Original subtitles

Let's have a look.

Let's see what we've got here.

Oh, yes.

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

Hi. 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.

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

He came at the right time. He had the right daring qualities.

He has huge warmth and it's a warmth that spreads across

all kinds of people.

Bye-bye, Suleiman 2. Bye-bye, Yousef. Bye, Mohammed.

It expanded my little horizons to the rest of the planet.

All through my travels, I kept a diary.

I always felt when I've travelled, it's really, really important

to keep a record. I mean, every day is precious.

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

Now, for the first time, I'm looking back - revisiting my most memorable

journeys and opening my diaries to find forgotten moments

from my travels. My way of looking at each journey as something

different, new, special, exciting, dramatic and challenging

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

I can't deny that I was very, very excited about travelling.

It was adventure and it was seeing the world, all these things

I just loved since I was very young, growing up in Sheffield.

But before I was a traveller, I was a Python, shaking up comedy,

offending people and being very silly.

But like all good things, it came to an end

and it was time to decide what next.

And then out of the blue comes this suggestion from the BBC.

PHONE RINGS

Hello.

Yeah.

BBC, yes, I know. Mm.

You want me to what?

You want me to go round the world.

Yeah. But I mean, yes, I don't see why.

I mean, you can go around the world in 36 hours. Ah, 80.

80 days. Yes.

Unusual journeys require unusual preparations.

Heart rate's 164.

Average test time is five to six minutes.

Really well. Keep going there.

So in summary, therefore, you're very fit. Well done.

I shall now be able to carry everybody's bags everywhere.

Don't tell them that. No.

Is this absolutely necessary?

One of the things that we felt we should do at the beginning

was talk to an experienced traveller.

And I emphasised that I was the novice,

I was a learner, so people wouldn't expect too much from me.

So who better to go and see than Alan Whicker!

Alan Whicker did these big travel programmes called Whicker's World,

which were very much about him and his journey -

quite formal, quite reporter-y.

They seem an absolutely cracking people to me.

Are they what they appear to be? Yes, they are. All the time?

They're like that all the time.

They're the kindest, most happy people I've ever lived with.

They're just fantastic.

How do you cope when things sort of fall apart or something

completely unusual happens?

I become tremendously British.

And you must always speak English.

You mustn't try and speak the local language

because when the Tonton Macoute are sticking guns into your ribs,

you mustn't try and say, "Please, don't," to them.

You must say in English, "Do you mind standing aside?

"Excuse me, BBC Television. Do you mind? Just back a bit.

"That's right," you know? And that's exactly what we did.

And they were absolutely staggered and it worked like a dream.

That's the way he travelled - in a suit - in a suit and tie.

Always the rather detached Englishman.

And I... You know, I realised I couldn't travel like that.

I hadn't got a tie. Well, I did have a tie, I had one tie.

Right. Where are the porters?

There are 40 bearers who are going with us on this trip.

At the very last moment, I remembered to bring a tie.

You never know, it might come in useful -

for strangling muggers or whatever one needs.

When I was growing up in the 1950s, no-one travelled very far.

You know, Nottingham, maybe, or Leeds, but that was about it.

Bye-bye. Bye. Bye-bye, everybody. Bye.

So suddenly to find myself being out there doing things that, you know,

would be something unbelievable when I was growing up,

it was so exciting and it was so...liberating.

The idea was beautifully simple.

It was a race against the clock.

I would trace the journey of Phileas Fogg, the hero

of Jules Verne's classic 19th century novel,

across land and sea, with no planes allowed.

Could I make it round the world in 80 days?

I saw it as something almost theatrical.

You know, it was all there in my mind already - the longest journey

of my life.

I don't think anyone had ever, the BBC ever said,

"We're going to go with one traveller and we're going to spend

"80 days with him, and he's going to be watched by the camera

"every single moment." You know, there's hardly a moment of privacy.

That hadn't been done before.

We were sort of toying with a completely new way

of doing documentaries.

And, for me, that meant getting my hands dirty.

For a few hours, I become a spazzino -

a temporary unpaid auxiliary with the Venice Sanitation Department.

This is the way to see Venice.

Gondolas. Gondolas, no?

Si. MAN SPEAKING ITALIAN

Ah. Wahey! Campione, campione!

Ah! Sheffield Wednesday.

Campione del mondo.

What is it? "Iannello, Giancarlo." Iannello, Francesco.

Iannello, Francesco. Iannello, Francesco. Really?

Iannello, Giancarlo. So it could be yours, yeah.

What is it - four? Quattro passi...

Quattro passi per la Giudecca.

Giudecca, Giudecca. Ah. Corsa.

I think he's run four times round the Giudecca.

Ah, it's a running cup. Mm. He's obviously given up his career now.

This is on the Espresso Egitto, which was the ship

from which we went from Venice to Alexandria.

You know, an exotic part of the journey, but I was clearly

at the beginning of the journey and I was very unsure of myself.

This is what I wrote.

"Occasionally, the realisation that this whole project is supported

"on my shoulders and demands not just my survival but my wit,

"energy, exuberance and enthusiasm, quite terrifies me.

"It's going to be a supreme test, but I'm determined to pull this off.

"Failure is unthinkable."

That used to keep me awake at night.

Failure is unthinkable.

The enormity of the task itself had me worried.

And it was tied in with how I was going to present myself.

Could I be funny for 80 more days?

Could I be funny for one more day? And because everyone agreed,

well, it's got to be Palin being spontaneous,

no-one was going to really step in and say, "You shouldn't say this,

"you shouldn't say that." That was against the spirit of it.

But, at the same time, it fed on a sort of insecurity in my mind.

Mm.

Hello, world.

God, you're much bigger than I thought.

This was arriving in Alexandria

and it was quite a moment for me

because it was the first real sort of moment of foreignness.

Up till that point, I was within a European perspective,

suddenly, I'm in an African perspective.

It was a world you didn't know at all.

Suddenly being somewhere foreign, strange, really different.

Everything felt different - the heat, the smells, the sounds.

You can't relate to it in your... in an English way particularly.

You certainly can't be all colonial about it and saying,

"Come on, excuse me."

You've just got to go with it

and I realised I was quite excited by that.

That was where the fun began, I thought.

We look around Alexandria. A quick drive in Alexandria.

You're looking at the big mosque, Alexandria, Abu al-Abbas.

Well, I'm really looking to get to the station.

How long will that take? The station two hour, one hour.

Two hours! No, I have to be...

I have to be at the station in half an hour.

After looking at the big mosque, Abu al-Abbas.

It's a big mosque Alexandria.

I think maybe you just take me to the station. OK.

Next time I come, we'll see the museums.

Getting to the station in Alexandria isn't easy.

Alexandrian horses know no fear.

They attack the traffic head-on.

I feel like Ben Hur on the M1.

What's your horse called? Larry.

Larry. An Egyptian horse.

I'm Michael. Michael. Michael Caine. Yeah, thank you.

With a whip-assisted lurch, longsuffering Larry turns

off the Corniche, once an elegant promenade, now crumbling gently,

like Cannes with acne.

As well as keeping a diary,

I also carried a tape recorder, and although I kept the tapes,

I've hardly ever listened to them - until now.

TAPE RECORDING: Now proceeding at a manic gallop

on the old horsedrawn carriage.

It is just extraordinary.

Lots of little individual enterprises.

The untidiness really.

I suppose if I were on my own, I'd be pretty scared.

STOPS TAPE

Says it all really. It sort of...

..just spills all around you.

All these... All these different sensations, and the fact

that everyone seems to be mad.

Mad but happy, I would have to say.

I finally reach the handsome station, resolved to shed

some English inhibitions, and become a part of Africa.

My first experience of fending for myself in a very difficult

environment, which I knew very little about.

There were no sort of English lettering, English signs

or anything like that. Just go in there, Michael,

and ask for a train ticket to Cairo.

Honestly, at this point, I just didn't quite know

what I was supposed to do.

Cairo?

Cairo? Cairo?

Cairo? Cairo? OK. Here we go.

How many, sir? One. One? Yes. One way to Cairo.

HE SPEAKS ARABIC

One? Yes, one. Just me. One way.

Cairo? Yes.

Today? Yes.

There. Ah, I've just come from there.

I shall walk to Cairo at this rate.

This is even cleverer than I thought.

That it was actually unrehearsed.

I mean, he turns up at a ticket booth says, "I want to go

"to somewhere or other," and it's a real exchange.

And if there's a confusion about understanding one another,

there's confusion about understanding it,

which is how it is.

TAPE RECORDING: An enormous full-scale blazing row

has erupted in the ticket hall

here at Alexandria, over whether I'm allowed to film or not.

About four people are shouting at each other, clutching their heads.

You would think it was sort of deaths in the family

from the way they carry on. Now they've gone quiet for a moment

and things are being looked at.

An Englishman trying to make sense it all, hanging on

to his Englishness. Surely they shouldn't have done that.

People shouldn't shout on stations.

They shouldn't argue in public and all that sort of thing.

But that's what they do. It happens all the time.

Hello! I saw you before. You're trouble.

Cairo?

After buying the ticket, I just thought, this is hopeless,

I'm going to look completely incompetent.

In the end, it was this sort of incompetence which people quite

enjoyed - they sort of felt comfortable with that.

Like, you know, well, we'd have been in the same situation

if we'd had to buy a ticket,

er, at Alexandria, and we didn't know any Arabic.

The thing about when you have had a career and you're moving

into something new,

is you're almost like a baby

because everything is fresh and new again,

and you could see that.

Have you any milk? No milk. No milk. Oh, I see.

Right.

I'll have it black then.

The thing that makes it special is when you have hard and grizzled

travellers, that kind of newness, that sense of excitement is gone,

but it was there with Michael

and people connect to that.

Back across the Nile to the city centre to search out a room

for the night. Eschewing the Hiltons and the Intercontinentals,

I plump for the classy ring of something older and more dignified.

Hello. Hello, sir. Good evening. Evening, sir. Do you have a room?

Yes, sir. A single one? Yes. Yes, we have. You do?

Marvellous. I'm not quite sure of the date of departure.

I'll just put approximately. OK, leave it out. OK.

And your room is on the second floor, sir. Thanks very much.

Thank you, sir.

When Michael surfed into the travel shows, we knew it was going

to be different. We knew it would be quite, what we call in the business,

roughty toughty. Not all smart hotels and lovely clothes.

It would be a real traveller's piece of work.

At the end of a long and tiring day, I'm just happy to have a bed

and a hot bath.

PIPES JUDDER

TAPE RECORDING: There is no hot water,

there is no stopper on the bath even if there were hot water

and the fact that so many fittings don't work add to the sort of

magical anarchy of Cairo.

Mm. Yeah.

I know that's something of a romantic notion...

..but it is just how you have to approach the place.

It's good to hear that actually -

"magical anarchy" and things like that.

I'd say that's probably exactly what I felt

and I feel a slight regret that I've never felt quite

like that again, because the next time you go somewhere,

it just is less of a surprise.

And this was just, bomb, a real assault on the senses.

I find room on a ferry leaving at midday.

The Saudi Moon II, with the II now crossed out,

since Saudi Moon I floundered on a reef outside Jeddah.

I'm the only European boarding this vessel, which carries either

pilgrims to Mecca or guest workers drawn to the bountiful economy

of Saudi Arabia.

My visa has taken many weeks to come through.

Every visitor to Saudi Arabia must be sponsored.

There are few non-Muslims and no tourists.

This is on the ship down to Jeddah.

There's the captain, wonderfully urbane, well-mannered man,

running this rather battered ship.

"Day 11, lunch with Captain Abbas.

"He's a charming, enthusiastic and philosophical man.

"He admires England.

"'You have such love for the sea.'

"His ship may be tired, battered and grubby, but his love for his work

"and his affection for sea life is very affecting."

Captain, I'm really enjoying this trip.

You're welcome on board any time.

Anybody from Liverpool with your group or from Liverpool?

Liverpool? I don't think we have any Liverpudlians.

A couple of Yorkshiremen. No. That won't do. Why Liverpool?

Because I'm in love with Liverpool, you know.

It was my first port, and I have many friends there.

Wherever you have friends, it's the best place.

And to all Liverpool, I send my love and to my favourite club there,

the Liverpudlians, Reds.

Can you tell me what...what are your views about air travel

shrinking the world?

They're shrinking people. They're not shrinking the world.

I don't like aeroplanes very much.

Not because I'm a fanatic to the sea, but really,

at air you don't see... Poom-poom, you are there.

But, you know, at sea, you enjoy the voyage.

You enjoy the sea, you enjoy the change.

Every day is not like the other. The clouds are different,

the sea's different. The weather is different.

The people you see in every port is different.

Nationalities, characters, traditions.

It's very rich what you see here,

what life is like on that ship.

The amount of time that's spent on deck because most

of them didn't have cabins or anything like that.

Unfortunately, we were going rather slowly.

We got rather late and things really began to fall apart.

First, we missed the ship that was meant to take us on towards Muscat.

Then, forced to travel over land,

we hit a snag in Saudi Arabia.

The situation is this. It's going to put us at least four days late.

If I catch a boat round to Dubai, that's the quickest we can do it.

However, I thought we were scuppered

but at 3:30am this morning,

the Saudi Ministry of Information came up with this letter,

which gives me permission to travel right across Saudi Arabia,

as far as Dubai, overland, however, it only extends to me,

doesn't include you lads as well. Sorry about that

but this is the way it goes. And at least it gets me as far as Dubai.

Then maybe we'll catch up some time on the dhow.

So, this is it, lads. See you in Dubai in two days.

Sorry about that. You'll get a lift, pretty boys like you.

Drive carefully, Michael. Yeah. Good luck.

Pretty boys like us!

I did feel on this journey that anything could happen

and you had to be able to deal with it. At the same time,

there was a part of me that really wanted to get this done

in less than 80 days.

From Saudi Arabia onwards, we began to lose days, four days behind.

So it was a combination of frustration because I wanted

to get the thing done properly, but exhilaration that we're having,

you know, these weird and wonderful things were happening.

Today, Dubai resembles a space-age city of the future.

When I got there, it was still a working port on the Persian Gulf

and I needed a lift.

That I'd arrived in Dubai at all was a small triumph.

And I'm even more cheered when I look out next morning

on to a most promising waterfront.

And, at last, my first sight of a dhow.

Preceded by the provisions - crates of mineral water,

yards of toilet paper, tins of tuna chunks,

everything the Western traveller needs for survival on the high seas,

I board our dhow, Al-Shama, which means candlelight in Arabic.

There we are. I'm not particularly keen on that look.

I was still in sort of semi Phileas Fogg mode.

The hat with sort of the pulled up socks and all that.

I mean, look! Dressed for sort of South Kensington or something,

but certainly not for the Persian Gulf.

The dhow was very basic in the sense that no-one really spoke English.

The captain spoke a few words of English.

The other 17 members of the crew and our own crew had to sleep

there on that deck, on those sacks, and all that.

There's no cabins or anything.

It's all very strange.

We're setting off for six days on the high seas,

out of radio contact, on a boat with not a life belt in sight.

We're heading out into the Persian Gulf, where nine years of war

are just coming to an end.

Assuming we miss the mines laid down during the Gulf War,

we still have to negotiate at night, without lights or radar,

one of the most tortuous channels in the world.

No wonder I didn't sleep last night.

It's getting rough. Those waves are 1.5 feet there, definitely.

Nothing like this had been done before, which made the whole thing

quite sort of alarming, but also exciting at the same time.

You were sort of making up the rules as you went along.

Ah. Ahh.

What's this doing here? Ah, yes.

Well, a bit more interesting last night.

We started pitching and tossing round about the middle of the night.

Went off to the loo, which is quite perilous.

There's a lot of men overboard that way, so...

The plumbing is basic.

They favour the hole in the barrel system, but using it is nowhere

near as alarming as getting to it.

The approach is scorchingly hot by day and suicidal at night.

Once installed, one enjoys direct contact with nature.

This is rather a shock and causes my bowels to lock solid for three days.

Oh, I remember this.

Yeah, I think it's kind of a recurring theme with Michael

when he goes on boats, he talks about his bowels

and how they get locked solid.

I've been on squatters, my God, hanging out over precipices.

I think the British public know more about Michael's bowels

than his GP, or his doctors.

I'm telling you, we all know!

His bowels are probably a national treasure.

You've got to face up to grim-ish things.

You've got to know that maybe you won't be able to shave.

You've got to know that sometimes you're not seen in your best light,

as it were, and you always want to...

Even if you're a clown, which he is, an entertainer

and not a vain man, which he's not remotely, you kind of want to look

good on screen, and sometimes you can't.

Urgh!

Ohh!

This is not for primetime television.

This is for indigestion, I hope he knows.

Walk on the... Urgh! ..Englishman.

Ah! Oh-oh, oh-oh!

I tell you, it's terrible pain!

You will not believe... Oh!

Being ill

and suddenly old Kasim comes and walks all over me.

Oh!

This was a time before technology took over our lives.

The dhow had no sat nav, no Wi-Fi,

no phone, and the crew navigated by sextant.

Resources are limited, but always shared.

Their food quickly becomes our food as well.

Is this rice, um...? Saag, saag. Saag? Saag, yes.

This is a good piece, is it? Yeah, good piece.

What will this do to me as I eat it?

I buy from the Bombay. Mm! Yeah.

Try a piece from the Bombay, try a piece.

This is vegetable, it's not meat? You like this?

Yes, it's very good. It tastes like... Yeah.

It tastes like meat, but it's not. Is it a vegetable?

Yes. Hm.

I felt a great curiosity about the people I was with.

I wanted to get things on a personal level.

And that's where the dhow really worked.

It had to be personal because there was no way of us

getting away from anybody else.

Do you eat meat? Yes, chicken.

You eat chicken? Chicken. She goat, he goat but not cow.

You eat sea goat?

She goat. Oh, she goat. Yes.

Not cow, eh? And not buffalo.

Yes. Nobody eats buffalo.

Some goat is swimming along... In the sea.

..I didn't know about. Another one is...

You drink this buttermilk, OK?

You put a bit of buttermilk in? Yeah, buttermilk. Put inside.

There we go.

If I make a noise like Kasim at the end of it,

you'll know I've had a good meal.

Right. So it's now ready to go.

Down, sir. Down. Not yet.

No, no. That was the quartermaster.

Yep. Same like you, tall, tall man.

Tall man! Tall, rather good-looking man, I think, yeah.

Mm, like me. Yeah, tall.

Mm!

It was just lovely. It was a lovely world to be in.

It was a world where you could sort of share and say things.

The language was different, but you could make jokes.

You could make them laugh. They could make you laugh.

The dhow was the sort of crucial point of change in my attitude

to the people I was seeing and how to play the series

and how to be myself.

MEN LAUGH

There was one moment in particular that really stuck with me

at the time, where he sat on this old dhow with an older bloke

and Michael was listening to this old Walkman, which for anyone

who's significantly younger than me,

was our early MP3 player-type.

It played something called a tape

and you had to press a button and you had these headphones

that went over your head.

You put them on like that.

OK?

How's that, Kasim? All right?

Now prepare yourself for a bit of Bruce Springsteen.

This may have very serious effects

but tell me to stop if you don't like it. All right?

Do you like it?

Good beat?

This must be one of the oddest audiences for The Wild, the Innocent

& the E Street Shuffle ever recorded.

It's good, isn't it?

Tweak the sound up a bit. See what happens here.

What?! Unbelievable, what this man can take!

Full volume now, this is full volume.

Kasim, are you all right?

Are you all right in there?

It was just brilliant and beautiful and, honestly, it was a bit

of a revelation. It was like, "Oh, my goodness! They're just like us,

"these strange foreign people."

And that was a big difference on telly to what had gone before.

It was supposed to be a five, ten-minute sequence at most

and it was the editor who looked at all this and said,

"I think it would work better at 55 minutes."

So the dhow became a complete episode.

MEN SING IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE

"The grey mist is lifting and revealing the Gateway of India.

"So the time comes to say goodbye to the people in whose hands

"we've entrusted our lives for the last week."

Bye-bye, Suleiman. Bye-bye, Suleiman 2. Bye-bye, Yousef.

Bye, Mohammed. Bye. Goodbye.

Bye-bye, Arun. Bye-bye, Yaqub. Bye-bye, Kasim. Oh!

Oh, look at that.

Thanks very much. You're very nice people, a very good crew.

I'll always sail with you. Thank you.

Here we go.

I can't imagine any other circumstances in which we would

have become so close so quickly...

..to people quite different from us

in wealth, class, race, religion and circumstance.

Of course, the programmes are about Michael and his journey,

but also, I think fundamentally, it's about these people he meets

and those little moments, those little sparks of interaction

that are the purest joy of travel.

And he shows us that and he relates it to us and we have it.

We keep it ourselves a little bit.

We benefit from his little encounters.

Phileas Fogg first saw Bombay on his 18th day out of England.

It's my 25th and I'm a week behind.

But Fogg wouldn't have seen this,

the arch built to commemorate the first visit

of a British monarch in 1911.

They still call it the Gateway to India.

In India, there's so much going on and so much to sort of take in.

This busy, seething city in the middle

of this busy, seething country.

There was an awful lot happening on the street and we had to make

sense of it and make our way through it.

We were then going to be staying at the Taj Hotel.

So I went from seven days on the dhow

to this very expensive, posh hotel.

Morning. The name's Palin. I have a reservation, but I'm a day late.

Nice to see you. Welcome to the hotel.

Thanks.

I was almost disgusted by what I saw.

I could see people sort of, you know, shouting at porters

and things like that and being very overbearing and just pointing

at things, demanding things be done.

But it was a very powerful feeling

when I got to the Taj, like I was sort of distanced from it.

Like I'd come from another planet,

see just how people behaved in what we would call our familiar world.

Ah!

"Bombay is the most difficult place to film yet.

"People who stare at the camera, the dripping humidity

"the extraordinary locations.

"Watching a mongoose driven to draw blood from a snake.

"In amongst grinding poverty. It's wearing us all down."

I don't remember that. I... You know, I look back on those journeys

and think we all had such a wonderful time. But, of course,

you didn't, you know. You had doubts, you had worries.

You got very tired.

And of course, filming in Bombay it looks terrific,

in the end, but actually working through it was...was pretty tough.

This is the really difficult bit.

Sorry.

These kids. Probably only five or six years old.

Difficult to know what to do. I mean, I just...

I just say no, because otherwise you can't solve anything.

You can't change everything.

If you gave ten rupees to every person, the 11th, you know,

to ten people, the 11th person would feel left out.

It's all over the city, sort of endemic,

the begging, and it's pretty horrific.

This was really difficult.

This... This was very, very hard.

I didn't know how to deal with that.

Nobody who goes to India does know

quite how to deal with that sort of thing.

Well, there we are - I've tried to sort of put across what I'm feeling.

Not altogether worthy feelings.

Uncomfortable feelings.

I've been told on good authority that there is an excellent barber

under a tree.

My taxi driver seems to know the tree well.

Hello, excuse me.

Excuse me. Are you a barber?

You do a shave? Yes.

Would you do me a shave, take this beard off?

Will you? OK. What do I do?

Sit here. So this is the seat, the barber's seat, is it?

No, like this. No, face this way. I face him? Yes.

He can't... All right.

There's eight days' growth here, so go easy.

Mm. That's great.

Are you one of the best?

Are you a good barber?

A quiet man.

I see Sheffield United won last Saturday.

Uh-oh.

Right. Michael, be still. Be as still you can. Oh! Leave the nose.

I know it's big.

Ah. Aah.

Suddenly, I realise what it is about the barber's manner that worries me.

From the way he handles me and stares past me, I form

the distinct impression that he's blind.

I'm not going to talk because if I do...

..he might get the jugular.

This is why the crowd's here. They haven't come to watch a shave,

they've come to watch an execution.

This guy gave me almost the best shave in my life because everything

was done by touch and it was absolutely sort of perfect.

There wasn't a sort of single nano hair left by the end of it.

TAPE RECORDING: Dadar Station 20 minutes before departure

of the Madras Express. No-one seems to know what they're doing.

People have been going in and out, scrambling about, changing places.

Is this is a permanent state of affairs?

I do notice on the book stall, there's a copy of Jeffrey Archer

and a copy of Spycatcher in the middle of all this.

Yes, we weren't there for long.

Not just about destinations.

We've got to remember that the whole thing is a journey,

which has to be done in under 80 days.

Are you travelling all the way to Madras?

Yes, from Bombay to Madras.

What will the south be like?

I've never been there before.

It's like another country.

The whole culture's different. The language is obviously...

The south has the Dravidian languages.

If we didn't speak English or three or four Indian languages,

we wouldn't be able to communicate at all.

Yes, I've just been boning up on my Hindi,

which is going to be fairly useless.

I'm afraid that's not going to help you very much in Madras.

In fact, I would advise you not to say very much in Hindi.

Despite this being a trans Indian express, no food is cooked on board.

Meals can be ordered ahead and collected at a station

further up the line. If the train's delayed,

so's the meal and the army of station vendors

becomes the only alternative.

One rupee, two. What are they? Guava. Fruits. Guava. Ah, guava.

Good to eat on the train. Yeah.

Could I have one rupee's worth? I'm about to make a purchase.

Thank you very much.

The Indians are very friendly people,

it's quite nice working there.

They were very involved in what we were doing

and very interested and genuinely felt that they could show us

a better way of doing it.

TAPE RECORDING: Beautiful views down now to our right.

Fields, trees, stretches of water.

Now a party of children walking along the down line, now.

Little kids with their plastic bags, striding off very purposely.

Looks idyllic out there really for them.

It's the sort of thing that...

..that never loses its appeal.

It's deeply emotional. Nostalgic, I know.

There we are, you see?

I'm rambling on, expressing what is essentially the heroic nature

of train travel, which from very early on, when I was very young,

there was something heroic about trains.

Just went through the cities and through the country

and had a sublime confidence.

There's a lot of little boy in the whole enterprise, really.

In all the travels, I think when I've lost the little boy

sense of wonder...I've lost something quite significant.

This magical train ride will be my last overland journey

for quite a few days.

From Madras, I caught a cargo ship

to Singapore and then a container ship on to Hong Kong,

a new continent and a new culture to try and get to grips with.

Good morning, Mr Palin. Welcome to Hong Kong, sir.

Thank you very much.

On the streets of Kowloon, I can escape for a while from the world

of schedules and deadlines and observe a little local life.

It's exhilarating and unfamiliar, especially in the bird market -

a long street, proffering feathered friends for all your needs,

for singing, eating, fighting or just a chat.

Hello. Hello.

I've been in a sketch with you once.

Yes, I have. They think I'm mad.

Quite right.

It's a cross between a zoo and a club.

People walk their birds here just so they can enjoy

the company of other birds.

Is it like taking a dog for a walk? Yeah, yeah.

And what do the birds do? Do they...? Are these song birds?

Yeah, but not now. Not now because we're on television.

It's scared. It's too young.

Too young. Vocal cords have got to grow yet.

But in some ways, Hong Kong was just a prelude to the most

exciting stage of the journey yet -

Communist China itself.

China and Saudi Arabia.

The only two countries on the journey where you had

that extra element of fear of offending some authority.

So everything was potentially much more loaded going into...to China.

TAPE RECORDING: Outside the window is China.

My first glimpse of China. It's different from Hong Kong

because on the shoreline there are a lot of small, thatched huts

standing in the water. I suppose they're fishermen's huts.

A lot of small fishing boats

but it's a very broad, grey-green estuary here.

There's a frisson going to China because it was a Communist country

and Communism then was still a very sort of potent, threatening image

for Westerners. And it was not long after the Mao Tse Tung era,

people being forced to go off to the fields and all that.

So I didn't quite know what I was going to find.

I was enjoying being far from home.

This is what I wanted to travel for.

I wanted to find places that were very different,

not similar to home.

Some time I see the programme of BBC television. Yes.

And sometimes I listen... I listen to the radio. Ah.

BBC in shortwave. Shortwave. Shortwave. Shortwave.

That's right. Look at the clothing there!

Look at what they're wearing. I mean, he's travelling

at such a fascinating time of change.

They're all in flipping Gucci and Levis now.

That's what's so cool about it.

It kind of feels like you're being let into a world that...

..that's been forbidden.

Shanghai is the largest city of China with a population

of more than 12 million,

so it's not surprisingly highly labour-intensive.

Everyone's got something to do, whether it's sweeping, selling,

cooking or being a bicycle warden.

Though the street atmosphere feels medieval, there's a definite trickle

of modern goods.

You can buy an electronic calculator, but the price

will still be added up on an abacus.

What I realised as we went through China was that the Chinese

were very, very preoccupied with their own lives

and this enormous transition from being sort of an agricultural

peasant economy to an economy where big cities were growing,

buildings were going up all the time.

So something was going on in China that preoccupied

the Chinese completely.

And that was the feeling in China that there were a lot of things

you didn't know and you couldn't know and they didn't want

you to know, and there's no way of finding out.

It wasn't sort of evident in a sense

of a sort of obvious oppression.

People with guns being... pushing people around and all that.

But there was a kind of acceptance that this was a huge, potentially

very powerful country run by a totalitarian government.

TRAIN HORN HONKS

SHE READS ALOUD

On the train, on the other hand,

there are one or two people to meet.

Trains are always good because every sort of estate of man or woman

is...uses trains, you know, from the richest to the poorest.

There was something I wanted to ask people.

Is there any one question you would ask someone coming from Britain?

Is there any one question you'd like to ask me?

Yeah. Only one question. What?

Do you carry an umbrella with you every day?

Is that true or not? No. No?

If I set out of the house with an umbrella, I'd lose it

within a day, anyway. No, no. No, no, no. No, I don't.

I just get wet. Oh, just get wet.

OK. That's very good. SHE GIGGLES

SHE READS ALOUD

"I visit the train's DJ.

"Requests to play a track from my Springsteen and Billy Joel tapes

"have been vetoed by her superior,

"the director of on-train broadcasting.

"So I suggest Mozart instead.

"She eyes my tape doubtfully."

Would you? It's much better than listening to it on the cassette.

Will this go all the way, everyone in the train hear this?

Yes. They don't know who Mozart is.

So it's played privately first, approved, and much later, relayed

to the rest of the train.

MESSAGE OVER PA

MOZART PLAYS

I did my best to understand China

but, in the end, I had to admit I'd hardly scratched the surface

of this vast, ancient civilisation.

Leaving, I felt we were on the home straight, even though we were still

two oceans and a continent away from completing the circle.

From Japan, we sailed to California, a ten-day voyage that gave me time

to reflect on everything I'd seen and experienced.

Then, after one last epic train journey right across America,

we finally set sail for England.

"I lie in bed this morning and seriously consider

"what it would be like to be back home."

"I think that the journey has, in a way, calmed and settled me.

"It's been much nearer to sanity than the phone-ringing,

"celebrity-conscious world I left at home."

"At sea, the pace of life slows to a very agreeable level

"and the thought of a return to city life is not this morning

"as tempting as I expected it to be.

"In fact, I could easily go round again."

There we are, packing up my bag for the last time

on board the Danish ship, The Leader Maersk, that had taken us

from New York to Felixstowe.

And you look - I'm looking tired. Let's face it.

It's been a long, long journey.

I've been on camera for 79 days.

Look at that. There's a man who's knackered.

Absolutely knackered. No acting required.

I want to get home, I want to have a beer, I want to get to bed.

Maybe it's the shock of being somewhere so busy after eight days

contemplating the Atlantic, but I feel myself more than usually

aware of that underlying atmosphere of tension that most city dwellers

don't even notice.

As we pull into Bank station, a harsh voice triggers my worst fears.

MUFFLED TANNOY MESSAGE

There I am. I'm really bewildered.

This is worse than being in the middle of Bombay or China

or anything. I really don't know quite what's going on.

We finally get to the Reform Club

and, you know, this is... It's wonderful.

We've done it in 79 days, seven hours. We go up the steps

and one more indignity ready to be heaped upon us.

Well, there we are. This is the Reform Club.

This is where Phileas Fogg started his journey.

This is where I began my journey on September the 25th, 1988,

79 days and seven hours ago.

Unfortunately, for reasons of their own, the club do not want me

to go in there and film this afternoon.

So I have to say, this is the end of the journey on the pavement

outside 104 Pall Mall.

That's it.

British clubs. You know, it's not about letting people in,

it's about keeping people out.

So I learnt a few lessons about the English that day,

which left me very depressed for about a week.

Still, I was home, reunited with my family, back in my old life

and anxiously waiting for the moment of truth.

What would the viewers make of my journey round the world?

And we're here to take your calls on anything to do with television.

Let's have a look at what you've been calling about already

in our Open Line.

Regarding Around the World in 80 Days,

I have never enjoyed a programme so much. He has taken me,

personally, to places I'd never seen.

So many of you have phoned in about this programme last night.

David Templeman from Camberley,

"Congratulations. This is what television is all about."

The fact that it rated so highly was a surprise in a way

because there hadn't been anything like that before, which was quite

so sort of spontaneous, improvised, unplanned.

It's changed travel, travel programmes forever.

Total beautiful, melting mix of cultures and just humanity shared.

I learnt that my desire to travel, my love of travel,

wasn't something false and wasn't something I had romanticised.

It was very real.

I didn't really ever expect it to unleash all the other programmes

or the freedom to do other programmes.

This is it. I'm standing on the top of the world.

Pole To Pole, this was a greater challenge.

You know, countries that I'd never been to.

The USSR.

And all the way through Africa.

Then to Antarctica itself.

Thrilling stuff.