What do you feel towards them,

that they're just legitimately trying - well, not legitimately -

they're trying to get some work, or what? It's a push-pull effect.

They're pushed up here economically and they're drawn

up here economically.

I think that if I was in their shoes,

I'd be doing the same thing.

If you're a forgotten people in a difficult situation, it means

a hell of a lot for somebody to turn up and take an interest.

And it's a very powerful thing for people to think that their story,

in whatever form, it's going to be shared with others

around the world, with other human beings,

other people will hear about this situation,

that's important to them

and I think it's important for us to hear it as well.

Like so many experiences on the journey, this sobering

reminder that we live in a world of have and have nots made a big

impression on me.

INTERCOM: Welcome to the United States of America.

But I never imagined that, 25 years on,

this border would become the huge political issue it is today.

And so, on day 227 of our epic voyage, we began the last leg

up through the states and into Canada, towards Alaska,

where it had all begun.

Thanks a lot. Sorry to stop you, but... That's all right.

I was told you stop anywhere. OK?

The last section, especially up through Canada,

we were all getting very, very tired.

But I think it was only the Canadian Lumberjack Festival

that finally cracked me.

ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm Squamish welcome

to Mr Michael Palin!

I once sang a song about lumberjacks

and today, in Squamish, I'm going to pay for it.

The Annual Logging Games always start with a bang

and this year, I've been asked to provide it.

Has it got a kick on it? Just a little. A little kick, yeah?

All right, you see that tree with the red marking? Yeah.

No excuses now.

Ready?

Aim...

fire!

EXPLOSION

Wow! We've never had anybody do it.

You did it!

Mike Palin, ladies and gentlemen. CHEERING

Then, just as I think it's all over,

I make the fatal mistake of getting excited.

LAUGHING: You're going the wrong way.

Pride comes before a fall.

Contestants ready.

One, two, go!

CROWD EXCLAIMS

It's no good.

I think I've lost the will to win.

LAUGHTER

Oh, my goodness. How about it?

Let's give him a super big...

I want to go home! I want to go home!

And everyone thought that was hilarious, but I really felt it.

I really... That was my...

I think one of the few moments in all the series ever done

where I've had a heartfelt desire not to be where I was.

But the finish line was in sight,

so we pushed on north towards our original point of departure,

the Diomede Islands.

The US Coast Guard, who offered us a ride down the

Aleutian Islands chain when we started out a year ago,

had promised to help us on our return journey.

Today, they're as good as their word.

Their ship, the Monroe, is in the area, winding up routine

patrol duties in the Bering Sea.

Thanks, guys.

If anyone can get us onto Diomede, it's the US Coast Guard.

Oh, Captain, it doesn't look too good.

What are the chances of getting me onto Diomede?

Not very good, I'm afraid.

Winds are about 30 knots.

The seas are about 12 feet. HORN BLOWS

And as you can hear, the fog signal's going off, which indicates

reduced visibility, particularly around Diomede.

So I don't think we'll be able to fly the helicopter in either.

Well, it looks as though the Bering Strait has defeated us.

The most notorious and changeable and dangerous weather systems

come through here.

I shan't set foot on Diomede, but I feel...I feel that

I've closed the circle.

It is out there. We've travelled 50,000 miles.

We got within a gnat's of it. A gnat's of it

and I think that's something.

"Alaska time, 10pm London, we begin to wrap up the filming

"of Full Circle after 245 days.

"Captain, who's been steaming around the island since first light,

"sets course southwards into the wind and the mist."

We couldn't land on the island, it was so rough.

"We proceed for a mile or so along the International Date Line.

"Even from the Date Line, only two miles off the rocky shore,

"it's impossible to make out the 1,000-foot rock

"where we started."

In many ways, Full Circle was the best series we did.

Best because it had the greatest scope,

cos it covered the most diverse landscapes.

And apart from a few areas, it was very unfamiliar

and it fulfilled all the ideas that it should be adventure

and it should be revelation and it should be, you know, informed

by a sense of wonder and all that.

HE MOUTHS

I think it was just such a big journey that I felt, that's it.

You know, we'll not do anything better than that.

I felt it was a door closing there, yes.

It turned out not to be, of course, because, actually for me,

travel became an addiction.

The Sahara Desert. I remember looking at it and thinking,

"That would be a challenge.

"It just looks totally empty and it's a vast area.

"There must be things there."

I really wanted to show that the Sahara

had a modern life there, which, just people never saw.

Woo!

It was as challenging and as difficult as any of the ones

we'd done before.