Original subtitles

Now, 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.

Oh, 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.

Oh.

MICHAEL CHUCKLES Look at that.

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

INDISTINCT AUDIO ON TV

Oh, God.

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

exciting, dramatic and challenging,

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

I'd made three travel series - 80 Days,

Pole to Pole... Sleep well?

..and Full Circle.

Those journeys all had a set route and a finish line.

Now I was looking for a different kind of challenge.

A trip that would take me to one of the most mysterious,

least-visited parts of the Earth.

My wife and I, we had some holidays, we went to Africa, we travelled

to Tanzania and Kenya.

It was on the way back from one of these flights,

I sort of woke up early in the morning and was looking

at the flight map.

There was Africa

and there was a great big sort of bare, brown mass which took

up most of northern and western Africa - the Sahara Desert.

I remember looking at it and thinking,

"Now, that would be a challenge.

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

"and it can't be empty.

"There must be things there".

I said, "There's going to be something there,

"I'm sure we'll discover these things,"

without knowing whether we would or not. I just bluffed it.

I love that that's how Michael Palin got the Sahara gig.

I love that idea.

"I wonder what's down there.

"I'll come back and explore that."

Isn't that brilliant? What a lucky man he is, but totally deserved.

I had not travelled, really, in the Sahara at all,

so it would be somewhere

that would offer maximum surprise value, wonderment value,

all those things that are important when you're starting to do a series.

I was very much aware that it would be a difficult journey to do,

but that was one of the advantages.

If it had been easy to do, lots of people would have done it.

I really wanted to show that the Sahara

had a fascination, had a historical background, had a modern life there,

which just people never saw.

But to start the journey, we chose somewhere that felt

all too familiar...

Fire!

I always have bad dreams before a new journey,

dreams of being late or forgetting to pack my underwear

or being shot at. Number four gun, fire!

What do I need? Maps, boots.

Stay calm.

Now, read the newspaper, might be the last you'll see for a while.

My destination isn't that far away now.

From here, you can almost see it.

It all seems so easy.

Last lunch on British soil whilst looking out across

the Straits of Gibraltar to Africa.

What terrors can the Sahara possibly hold when it's only 300

miles from a British Home Stores?

At 3,600,000 square miles,

the Sahara is the largest hot desert on Earth.

It covers much of North Africa, from Egypt in the east

to Morocco in the west, and contains within it sprawling countries

like Algeria, Mauritania, Mali and Niger.

Yet this vast land is only a short ferry crossing from Europe.

Is there anywhere in the world where two places are so close,

yet so utterly different?

I think as travellers we all have these places

that you've always wanted to go.

And so for Michael, flying over the Sahara and seeing

the expanse, the expansiveness of the desert and being really drawn

to going to explore it, I think as travellers, we all sort

of have those places and really identify with that.

And then also as travellers, understand that you go

to these places and they might not be anything like you imagine

them to be.

There's no way of reaching the Sahara without crossing

the Atlas Mountains, a series of long, steep ranges that stretch

right across Morocco.

In amongst them are some of the oldest cities in North Africa.

This is Fez,

thought by many to be the most perfect medieval city

in the Islamic world.

Yes, a city of arches and alleyways.

Fez, which looked a bit severe from the outside, many doors closed,

was in fact, you know, just preserving itself and a way of life.

And a rather serene way of life, which I hadn't really expected

and found fascinating.

Ah, good heavens.

That is amazing.

That's exactly how it looked in the medieval times.

But it's extraordinary, first of all, from these narrow passageways

you've suddenly got so much space here, but also this...

I've never seen anything like that anywhere.

That is incredible.

So what's going on here?

I mean, obviously, dying and tanning, but...

It's different stages of treatment of the hides.

So there's a washing machine there.

Then they get the hide into the holes with some lime and pigeon poo.

Yeah, there's... Pigeon poo? Pigeon droppings? Yeah.

Is that good for sort of stripping the...?

Yes. It's got some sort of acid with the...

And it also feeds the hide.

Yeah. Because it is quite a...quite a pungent smell. It is.

Yeah, and then? And then after that, they get them into these vats

where they are going to take the final colour.

The great dying vats which were sort of very, very pre-industrial,

people doing the work using their feet in the blazing sunshine.

Can you believe people are still doing that in this age?

Well, they were.

It's also like a great paint box.

I remember when I was young, you know, I had a paint box,

I opened it up and put the water in there, just like that.

Yeah, it's a nice comparison.

I was really reassured once we got into the desert that this was not

going to be empty.

This was not going to be somewhere where there was no activity at all.

All along the route were reminders that

there had been a great civilisation in the Sahara.

It gave me a feeling that we were doing the right thing.

There was an enormous amount

of history, activity then and, of course, now.

When I started to watch it, I thought, "I don't really get it.

"Is it just he's going to a desert?"

Like, I didn't understand?

And then you think, "Oh, my God, there's, you know,

"such different cultures here.

"There's so much life and it's so different.

"And it's...it's...it's not just desert.

"It's a whole other world."

From Marrakesh it's all uphill to the Sahara,

passing, first of all, through the land of the Berber people, one

of whom is my companion, Amina.

Though she spent so much time working in America,

her accent is more mafia than Moroccan.

Are we already in the Berber villages? Yes, we are.

Yes, we are in the Berber villages.

They were the original inhabitants of...of Morocco

before the Arabs came through, is that right? Yes, absolutely.

We don't quite know the origins, but they sure were here

before the Arabs, yeah.

Sorry to harp on about this Berber thing,

but what are the characteristics of the Berbers?

Warm people...

..very ambitious, hardworking.

You're a New Yorker, really, aren't you?

Not really. I'm a Casaoui, as they say in... Casaoui?

Casaoui, from Casablanca.

Oh, Casaoui, that's good, I like that. Casaoui.

I'm from Sheffield.

I'm a Sheffielder-oui.

Talking of that, I must go and find the toilet.

There's a progression throughout all the different series that he does.

I think, really, in Sahara is

where he hit his stride as a documentarian.

He spent more time getting under the skin of a place in Sahara

than he had done previously.

There's nothing, just the bare...bare rock.

I can't believe there's a village up ahead.

There is, is there? Yes, um... They're not fooling us?

No, they're not.

I hope they're not.

I'm sure they're not. He's laughing,

so I think we're OK. Is there a restaurant that there?

The Berber village of Aroumd,

8,000 feet up in the Atlas, is so well camouflaged,

you could easily miss it.

It looks cold and inhospitable, but we're in for a surprise.

INDISTINCT CHATTER AND MUSIC

OK. Well, we're not going to be the only ones eating here.

We have to share.

Is this the national dish, tagine, of Morocco?

This is the tagine. That's the tagine.

And in there... Oh, wow, wow.

It's meat, potatoes, olives.

Beans, are those beans or are those olives?

Bea... No, olive.

THEY SING IN OWN LANGUAGE

The Berbers are a minority in a predominantly Arab Morocco,

so a dance like this is celebrating more than just a betrothal -

it's celebrating the survival of their own culture.

Sahara wasn't a test of endurance as Full Circle was,

and Pole to Pole was in a certain way.

It was less of just physical survival business and more actual...

..you know, relishing of what I was seeing, learning more about...

..you know, how people were and what they were doing.

When Muslims talk about making a journey,

they always add, "inshallah", "God willing".

It seems appropriate as we climb towards the highest pass

on the Atlas Mountains.

Inshallah.

Well, now we've crossed the High Atlas, we are, for the first time

in this journey, on the edge of real desert, and yet the first village

we come to is perhaps one of the most familiar on the planet.

If you've seen Gladiator, you've seen it.

If you've seen Lawrence of Arabia, you've seen it.

If you've seen Romancing the Stone, you've seen it.

If you've seen the Four Feathers, you've seen it.

If you've seen Sodom and Gomorrah, which my parents took me

to as a treat, you've seen it.

Ait Ben Haddou is one of the great film sets of the world.

The towers of Ait Ben Haddou are beautiful,

but it's hard to tell which are made

of rich red desert earth,

and which are made of four-by-two plasterboard.

In this Moroccan Hollywood, illusion and reality play strange tricks.

This was the desert as fantasy,

but I was drawing ever closer to the real thing.

From now on, signs of life are few and far between.

The last river sinks into the sand, the last salesmen make their pitch.

Quinze, quinze.

Where we have a "vingt", we have a "quinze". Quinze?

How about "dix"? Dix?

The dates were delicious

and they brought back a memory from my childhood,

something that might help to explain my fascination with the Sahara.

"My father was in charge of the

"export department of a steelworks,

"and every Christmas, he received

"an enormous box of dates

"from their agent in Algeria.

"The illustration on the packet fuelled powerfully romantic

"fantasies of somewhere hotter, drier and even more exotic

"than South Yorkshire,

"a place where men with turbans reclined

"under palm trees whilst their faithful camels stood

"in picturesque silhouette against the setting sun."

Now, all those years later, I was actually about to visit

that imaginary world.

Right at the very end of Morocco, where the wind really does blow

and it almost looks as though there's a veil being drawn -

can you go through this, what will you find on the other side?

That was when suddenly you were into the reality of a desert world.

The Sahara is one of the harshest environments on Earth,

but there are people for whom it's home, and a home worth fighting for,

as I was to discover at my next destination.

South and west of Morocco lies the disputed territory

of Western Sahara.

It was once a Spanish colony, but when they left in 1975,

the Moroccans moved in.

Those inhabitants who didn't want to be Moroccan were forced to flee.

They were given land near Tindouf in Algeria

for four temporary refugee camps,

which is where they still are over a quarter of a century later.

The issue of refugees and people, stateless people, within the Sahara

area was going to be a strong theme.

There were people crossing the Sahara all the time.

There were people, so many people coming from Sub-Saharan Africa

to try to get into Europe.

This was a very, very powerful issue.

And these people had been in these camps in...in Algeria for many years.

And they were kept going by this dream that they would eventually

be allowed back to their own land.

The tankers shuttle back and forth across the desert

day in and day out.

Without them, Smara camp would die of thirst.

My host, Bashir, has been a refugee for half his life.

Well educated and well travelled, he lived for a while in Leeds.

And that water is for everything they need?

It's for their cooking, for their washing, for their bathing?

Yeah, for everything except for tea. Yeah.

Because this is a little bit salty...relatively salty.

So it's a very good for cooking, for washing, for everything,

but not for tea, because tea needs a very good water.

And it needs unsalty water.

Unsalty water. Where does the tea water come from?

Well, from another well, which is very, very, very far from here.

And you can't see it. How far?

It's about...something like 50 miles.

50 miles, for a cup of tea! Yeah, yeah.

BASHIR CHUCKLES

How many people are there in this Smara, in this camp?

In this camp, it's the second largest camp of refugees

and we have something like 40,000 people.

40,000. Do people have to pay for their houses here?

Do they have to pay any rent or...? No, absolutely nothing.

But education is free?

Education is free, health is free. Water?

Water, transportation.

It is a delicate balance between journalism

and then, you know, the beauty of the place.

If you report on what you see, there will be beautiful moments.

But you cannot deny, you know, in some of these places, people

are living in absolute hardship or how much they're impacted

by the history.

And you have to talk about that.

And I think Michael must have learnt that.

That must have been his progression along the way.

And he did it beautifully.

Before my next camel dinner, I retire to the bathroom

for a quick shower,

whilst Bashir's wife conjures up another meal for us all.

Sadly, the hot water isn't working.

Ooh!

Bashir, he said, "You must come and stay.

"There are no hotels in the refugee camp.

"But my wife and I will put you up.

"We have a big...sort of outbuilding where you can all sleep".

And so we did, jam packed a bit together.

One loo dug into the ground.

So it was fairly basic.

We're moving on tomorrow, on around the Sahara.

And one thing I'll remember about Smara here, I mean,

apart from the way you've looked after us with this magnificent hospitality... Thank you.

..is that it's a very well-organised, very well-run town.

And I keep forgetting it's a camp and it's not a town.

It's a refugee camp.

You are, you know, to all intents and purposes, refugees.

Your children have never actually seen the country

in which you were born and brought up in.

And I wonder what the future is.

I mean, how do you see the future developing?

For us, the future is very clear.

We will fight, we will continue this fight until the end.

"The considerable size of the cemetery, a scattering of rocks

"and boulders just outside the town,

"suggests that life expectancy is low.

"Bashir shakes his head vigorously.

"'It is 70, 80 years.

"'People don't die in the desert, you know,' he said.

"In that case, the size of the cemetery merely emphasises

"how long the Sahrawis have been away from home."

I was in the same camp nearly a decade after Michael,

and it hadn't changed very much.

People were still stuck out there in the desert.

So it's now been 45 years or so with nothing done.

Now, another generation is growing up

who have not known their own country.

Leaving our new friends behind, we headed west across the desert

into Mauritania, land of the Moors.

Zouerat is a company town.

Rich iron ore deposits have turned this corner

of the Sahara into a multimillion-dollar asset.

Iron ore makes up almost half of Mauritania's foreign earnings

and production goes on around the clock to fill the huge trains

that carry it away.

Despite the presence of the mine,

Zouerat has pockets of great poverty.

Here, everything is recycled - an oil drum becomes not only the side

of a house, but the roof and the doors and the garden wall.

Five years ago, this family were farmers till drought forced

them into the town.

The outer wall of their tent is made from material once used

to wrap mining explosive.

I wanted to know how they stayed so happy.

Qu'est-ce qui fait vous le plus heureux?

Quelle sorte de celebration?

"There is in all of this not a trace of self-pity. They simply hope

"the rains will come and turn the desert green again,

"enable them to return to the life they know best.

"Meanwhile, home is a tent of explosive sacks

"behind a fence made of oil drums.

"'What makes you happy?' I ask.

"Even Mother, nervously twisting her beads,

"smiles as this is translated to them.

"They don't even have to think of the answer.

"'Whatever God gives makes us happy.'"

You know.

Having that spirit when they've got so little

is really inspiring, moving.

"Whatever God gives makes me happy."

What makes you really happy?

Talk to somebody who's living in a house made of explosive

wrapping and not be doing it from the point of,

"These people need your help".

You know, it's like, this is...this is their lives,

this is their reality.

And this woman actually is trying to look on the bright side of it.

So it's more humanising.

Often when you're travelling, you encounter people

who are really having a tremendously difficult time and it really makes

you reassess all sorts of things about your own life.

And I think that happened to Michael quite a lot.

It certainly happened to me.

It's a very humbling experience.

And I think that is what is very special actually about that series.

It was my first time in this part of Africa, but if my previous trips

to the continent had taught me anything, it was how to approach

the question of train travel.

Every day, seven days a week, iron ore trains more

than 2km long leave Zouerat

and unlikely as it may seem, some of them carry passengers.

After a week in backbreaking vehicles,

the chance to cross the desert by rail is not one I can ignore.

I've got a ticket, but I'm not quite sure what for.

INDISTINCT CHATTER

The railway officials aren't over-helpful.

Their primary role seems to be to stop anyone getting on.

I don't think he's very keen to let us on there.

There was passenger accommodation at the back, but whether you got

a ticket or not, you just had to go for it.

But it is the only way of getting through Mauritania.

There's one last hope, the recycling bin at the back of the train.

MICHAEL SPEAKS IN FRENCH

I'm very confused but I'm told this is first class,

even though you may be forgiven for thinking it was rubbish class.

Well...

Here we go.

INDISTINCT CHATTER

The Iron Ore Express may take a while to get going,

but then it is the longest train in the world...

..probably.

The train was carrying me west towards the Atlantic coast

and Senegal, a country which, like Mauritania and several others

in this part of Africa, had once been part of the French Empire.

If you look at the colonial world,

I mean, the Brits tended to go to India, Australia.

The Sahara was French, really, the people who colonised the Sahara

were the French, and we don't do French history.

We're not interested in French history.

And that, to me, gave it another attraction.

Senegal has been independent since 1960,

but seems to be in no hurry to shake off the French connection.

Le Monde.

Combien Le Monde, s'il vous plait?

Neuf?

And by sad coincidence, today's headlines

mark the death of another French hero, the singer Charles Trenet.

Merci.

Charles Trenet est morte.

# La mer

# La-la, la-di... #

Down here it's like a huge department store,

you've got handbags, ladies' underwear.

PEOPLE SHOUT INDISTINCTLY TO TRAIN

There really is no better way to get the feel of a country

than on a train.

Train journeys offer a captive audience,

a perfect chance to meet people and learn about their lives.

I get talking to an English teacher called Dade on the perennial topic

of husbands and wives and how many of each.

Yes. Islam entered Africa and men said that, "OK, the Koran said

"that since we are Muslim, we can marry up to four wives".

I am against that.

Why? Let's say, first of all, I'm jealous.

I don't want to share my husband.

And in second...

In every polygamist house...

..there is always trouble.

Because four wives, you know, are jealous.

Sometimes they finish before the judge.

Because most of the time, the husband, he got, you know,

one house and all the four wives they live, you know,

in the same house.

And you know, you can't imagine that.

Everybody would like, you know,

the man to love her better and they put some powder in the food

or in the water, you know, things like that.

Or sometimes when one of the wives is sick, for example,

she's going to say, "OK, that's my co-wife, she's a witch."

My destination was Mali's capital, Bamako.

Luckily, I wasn't in a hurry.

My experience of African train schedules during the filming

of Pole to Pole had taught me that they are flexible and so must I be.

Well, we've now completed 33 hours of the supposedly 35-hour journey,

but we've still... We're becalmed here at some station on the way.

We're still ten hours away from Bamako.

We've stopped because this train came in.

It was occupying the single track line up there.

But our progress is a matter of considerable chance at the moment.

Whether we'll get there in 10 hours or 15 or 20 hours,

I just don't know.

It's...

..in the lap of the gods.

Well...

KIDS SHOUT INDISTINCTLY

Bye-bye.

It's always a good sign we're actually moving.

That's very encouraging.

A little cloud of dust up in the front.

I can't quite seem to see the engine, but we are on the move.

We are heading towards Bamako and we're only ten hours late.

The ancient town of Djenne circled by the waters of the Bani River,

is our next stop on the road to Timbuktu.

I've hired a Mobylette to drive myself around what many consider

to be the most beautiful of all the cities of the Sahara.

One of the great buildings of the world, the mud mosque in Djenne.

Utterly extraordinary. I've never seen anything quite like that.

The buildings themselves are made from the sand and the wet mud

of the desert.

The most striking thing about Mali, and indeed about

most of West Africa, is that it's, you know, it may be sandy,

a bit drab, but the colours of the costumes are extraordinary.

Everyone is dressed to kill.

Just... And this is an everyday market, really.

And yet almost everybody has got a different outfit

from the other people.

I think they're aware of their own beauty, their own sort

of need to...to show that they've thought about what they're wearing.

And there's boring old presenter in his Oxford button-down and jeans.

What tribal people are you from?

I'm Fulani. I'm half Fulani. You're Fulani? Yeah. Half Fulani.

What's the other half? My father, the other half...

Pigme was my guide, very cheery.

I heard that you met your wife in the market.

Is that true?

If I met... Yeah, I met her on the market.

Yeah. She's Fulani and she was... And you're Fulani.

Yes, I'm Fulani, but for me, it wasn't necessary

to be Fulani or not.

Yeah. For me, only she was nice.

She was very nice for me.

Then every time when I come she would bring milk -

because she sold milk. Yeah.

And for me every time when she come I see her and she was pretty,

young, nice.

Yeah. And for me, I was always happy to be with her.

Can you tell a Fulani woman here in the crowd?

Yeah. Example, she's a Fulani woman.

She's a Fulani girl. Why?

She's the cousin of my wife.

Oh, right. She's the cousin of your wife.

He just happened to find her here.

At Pigme's house, the wife he met over milkshakes in the market

is having her feet hennaed by an older woman,

who suggests there was more to the relationship

than simply buying milk.

SHE SPEAKS IN OWN LANGUAGE

I think there's another side to this story, which is much more

interesting. You see, what she said...

What did she say?

She said if you fall in love with a girl,

and you try one time with her and it's nice...

Yeah. ..you can't leave her alone, you will follow her everywhere.

She says the same thing, but it is not true.

For a Malian man and woman, before you get married,

are you allowed to have time together?

Can you sleep together?

Me, her... Yeah.

..since the day I get married, I never know her before.

Like lovely or sleep together.

I never do that with her.

Before I get married, never.

But for the village's people,

for them, it was strange because they don't believe I never

make love or something with her.

I like Pigme and I like the fact that he overcame his parents'

objections to marry the woman he wanted.

These are not people oppressed by living in a...in a sort

of near-desert environment.

They were... They were sort of making absolutely the most of it

and having, you know... There was a real life there.

And there was...there was a future potential, even though a lot

of these countries were quite poor.

Enthralling as Djenne was, it was time to move on

deeper into the desert, not by train this time,

but boat, up the River Niger itself.

There's no denying the sense of anticipation

as we finally get under way.

There's no restaurant as such on board, but food is always available

from the kitchen, which is, well, just about anywhere.

In a sense, this was the climax of my journey

so far because I was finally drawing close to surely one of the most

legendary and evocative places in all of Africa, if not the world -

Timbuktu.

The seeds had been sown a long time ago. In my case, I can remember

the first book I was ever given by my dad was The Arabian Nights.

It was all stories of sort of the desert world,

the world of the Middle East and Africa and North Africa

and all that.

So there was a sort of sand dunes and that kind of world

and date palms and camels was never far from my mind.

Well, here I am in Timbuktu.

Never, ever thought in my entire life I'd find myself in a place

like this, but if you're interested in places, names, the significance

of names and places, geography, Timbuktu is one of the great names.

Great trading city of the Middle Ages in...in Africa.

Now quite run down, but still rather a thrill to be there.

CALL TO PRAYER

In a way, it was still rather sensational,

certainly a building like this.

This great mosque here in Timbuktu is an extraordinarily powerful

and quietly affecting building.

It's built on almost 100 columns

and it creates a sort of forest of cool

in this cauldron of heat outside.

It was originally constructed in 1325,

and just the sheer scale of the place is testimony

to the power of the Islamic presence here in the Middle Ages.

Extremely atmospheric.

I love the fan there,

somehow it just reminds you this is the modern world.

16th century. MAN SPEAKS IN FRENCH

The imam has a collection of scientific texts

that clearly show the planets circling the sun.

They date back hundreds of years, preserved, I assume,

by the dry desert air.

It's convincing evidence that the scholars of Timbuktu

knew a lot more than their counterparts in Europe.

Something nice about Sahara is the pace of it.

They took more time at each individual place,

and, like, seeing parts of Africa that we don't get to see day-to-day.

It's fascinating.

And they were so open to him being there as well.

Quinzieme ou quatorzieme?

Quatorzieme siecle. Quatorzieme siecle.

Quatorzieme siecle.

Essentially, a nicer way to do the journey

is to pause and meet the people.

And cos, of course, that's what it's all about.

Otherwise, we can be a little bit like, you know, touristic

about these things. It is about meeting the people.

SPEAKS IN OWN LANGUAGE

When there's characters you meet along the way who you can vibe

with and have conversation with, that definitely helps, especially

if you're stopping long enough to really get to know them a little bit.

And I think over the course of Michael's career, those pauses

became longer and that adds its own magic.

You have a chance to sort of have some very intense views of fairly

small tribes and how they worked and their life

and why they did what they did, where they travelled to,

how they dressed, what their problems were.

So we're looking at fewer people, but much more intensely.

COCKEREL CROWS

East of Timbuktu, the Sahara is virtually inaccessible

to all but the nomads who move their cattle across it. Once a year,

they all have a get-together at Ingal, in the Republic of Niger.

These are the Wodaabe, a tall, elegant people thought originally

to have come from Ethiopia.

They walk and ride hundreds of miles every year,

seeking pasture for their cattle.

They move camp every six or seven days,

so all they own must be portable.

Recent rains have brought food and water, and they must take every

advantage of these conditions to fatten their cattle.

The Wodaabe grow no food, so without the animals they would not survive.

CACOPHONY OF ANIMAL NOISES

The fattening of the animals on the salt grass is celebrated

at an annual festival called Cure Salee - the Salt Cure.

This great gathering of the nomadic clans is now only days away.

ALL SING ONE NOTE CONTINUOUSLY

And as I discovered, a key part of these celebrations is a remarkable

courting ritual, the Gerewol.

The young men go to enormous lengths to make themselves irresistible.

This means plenty of make-up, exotic hairdressing, the ability to repeat

the same song and the same movement for hours on end,

and some very fancy eye work.

When you got to see the tribe, all these rituals that they had,

it's fascinating, it's incredible.

And for that to be captured on camera, and I hope long may those

traditions continue and, you know,

the Western world doesn't impose and try and change them.

How long do they dance for?

Something like seven days.

Seven days? Yes. Seven days?!

Now it's the girls' turn. Once decked out in all their finery

by doting mothers, aunts and grannies, they will parade

in front of the boys and make their choice of partner.

Now comes the time for the girls to play their part in the ceremony.

SINGING CONTINUES

Do they come forward?

Yes, people, like women, want to see this.

Though the girls have the right to choose,

it looks to be more of an ordeal than a privilege.

Their choice must be made in full view for everyone to see.

Nerves are beginning to show.

NOTE CHANGES TONE SLIGHTLY

Do the girls...? Do they choose, they choose one boy?

Yes. They go up and they put their hand on one?

Maybe one woman, maybe two.

Ah, oh, right. Ah. Yes.

Guided by the mistress of ceremonies, each girl walks the line

until contact is made and the choice announced in the traditional way.

WHOOPING

Now, the worst is over. Her chosen one will meet up with her later.

He's hers for the night.

There's an ease and there's sort of investigation,

but in a...in a lovely, curious way.

It's about curiosity, really,

and about really taking one step at a time.

And I think that is really what Michael Palin does so well.

For me, the Wodaabe are some of the most remarkable people

I've met on any of my travels.

Their way of life felt like something outside time.

But of course, this was an illusion.

They lived in the 21st century, like the rest of us.

A world that, although it felt far away, was about to deliver a shock.

"I'm standing on the small roof terrace of the Pensione Tellit,

"in Agadez. There's only one tall building in town, and that's

"the minaret of the Grand Mosque, a pyramid of mud, stones

"and projecting wood beams, which rises high

"above the surrounding town.

"I'm staring at it now as my wife,

"on the other end of a satellite phone,

"is describing the almost unbelievable destruction of

"two other iconic towers, 6,000 miles away in New York."

We're in Niger, which I think is the second-poorest country

in the world. The people there weren't moved at all

by what was happening in New York. They barely knew about it.

But, by the end of the journey, I was aware that there were problems

that were going to be exacerbated by what had happened in New York.

Some of the jihadi groups working in the Sahara, which had been fairly

small, were beginning to get...

..er, were encouraged by what had happened.

In the years that followed,

many of the places we visited in the Sahara became overrun

by Islamic extremists. Travel to much of Mali, and Niger

became all but impossible.

And, tragically, Timbuktu was an inaccessible place once more.

We were now deep in the Sahara, some 2,000 miles from the sea,

and we were about to go deeper on foot, accompanying a camel train

in temperatures of up to 55 degrees centigrade.

We're ready to go.

Everything we need for the journey has to be carried on the backs

of the camels, except, of course, fresh food which walks alongside.

Well, here we go.

Not quite sure about me yet.

Come on, come on!

MEN SPEAK IN OWN LANGUAGE

Well, this is it. It's not quite what I expected

when I'd, er... Camel rides on the beach or once around the pyramids.

This is the real thing. Start of the train.

I've failed already.

I got him a few yards anyway!

If you really want to get to the heart of the Sahara Desert

and the people who live in the heart of the desert,

you have to really go with the Tuareg.

They're the main nomads who take the camel trains with salt,

going across the desert. The old way of life. And we were very lucky

to find a group who were happy to take us across the desert -

the hottest, most difficult part of the desert.

The camel, or dromedary,

as these single-humped animals are sometimes called,

is a marvellous desert machine.

Their weight is so finely distributed that they leave barely

a mark in the sand. Provided they have somewhere to graze,

they can last two weeks without water, and they can carry

loads of up to 500lbs over enormous distances.

Camels changed the history of the Sahara.

Without them, 2,000 years of trade, war, expansion and exploration

would never have happened.

They're quite brilliant, although they look, you know,

an animal designed by committee is just about right, really.

This is camel land.

Heart of the Sahara.

It's getting now to midday, the peak of heat. We're seeking a tree.

We just have to keep drinking lots and lots of water, that's obvious.

The other thing which is nice about it is just you go at the...

The camels sort of dictate the pace but also the mood.

It's the sort of continuous, sort of unchanging rhythm.

I mean, you know, there are good things about it. There are no flies!

Not getting bitten by anything.

There's no undergrowth to catch your clothing on or get jabbed by

or anything like that. But, erm...

There's very little scope for action.

A lot of scope for imagination, so you think a lot.

Like why do they even suggest doing this in the first place?

Just a joke.

Oh, a tree!

THEY SPEAK IN OWN LANGUAGE

Hey!

HE CHUCKLES

The main social event of the day is the evening meal.

Usually bread, dates and cheese.

But tonight, in my honour, there'll be a stew as well.

Everyone has a job to do.

Omar and Isambar slaughter the sheep.

Osman bakes bread in a sand oven,

and Musa plaits some fresh twine to secure the camel loads.

I'm still recovering.

Thick and coarse and heavy.

THEY TALK IN OWN LANGUAGE

It's more like cake, really.

Chunk of cake you used to have at school.

Mm!

Nice hard crispy outside.

Mm. Tastes good.

HE SPEAKS IN OWN LANGUAGE

You see, you can have a joke with them.

They're absolutely... A good sense of humour.

They laughed at me a lot.

Whether they laughed with me, I don't know,

but they thought I was kind of quite...

..a character.

You have to get the emphasis right.

Probably means, you know...

ATTEMPTS DIFFERENT LANGUAGE

Humour is a very dangerous and yet potent tool.

And it all depends on where the humour lies.

THEY ALL LAUGH

I think Michael by and large walks that path really well,

because you can see in his heart he's a humanist,

he loves people, and so it's soft, it's gentle.

It's not... It's not pointed in any way.

HE SPEAKS IN OWN LANGUAGE

For me? Ah, thank you.

THEY LAUGH

Is hot?

It's hot.

It's hot. It's very hot.

It's good. Mm.

We're now into what my French guidebook calls desert absolu.

Absolute desert.

The Earth stripped clean, as bare as a glacier,

as featureless as the sea.

The outside world is so far away as to be almost irrelevant.

I can understand why so many religions were born in the desert.

The outside is so hostile, you have to look inside.

Finally, the scorching sun set and we made camp.

A tiny, comforting haven

in the immense emptiness that surrounded us.

This indeed was the desert of my imagination.

INDISTINCT BACKGROUND CHATTER

Oh, pour moi? Merci. Merci.

Oh, this is a bit of the cheese, yeah.

Mm.

Mm.

Goma. Tacoma.

You're going teach me another word, aren't you? Tacoma.

Tacoma. Tacoma?

Olivuto.

Mm? Olivuto.

Olivuto.

THEY LAUGH

You're teaching me rude words!

These little Tuareg soirees!

Mm. Cheese is nice. Very nice.

Cheers.

En Anglais.

Cheers. Cheers.

Down the hatch!

Bottoms up. Bottoms up.

Bottoms up?

Bottoms... Bottom.

Bottom. Bottom.

Bottoms. Bottoms.

Up. Up.

Yeah, great.

THEY LAUGH

Bottoms up! Bottoms up.

Bottoms up. Bottoms up.

Well...

..genius.

I mean, that's such a lovely scene.

God bless Her Majesty.

Yeah, you really feel it there.

You feel the rapport, the connection.

And that's what you get when you put the time in.

You know, he did the walking, he was there on the ground,

and that's the reward.

It's like a warmth, a real warmth of friendship,

and it's really beautiful to see.

Merci. Merci.

Bon voyage.

Merci, merci. Merci.

Merci, merci, merci.

Hey, hey, hey, hey.

INDISTINCT CHATTER

Bottoms up!

My walk with the Tuareg had taken me as far into the deep

Sahara as anyone could go.

OK.

Now, then, which way? Yes.

And they'd shown me once again that bridges can be built

across barriers of language or culture, if we just take the time

and keep our minds and hearts open.

My journey was nearly at an end.

From the heart of Niger,

we made our way back towards Europe,

across Algeria, Libya and Tunisia.

This Kasbah sounds as though it's coming to life.

Things are happening.

As I finally crossed back to Gibraltar, I felt a sense

of regret that the friends I'd made in the Sahara would be seen by some

Europeans as a threat.

There is a danger in becoming obsessed with our own security.

There may be enemies at the gate, but locking them out

may only create more enemies.

When I set out, I always thought of Gibraltar as the bridge

between Europe and Africa, but now I've finished the journey,

I think what's more important for the future is that the Sahara

is the bridge from Africa into Europe.

And that, for me, gets to the essence of why I travel.

I think travel does help to keep your mind open. It's questioning,

discovering...never finding the exact answer to anything.

And I've often said travelling is more about asking questions

than finding answers.

I was 45 when I started travelling.

I've lost count of the countries I've visited

and the people I've met.

But at the heart of it all has been the satisfaction of seeing

others as we see ourselves,

not as strangers, but as partners living,

working and hopefully protecting the world we all share.

Physically, I probably couldn't do all those things now.

I don't particularly mind that. I'll still travel, I'll still read,

I'll still think

about my own journeys and what I've learned from them,

and I'll still be curious, but what this has done is enable me

to explore and remember things that I've not yet expressed before.

So it's really like looking into a very, very nice, busy,

old, you know, storeroom.

Climbing up and finding, "Oh, here's another bit!"

Which I suppose to some people who will say, "Oh, yeah,

"God, I hope he doesn't find any more."

HE CHUCKLES

But I've enjoyed it.