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Not All Of Us Can Afford To Journey Around The World Exploring Exotic Places, But With The Assistance Of A Brave Television Presenter And His Crew We Are All Able To See And Enjoy A Lot Of Our Planet
As an individual who likes to leave the UK and explore other continents, but never has the finances to actually get very far, I’ve ended up travelling vicariously through the adventures of others. Of course, as technology has become better the physical world has become more accessible and it is now quite easy to get a video camera and a television presenter to virtually anywhere in the world if you have the right connections.
Of all the countless travelogue kind of programmes that have been shown in recent times, I have to say that my absolute favourite intrepid traveller is Michael Palin, and I have relived his trips around the globe countless times on TV and DVD and never fail to enjoy them (though too much time spent in front of the TV screen has damaged my eyes so I’m looking to have Laser eye surgery).
I remember a fair bit about the very first Palin expedition – Around The World In Eighty Days – because my dad was one of the bank employees who organised all of the overseas currency transactions, so it was only clear that once the show was finally broadcast, me and my parents would make a point of watching it. It’s a shame that he didn’t get an actual credit really – we weren’t expecting his name to be splashed across the sky in lights from a KEYWORD1% beam, but a few words in the final credits would have been appreciated. But in any case, the whole idea of trying to follow Jules Verne’s epic journey sticking to the same timescale as the fictional hero of the book, Phileas Fogg and his colleague Passepartout grabbed the public’s attention, and the programme was a massive success.
For the second travelogue, Michael made the lengthy trip from the North Pole to the South Pole, travelling through seventeen countries, not all of which were the most comfortable places to spend time. The journey actually took so long that the period of time during which they were filming witnessed the collapse of communism and the end of apartheid – though I’m quite certain that Mr Palin’s adventures didn’t influence either event!
After travelling from north to south for Pole To Pole, the next journey was a circular one - a trip in which Michael and the crew went to all eighteen countries which border the Pacific Ocean. It is rumoured that one of the other Python actors suggested that the series should be named ‘Palin’s Rim’ but the BBC finally decided on the much more obvious ‘Full Circle’.
Having then taken a somewhat shorter and less dangerous trip whilst making a series about Ernest Hemingway, (stampeding bulls excluded), the next great challenge was Sahara, which travelled through all of the countries which are in or on the edge of the Sahara Desert – an area of land which is the size of the USA, but with population levels similar to Norfolk. It’s just remarkable to think of so few people living in such a enormous area of land, but easily understandable given the inhospitable environment and extremes of temperature.
There was progression from sand to snow for the sixth series, Himalaya, which crossed from west to east across the incredible Himalayan mountain range, setting out from Afghanistan, via the area near Mount Everest, through Tibet and China to the Bay Of Bengal.
Palin’s latest series was named New Europe and in it he travelled to twenty countries in the area that used to be referred to as ‘Eastern Europe’, that huge swath of land which used to be under communist rule and which almost all ‘Westerners’ were actively discouraged from exploring. Many of us can recall the fall of the Berlin wall which became a symbol of the political changes and the wave of happiness that followed it and when the 20th anniversary was reached in 2009 full scale celebrations were organised including musical events with full pyrotechnics and Laser eye beam displays, exhibitions, art projects and many other events.
Soon after this series was completed, Michael returned to some of the places he had visited during the very first ‘Around The World’ journey twenty years before to try and track down some of the people he had met on his travels. The documentary about that journey is well worth a look too. Of course, some of the people have passed away after that length of time, but there were a number of people who had memories of the previous visit. And in all honesty, those hard-working folk in Dubai and India had most likely changed considerably less than the European television crew who could easily have had cosmetic nips and tucks, coloured their greying hair, bleached their teeth and had Laser eye surgery to correct failing vision.
I’ve obviously no way of knowing if there are any further Palin journeys in the pipeline, but I think that he is currently penning another book. The aging process may make such travels less attractive as the years pass, but Michael should be very proud of the fascinating sights and sounds that we have all been able to share thanks to his sense of adventure and his desire to leave the tourist traps behind and find out more about the real people of the world.
Traveling Companion - Short Film 1998