Michael Palin: Travels of a Lifetime (2020) s01e03 Episode Script
Full Circle
MICHAEL:
Now, let's have a look.
Let's see what we've got here.
Oh, yes.
MICHAEL (VO): When I was growing up,
I dreamed of travel and adventure.
CROWD CHATTERS
Bye. Thank you!
MICHAEL (VO):
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.
Ooh! Ah
It's a bit like a very friendly steamroller.
He came at the right time,
he had the right daring qualities.
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
He has huge warmth.
And it's a warmth that spreads across
all kinds of people.
Bye—bye, Kazmir, oh!
HE CHUCKLES
Oh! Look at that!
MICHAEL (VO):
Now, for the first time, I'm looking back.
MICHAEL ON TAPE: Laying her down
in What must’ve been my old bed.
Oh, God.
— Tucking her up, making her comfortable.
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.
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 policía internacional
MICHAEL (VO):
I’d been Around the World in 80 Days
and I'd traveled 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.
AUDIENCE LAUGHS
— TERRY: That's good.
MICHAEL:
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 a sense, I felt that was necessary.
MICHAEL (VO): 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
dependant 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 so we did start at a remarkable
geographical location
this island in the middle
of the Bering Strait.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO:
These are the Diomede Islands.
Over behind me is Greater Diomede,
uninhabited, 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.
IN AMERICAN ACCENT:
So, we say, "Farewell, Diomede!"
See you in a year.
GREG JAMES:
I suppose, as I grew up
and he wanted to do more adventures
and find out more about the world
it was interesting to
to see him sort of 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.
SIMON REEVE: It was an adventure
on a totally different scale.
It involved logistics that would be
incredibly challenging now.
NICOLA: Being so far away from his family,
from home, for so long
that had to have been really tough to do.
MICHAEL: The thing about travelling is,
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
and then after a bit, you just carry on.
MICHAEL (VO): This epic journey
would take me through many countries
l'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.
Scarcity, people making do.
Shops that are, you know, not
that much on the shelves.
There wasn't a feeling of confidence.
More confusion, I would say, in Russia.
MICHAEL (VO): Last time,
I'd traveled through western Russia.
European Russia.
But this was the far east, Siberia.
Infamous as the land of the Gulag.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO: 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 has 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.
IVAN SPEAKS RUSSIAN
He told me that the main causes
of death were overwork
radiation and terrible hunger.
MICHAEL ON TAPE:
The grounds of this particular camp
the Gulag
— MICHAEL SIGHS
On all sides are these mountains
full of rubble
great black mountains.
Tips, spoil tips, they look like.
From which the uranium was extracted.
A complete lack of almost any living thing
when you look up at the mountains around.
It must’ve been most
most depressing
most dispiriting.
It struck me as forcibly
as anywhere I had been in the world
as a sort of place of pure evil,
you know.
This was away from any sort of monitoring
any United Nations envoys
going out to see what it was like.
This was just they put people there
because there was nothing
for thousands of miles around.
So once you were there, that was it.
They could make you do anything,
and you were stuck there
and many, many, many
thousands died there.
What a sort of
horrific glimpse of what man can do to man.
GREG:
The thing 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.
So, that means you at home are sharing
that experience,
because for most people at home
it's their first time seeing these things
so when you're seeing something
for the first time with somebody else
you connect with them straight away
you know, because you're both
on the same journey
and that's an amazing skill to have.
You know, you're thousands of miles
away from people
in a box on the
at the bottom of their room
but you're still able to connect with them
cos you're on the same journey.
He revealed himself
at the same time as revealing
the world.
And
we got to know him
in a really different way
and in many ways,
that was a turning point in television
in that we were happy
for characters to become human
rather than presenters or actors.
And I sit on Michael's shoulders
as a result of that
and able to just be myself in the screen
but that wouldn't have been
possible without
Michael making that transition for us.
MICHAEL: "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, I mean, 4,000 islands,
did we know that?
Four hundred inhabited,
didn't know that.
A hundred active volcanoes, really?
So, Japan is full of glories
and so mountainous and so beautiful
and the people,
their First World way of living is a delight
for anybody who's a bit afraid of travel.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO:
Konnichiwa.
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.
He was just so funny and so warm and lovely
and just open, really open
to anything that happened.
It was a real adventure to him
and you sort of shared
that adventure with him.
So for me, that was just great.
It was just
This was a whole new, fresh way of
of looking at the world, really.
MICHAEL (VO):
But for all its Zen—like tendencies
Japan could be as aggressive
to wards 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,
and it was a Korean ferry
people were just much more relaxed
just the way they were
sort of sitting in chairs.
The Japanese were very neat and tidy
and the Koreans were sort of
sprawling a bit more, and
perhaps the Japanese wouldn't,
I know it's a small thing
but it led me into realising that these
these countries were quite different.
And Korea 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.
"Below me, the new high—rises of Seoul
sweep across the landscape
like a steadily advancing army.
In the face of this veracious display
of power and industry
North Korea, I can't help thinking
doesn't stand a chance."
MICHAEL ON VIDEO: In front of them all
is the motto of the 506th Infantry
some of the 37,000 American troops
still stationed in Korea.
GI: Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome to the Freedom House.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO: Today's GIs double
as guides, taking groups of foreign tourists
no South Koreans are allowed
right up to the border itself.
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.
MICHAEL (VO): 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 Communist China
but enormous amount of building going on
absolutely everywhere, look at all
all the cranes there.
The change in China,
in what was seven or eight years
was so clear.
China seemed 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.
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 had 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.
As a country, more people have been
lifted out of abject poverty
in China over recent decades
than at any other point in human history.
It is a stunning change and achievement
and Michael's there
just as the country was transforming.
It was just starting to to
The glimmers of it were just appearing.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO: 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 Johns
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.
— Ah!
Hello!
— If I do, then I'm something wrong.
I must be a rebel, what is it called?
— A what?
MAN 2:
Yeah, something would be wrong.
MICHAEL:
Yeah, OK. Well, but now it's
It's different now, is it?
— Mm—hm.
There's a couple of chaps coming round there
in police uniforms, looking a bit uncertain.
What do you think?
But nowadays, doesn't matter.
They can't interfere, we can talk freely.
Yeah. Yeah.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO:
I get the impression that my new friend
is someone I still shouldn't be talking to.
You've got to be conscious
that you're not going to
you're not gonna put yourself
or the people you're with in a situation
where the local "gestapo", quite frankly
turn up and start asking tricky questions.
"What did you say?
What did you say to the foreign TV crew?"
That will happen.
So you've got to be aware
of that responsibility.
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
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.
MICHAEL (VO):
From Shanghai, we headed inland
where we boarded ferry boat,
The Oriental Star Number One
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
cos 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 gonna go through
will, in 16 or 17 years' time
be totally underwater.
These towns look doomed.
Why change anything when, in a few years,
all this will be engulfed?
NICOLA:
It's tough to watch that, you know?
And talking about all the villages along
the Yangtze that were gonna 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?"
MICHAEL (VO):
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.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO: There are few places
in the world as untouched.
We're probably the first foreigners
they've ever seen.
INDISTINCT CHATTER
— Hello.
Nihao.
— WOMAN TRANSLATES
WOMAN TRANSLATES
MICHAEL ON VIDEO:
Unlike many others in China
the Miao are open, friendly and curious.
Let's go in, shall we?
— INDISTINCT CHATTER
Here we are,
barging in while you're having your lunch.
Can you ask him,
has he ever seen foreigners before?
Ever seen people from the West?
SHE SPEAKS CHINESE DIALEC
THEY CHATTER
TRANSLATOR: No.
— MICHAEL: What do we look like to them?
TRANSLATOR: Quite different, quite strange,
quite different.
How, why? What do we
I mean, apart from
— With big nose, they say.
Big noses? Well
— Yes, have a big nose.
That's just me,
not everybody has a nose as big as this.
INDISTINCT CHATTER
We are so used to seeing
the polished presenter
in the final destination,
delivering his polished piece
and here you have a character
that we know and love
actually having a human response
to something that was just completely
unexpected in that moment
and not only is it like a real look at
at what's going on, but it's also one that,
because it's Michael
carries charm and grace and
and some humour, you know,
and so, wow, you know?
What a wonderful insight
into travel and filmmaking as well, weirdly.
AMAR LATIF: See, it's like a forbidden world
that he's just entered into.
Culture connecting with people
it makes you realise
that your way of living is just one way.
SIMON: 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?
MICHAEL (VO): As we moved on
from Vietnam to the Philippines
we'd been travelling and filming
for 700 days straight.
It could be tough going.
And on one particularly rough ferry crossing
I had a vivid dream of home.
MICHAEL ON TAPE:
As the storm went on
it was strangely comforting.
Really, to be there, lying in one's bunk,
and I had a dream
and Rachael was a baby, and, er
— My daughter.
wasn't very well, for some reason.
I remember it was Whitworth Road,
my old home.
My old house in Sheffield!
— Taking her round and laying her down
in what must have been my old bed.
— Oh, God!
Tucking her up, making her comfortable
— HE LAUGHS
When the rolls were particularly severe
and pronounced
I began to think, "This is it!"
How funny that I had a dream
about my daughter
and me putting her to bed in my old house
back in Sheffield.
Well, must've been
so many things coming in then
not only the family
who you weren't gonna see
for another sort of four or five months
um, but also
insecurity, I suppose,
as you're sort of rolling about.
There was a genuine fear
that you might not survive.
GREG:
Full Circle, he was nearly away for a year
best part of a year, from his family
and it was a very tough challenge.
NICOLA: 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 mustn't have spoken to his family for
weeks if not months upon a time.
That's really, really difficult.
MICHAEL: 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 one night
when we 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," you know,
"I'll come back straightaway."
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.
The surgeon who's
going to do the operation
has said he's very happy to talk to you."
All this sort of thing,
so she played down
tried to play down the thing
cos I don't think she wanted me to panic.
But 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.
MICHAEL (VO):
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. ..
MICHAEL ON VIDEO:
Oh, my God!
I tell you, I've never done anything
like that in my whole life.
across to New Zealand
MAN GRUNTS
Wahoo!
and then onto the most
dramatic landscape yet.
South America.
MICHAEL:
I honestly knew far less, really
about the South American countries
so I went with a completely open mind.
Let's see what it's like.
Let's see what it's like along the way.
NICOLA:
I think it's so nice to watch him, because
first of all, he approaches everything
with such openness and such kindness.
He's so nice to everybody,
he doesn't go in pre—judging things.
He's willing to let the experience
present itself
and therefore, when you're alongside him
there's nothing getting in the way
of you learning
about that culture or that place
so it makes it much nicer to sort of
experience it with him.
MICHAEL (VO): 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.
I mean, when I started
going down the Urubamba
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,
"Wow, here we go! Nothing I can do.
Perhaps I shouldn't have signed up for this,
but hey, let's go!"
MICHAEL ON VIDEO:
Conditions on the river can change quickly
from docile to lethal.
Wow, just missed a rock by
the skin of our teeth there.
Jeopardy on camera
We're so used to, like, Hollywood
and like
And, like, just such extraordinary
feats of like
prowess and danger.
I know what that's like, that's terrifying!
But it doesn't look, on TV,
it just kinda looks a little bit insane
but I know what it's like.
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.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO: Glistening granite walls
loom ahead like slowly closing doors.
It's a tricky one, Barry.
— Yeah, he's gotta get it just right here.
If he messes up here, we could be
into that rock or into that rock.
He just shows an incredible lack of fear
going white—water rafting and then,
you know
going up the Amazon River
in this, you know
little boat and all this stuff,
he's never
There's so many points watching
where I went
"I definitely wouldn't have done that.
I definitely would've been
too afraid to do that."
It's very narrow, now, isn't it?
This whole river just squeezed in.
BARRY: Squeezed in,
it's getting narrower up ahead too.
JOANNA LUMLEY: I think it's rather lovely
when you begin to see
the traveller facing up to things
which are immensely challenging for them.
At home, we're sitting,
we're not challenged at all.
We're on a comfortable sofa and watching
but you can tell that he went through hell
on a lot of his journeys.
It was massively uncomfortable.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO:
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 jutting 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?
HE CHUCKLES
I feel sorry for you sighted folk!
HE LAUGHS
After three weeks
on the Peruvian river system
we've now reached 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 gonna head
north through Colombia
and back up towards the Pacific.
Wherever that is.
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 suddenly,
we were back in civilisation
and, you know, then you realise
how tenuous civilisation is.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO: Colombia's capital
is the biggest city we've seen since Sidney.
It has a reputation for being
one of the most violent places on Earth.
MICHAEL:
I think I 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 was more of a responsibility
to sort of note what's happening
in rather more sort of serious areas.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO:
Tim is well known round here.
He's reported on these streets
for 20 years.
Back in the car,
we head for the most notorious street of all
Calle Cartouche, "Bullet Street".
INDISTINCT CHATTER
If they see someone like this going through,
do they see it as a target
something to rob or possibly?
— Yes, yes.
Yes, they're already yelling insults at us.
LOUD THUD
— Now they're throwing rocks.
MICHAEL:
Shit.
ROCKS CLATTER
— Whoops!
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, you know,
50 cents worth of marijuana.
Yeah, 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.
Sometimes things take a dark turn
in a strange way.
Either you get ill,
which we all do when we travel
or you come across something
which is not remotely funny
um, or is desperately sad, or is
a sort of a blank wall
where there's no way of getting through it
and then there's no point
in trying to be chirpy about that.
You've got to take it on.
TIM SPEAKS SPANISH
Look at the scars.
That's typical
of the transvestite male prostitutes.
The self—mutilation.
See, he has AIDS now. He has AIDS.
He has to go back to the foundation
which deals with AIDS patients here.
Will he accept that? Will he do——
Yes, he wants to persuade his friend.
The trouble is to persuade the friend to come
in with him cos he doesn't want to leave him.
Oh, dear.
HE SPEAKS SPANISH
MICHAEL: I've only got a small bill,
that's all I have. OK?
TIM SPEAKS SPANISH
NICOLA: Going to Colombia
was something that really stuck out
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 judgement there
of any different cultures
or what people are going through.
MICHAEL:
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 some
You go to places
where people have to live with things
that are not always nice
but I don't want to fall in a trap of saying,
"This is a bleak area.
You 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."
HE LAUGHS
It's way more interesting to see people
go to a place
and not try and sugar—coat it
or present a certain version of it.
He just went and just
went in and just experienced it.
It's way better to watch it that way
and it can't always be positive.
Of course, his journey is central.
His personality is vital,
and we all identify and travel with him
but what he doesn't do
is impose his view on you.
He allows you, as his companion
to make your own mind up.
MICHAEL (VO): 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.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO:
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 a fence like this?
That it shouldn't be there?
— Oh, very, very sad, you know
because don't forget that all this,
it used to be Mexico.
MICHAEL:
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.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO:
When will these guys go, do you think?
Are they Oh, they're going now?
MAN: Yeah, they go now.
This is the way they cross.
MICHAEL:
It was people at the end of their tether
trying to break into America.
Prepared to take terrific risks
with the family, the children and all that
just to get in and enjoy the way of life
in their rich neighbour.
SIMON: 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, is gonna 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.
MICHAEL (VO):
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.
TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS
Thanks a lot! Sorry to stop you, but
That's alright.
— I was told you would stop anywhere. OK?
The last section,
especially up through Canada
we were all getting very, very tired.
You see kind of the edited highlights
on television.
The slog of the journey
is what exhausts people
and brings us to our knees.
Sometimes makes us tetchy.
Sometimes makes you think,
"I really can't go on with this."
Looking at a map, it's impossible to imagine
the scale of the Pacific Ocean
and the amount of places
that encompasses.
Trying to do that, and for the length of time
that he did it, was
incredible and insane, I think.
I think you could tell by the end,
he was ready for it to be over, I think.
MICHAEL (VO):
But the finish line was in sight
so we pushed on north
to wards our original point of departure
the Diomede Islands.
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 have 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.
MICHAEL:
"Alaska time, 10pm, London.
We begin to wrap up the filming
of Full Circle after 245 days.
Captain, who's been steaming round
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 thousand—foot rock where we started."
In many ways,
Full Circle was the best series we did.
The best, because it had the greatest scope
because 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.
INDISTINCT CHATTER
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
yet 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.
Now, let's have a look.
Let's see what we've got here.
Oh, yes.
MICHAEL (VO): When I was growing up,
I dreamed of travel and adventure.
CROWD CHATTERS
Bye. Thank you!
MICHAEL (VO):
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.
Ooh! Ah
It's a bit like a very friendly steamroller.
He came at the right time,
he had the right daring qualities.
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
He has huge warmth.
And it's a warmth that spreads across
all kinds of people.
Bye—bye, Kazmir, oh!
HE CHUCKLES
Oh! Look at that!
MICHAEL (VO):
Now, for the first time, I'm looking back.
MICHAEL ON TAPE: Laying her down
in What must’ve been my old bed.
Oh, God.
— Tucking her up, making her comfortable.
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.
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 policía internacional
MICHAEL (VO):
I’d been Around the World in 80 Days
and I'd traveled 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.
AUDIENCE LAUGHS
— TERRY: That's good.
MICHAEL:
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 a sense, I felt that was necessary.
MICHAEL (VO): 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
dependant 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 so we did start at a remarkable
geographical location
this island in the middle
of the Bering Strait.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO:
These are the Diomede Islands.
Over behind me is Greater Diomede,
uninhabited, 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.
IN AMERICAN ACCENT:
So, we say, "Farewell, Diomede!"
See you in a year.
GREG JAMES:
I suppose, as I grew up
and he wanted to do more adventures
and find out more about the world
it was interesting to
to see him sort of 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.
SIMON REEVE: It was an adventure
on a totally different scale.
It involved logistics that would be
incredibly challenging now.
NICOLA: Being so far away from his family,
from home, for so long
that had to have been really tough to do.
MICHAEL: The thing about travelling is,
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
and then after a bit, you just carry on.
MICHAEL (VO): This epic journey
would take me through many countries
l'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.
Scarcity, people making do.
Shops that are, you know, not
that much on the shelves.
There wasn't a feeling of confidence.
More confusion, I would say, in Russia.
MICHAEL (VO): Last time,
I'd traveled through western Russia.
European Russia.
But this was the far east, Siberia.
Infamous as the land of the Gulag.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO: 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 has 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.
IVAN SPEAKS RUSSIAN
He told me that the main causes
of death were overwork
radiation and terrible hunger.
MICHAEL ON TAPE:
The grounds of this particular camp
the Gulag
— MICHAEL SIGHS
On all sides are these mountains
full of rubble
great black mountains.
Tips, spoil tips, they look like.
From which the uranium was extracted.
A complete lack of almost any living thing
when you look up at the mountains around.
It must’ve been most
most depressing
most dispiriting.
It struck me as forcibly
as anywhere I had been in the world
as a sort of place of pure evil,
you know.
This was away from any sort of monitoring
any United Nations envoys
going out to see what it was like.
This was just they put people there
because there was nothing
for thousands of miles around.
So once you were there, that was it.
They could make you do anything,
and you were stuck there
and many, many, many
thousands died there.
What a sort of
horrific glimpse of what man can do to man.
GREG:
The thing 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.
So, that means you at home are sharing
that experience,
because for most people at home
it's their first time seeing these things
so when you're seeing something
for the first time with somebody else
you connect with them straight away
you know, because you're both
on the same journey
and that's an amazing skill to have.
You know, you're thousands of miles
away from people
in a box on the
at the bottom of their room
but you're still able to connect with them
cos you're on the same journey.
He revealed himself
at the same time as revealing
the world.
And
we got to know him
in a really different way
and in many ways,
that was a turning point in television
in that we were happy
for characters to become human
rather than presenters or actors.
And I sit on Michael's shoulders
as a result of that
and able to just be myself in the screen
but that wouldn't have been
possible without
Michael making that transition for us.
MICHAEL: "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, I mean, 4,000 islands,
did we know that?
Four hundred inhabited,
didn't know that.
A hundred active volcanoes, really?
So, Japan is full of glories
and so mountainous and so beautiful
and the people,
their First World way of living is a delight
for anybody who's a bit afraid of travel.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO:
Konnichiwa.
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.
He was just so funny and so warm and lovely
and just open, really open
to anything that happened.
It was a real adventure to him
and you sort of shared
that adventure with him.
So for me, that was just great.
It was just
This was a whole new, fresh way of
of looking at the world, really.
MICHAEL (VO):
But for all its Zen—like tendencies
Japan could be as aggressive
to wards 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,
and it was a Korean ferry
people were just much more relaxed
just the way they were
sort of sitting in chairs.
The Japanese were very neat and tidy
and the Koreans were sort of
sprawling a bit more, and
perhaps the Japanese wouldn't,
I know it's a small thing
but it led me into realising that these
these countries were quite different.
And Korea 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.
"Below me, the new high—rises of Seoul
sweep across the landscape
like a steadily advancing army.
In the face of this veracious display
of power and industry
North Korea, I can't help thinking
doesn't stand a chance."
MICHAEL ON VIDEO: In front of them all
is the motto of the 506th Infantry
some of the 37,000 American troops
still stationed in Korea.
GI: Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome to the Freedom House.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO: Today's GIs double
as guides, taking groups of foreign tourists
no South Koreans are allowed
right up to the border itself.
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.
MICHAEL (VO): 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 Communist China
but enormous amount of building going on
absolutely everywhere, look at all
all the cranes there.
The change in China,
in what was seven or eight years
was so clear.
China seemed 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.
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 had 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.
As a country, more people have been
lifted out of abject poverty
in China over recent decades
than at any other point in human history.
It is a stunning change and achievement
and Michael's there
just as the country was transforming.
It was just starting to to
The glimmers of it were just appearing.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO: 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 Johns
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.
— Ah!
Hello!
— If I do, then I'm something wrong.
I must be a rebel, what is it called?
— A what?
MAN 2:
Yeah, something would be wrong.
MICHAEL:
Yeah, OK. Well, but now it's
It's different now, is it?
— Mm—hm.
There's a couple of chaps coming round there
in police uniforms, looking a bit uncertain.
What do you think?
But nowadays, doesn't matter.
They can't interfere, we can talk freely.
Yeah. Yeah.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO:
I get the impression that my new friend
is someone I still shouldn't be talking to.
You've got to be conscious
that you're not going to
you're not gonna put yourself
or the people you're with in a situation
where the local "gestapo", quite frankly
turn up and start asking tricky questions.
"What did you say?
What did you say to the foreign TV crew?"
That will happen.
So you've got to be aware
of that responsibility.
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH:
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.
MICHAEL (VO):
From Shanghai, we headed inland
where we boarded ferry boat,
The Oriental Star Number One
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
cos 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 gonna go through
will, in 16 or 17 years' time
be totally underwater.
These towns look doomed.
Why change anything when, in a few years,
all this will be engulfed?
NICOLA:
It's tough to watch that, you know?
And talking about all the villages along
the Yangtze that were gonna 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?"
MICHAEL (VO):
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.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO: There are few places
in the world as untouched.
We're probably the first foreigners
they've ever seen.
INDISTINCT CHATTER
— Hello.
Nihao.
— WOMAN TRANSLATES
WOMAN TRANSLATES
MICHAEL ON VIDEO:
Unlike many others in China
the Miao are open, friendly and curious.
Let's go in, shall we?
— INDISTINCT CHATTER
Here we are,
barging in while you're having your lunch.
Can you ask him,
has he ever seen foreigners before?
Ever seen people from the West?
SHE SPEAKS CHINESE DIALEC
THEY CHATTER
TRANSLATOR: No.
— MICHAEL: What do we look like to them?
TRANSLATOR: Quite different, quite strange,
quite different.
How, why? What do we
I mean, apart from
— With big nose, they say.
Big noses? Well
— Yes, have a big nose.
That's just me,
not everybody has a nose as big as this.
INDISTINCT CHATTER
We are so used to seeing
the polished presenter
in the final destination,
delivering his polished piece
and here you have a character
that we know and love
actually having a human response
to something that was just completely
unexpected in that moment
and not only is it like a real look at
at what's going on, but it's also one that,
because it's Michael
carries charm and grace and
and some humour, you know,
and so, wow, you know?
What a wonderful insight
into travel and filmmaking as well, weirdly.
AMAR LATIF: See, it's like a forbidden world
that he's just entered into.
Culture connecting with people
it makes you realise
that your way of living is just one way.
SIMON: 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?
MICHAEL (VO): As we moved on
from Vietnam to the Philippines
we'd been travelling and filming
for 700 days straight.
It could be tough going.
And on one particularly rough ferry crossing
I had a vivid dream of home.
MICHAEL ON TAPE:
As the storm went on
it was strangely comforting.
Really, to be there, lying in one's bunk,
and I had a dream
and Rachael was a baby, and, er
— My daughter.
wasn't very well, for some reason.
I remember it was Whitworth Road,
my old home.
My old house in Sheffield!
— Taking her round and laying her down
in what must have been my old bed.
— Oh, God!
Tucking her up, making her comfortable
— HE LAUGHS
When the rolls were particularly severe
and pronounced
I began to think, "This is it!"
How funny that I had a dream
about my daughter
and me putting her to bed in my old house
back in Sheffield.
Well, must've been
so many things coming in then
not only the family
who you weren't gonna see
for another sort of four or five months
um, but also
insecurity, I suppose,
as you're sort of rolling about.
There was a genuine fear
that you might not survive.
GREG:
Full Circle, he was nearly away for a year
best part of a year, from his family
and it was a very tough challenge.
NICOLA: 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 mustn't have spoken to his family for
weeks if not months upon a time.
That's really, really difficult.
MICHAEL: 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 one night
when we 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," you know,
"I'll come back straightaway."
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.
The surgeon who's
going to do the operation
has said he's very happy to talk to you."
All this sort of thing,
so she played down
tried to play down the thing
cos I don't think she wanted me to panic.
But 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.
MICHAEL (VO):
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. ..
MICHAEL ON VIDEO:
Oh, my God!
I tell you, I've never done anything
like that in my whole life.
across to New Zealand
MAN GRUNTS
Wahoo!
and then onto the most
dramatic landscape yet.
South America.
MICHAEL:
I honestly knew far less, really
about the South American countries
so I went with a completely open mind.
Let's see what it's like.
Let's see what it's like along the way.
NICOLA:
I think it's so nice to watch him, because
first of all, he approaches everything
with such openness and such kindness.
He's so nice to everybody,
he doesn't go in pre—judging things.
He's willing to let the experience
present itself
and therefore, when you're alongside him
there's nothing getting in the way
of you learning
about that culture or that place
so it makes it much nicer to sort of
experience it with him.
MICHAEL (VO): 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.
I mean, when I started
going down the Urubamba
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,
"Wow, here we go! Nothing I can do.
Perhaps I shouldn't have signed up for this,
but hey, let's go!"
MICHAEL ON VIDEO:
Conditions on the river can change quickly
from docile to lethal.
Wow, just missed a rock by
the skin of our teeth there.
Jeopardy on camera
We're so used to, like, Hollywood
and like
And, like, just such extraordinary
feats of like
prowess and danger.
I know what that's like, that's terrifying!
But it doesn't look, on TV,
it just kinda looks a little bit insane
but I know what it's like.
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.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO: Glistening granite walls
loom ahead like slowly closing doors.
It's a tricky one, Barry.
— Yeah, he's gotta get it just right here.
If he messes up here, we could be
into that rock or into that rock.
He just shows an incredible lack of fear
going white—water rafting and then,
you know
going up the Amazon River
in this, you know
little boat and all this stuff,
he's never
There's so many points watching
where I went
"I definitely wouldn't have done that.
I definitely would've been
too afraid to do that."
It's very narrow, now, isn't it?
This whole river just squeezed in.
BARRY: Squeezed in,
it's getting narrower up ahead too.
JOANNA LUMLEY: I think it's rather lovely
when you begin to see
the traveller facing up to things
which are immensely challenging for them.
At home, we're sitting,
we're not challenged at all.
We're on a comfortable sofa and watching
but you can tell that he went through hell
on a lot of his journeys.
It was massively uncomfortable.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO:
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 jutting 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?
HE CHUCKLES
I feel sorry for you sighted folk!
HE LAUGHS
After three weeks
on the Peruvian river system
we've now reached 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 gonna head
north through Colombia
and back up towards the Pacific.
Wherever that is.
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 suddenly,
we were back in civilisation
and, you know, then you realise
how tenuous civilisation is.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO: Colombia's capital
is the biggest city we've seen since Sidney.
It has a reputation for being
one of the most violent places on Earth.
MICHAEL:
I think I 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 was more of a responsibility
to sort of note what's happening
in rather more sort of serious areas.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO:
Tim is well known round here.
He's reported on these streets
for 20 years.
Back in the car,
we head for the most notorious street of all
Calle Cartouche, "Bullet Street".
INDISTINCT CHATTER
If they see someone like this going through,
do they see it as a target
something to rob or possibly?
— Yes, yes.
Yes, they're already yelling insults at us.
LOUD THUD
— Now they're throwing rocks.
MICHAEL:
Shit.
ROCKS CLATTER
— Whoops!
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, you know,
50 cents worth of marijuana.
Yeah, 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.
Sometimes things take a dark turn
in a strange way.
Either you get ill,
which we all do when we travel
or you come across something
which is not remotely funny
um, or is desperately sad, or is
a sort of a blank wall
where there's no way of getting through it
and then there's no point
in trying to be chirpy about that.
You've got to take it on.
TIM SPEAKS SPANISH
Look at the scars.
That's typical
of the transvestite male prostitutes.
The self—mutilation.
See, he has AIDS now. He has AIDS.
He has to go back to the foundation
which deals with AIDS patients here.
Will he accept that? Will he do——
Yes, he wants to persuade his friend.
The trouble is to persuade the friend to come
in with him cos he doesn't want to leave him.
Oh, dear.
HE SPEAKS SPANISH
MICHAEL: I've only got a small bill,
that's all I have. OK?
TIM SPEAKS SPANISH
NICOLA: Going to Colombia
was something that really stuck out
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 judgement there
of any different cultures
or what people are going through.
MICHAEL:
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 some
You go to places
where people have to live with things
that are not always nice
but I don't want to fall in a trap of saying,
"This is a bleak area.
You 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."
HE LAUGHS
It's way more interesting to see people
go to a place
and not try and sugar—coat it
or present a certain version of it.
He just went and just
went in and just experienced it.
It's way better to watch it that way
and it can't always be positive.
Of course, his journey is central.
His personality is vital,
and we all identify and travel with him
but what he doesn't do
is impose his view on you.
He allows you, as his companion
to make your own mind up.
MICHAEL (VO): 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.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO:
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 a fence like this?
That it shouldn't be there?
— Oh, very, very sad, you know
because don't forget that all this,
it used to be Mexico.
MICHAEL:
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.
MICHAEL ON VIDEO:
When will these guys go, do you think?
Are they Oh, they're going now?
MAN: Yeah, they go now.
This is the way they cross.
MICHAEL:
It was people at the end of their tether
trying to break into America.
Prepared to take terrific risks
with the family, the children and all that
just to get in and enjoy the way of life
in their rich neighbour.
SIMON: 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, is gonna 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.
MICHAEL (VO):
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.
TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS
Thanks a lot! Sorry to stop you, but
That's alright.
— I was told you would stop anywhere. OK?
The last section,
especially up through Canada
we were all getting very, very tired.
You see kind of the edited highlights
on television.
The slog of the journey
is what exhausts people
and brings us to our knees.
Sometimes makes us tetchy.
Sometimes makes you think,
"I really can't go on with this."
Looking at a map, it's impossible to imagine
the scale of the Pacific Ocean
and the amount of places
that encompasses.
Trying to do that, and for the length of time
that he did it, was
incredible and insane, I think.
I think you could tell by the end,
he was ready for it to be over, I think.
MICHAEL (VO):
But the finish line was in sight
so we pushed on north
to wards our original point of departure
the Diomede Islands.
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 have 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.
MICHAEL:
"Alaska time, 10pm, London.
We begin to wrap up the filming
of Full Circle after 245 days.
Captain, who's been steaming round
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 thousand—foot rock where we started."
In many ways,
Full Circle was the best series we did.
The best, because it had the greatest scope
because 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.
INDISTINCT CHATTER
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
yet 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.