Original subtitles

I think the Himalaya is the sexiest mountain range.

The ultimate Boy's Own adventure.

When I was ten years old, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay

made the first ascent of Everest.

I never imagined that, one day, I'd follow them into the Himalaya.

But five decades later, I did.

Look at that!

Ha-ha-ha!

Wow!

It's the Himalayas...

I mean, the Himalayas.

He's going for one of the most extraordinary places on the planet.

He has huge warmth and it's a warmth

that spreads across all kinds of people.

Bottoms up!

Down the hatch!

Now I'm looking back on that epic journey

and opening up my diaries to revisit my trip to the roof of the world.

Your face - very familiar to me.

Because of BBC.

Oh!

Oh, wonderful.

I had that boyhood...

..feeling of, um, of adventure.

This is a summit of Annapurna.

And, really, I mean, it's just breathtaking.

I wasn't a boy any more.

I'm 60 years old...

..and more when we set off for the Himalaya.

It was like fulfilment of a dream that I thought

would never, ever come true.

I've spent decades travelling the world, and if I'm ever tempted

to think I've seen it all, this amazing planet has always

proved me wrong.

But nothing on my journeys really prepared me for the Himalaya.

What mattered really was somewhere striking, somewhere that had sort

of an identity, a feeling.

A sort of impact.

You just saw and heard the word "Himalaya".

It was sort of an epic word.

The Himalayan range contains many of the highest mountains

on Earth, and it's home to over 50 million people.

Quite a new mountain range.

And they're actually apparently

going higher by about an inch a year or something

like that, because the tectonic plate's pushing from the south.

The top of Everest is actually a little segment of limestone,

which means it was once on the seabed,

which is a great thought.

Our route would take us 3,000 miles across the Himalaya,

up into the high mountains, then down again

to the sea.

From Pakistan,

we would travel through northern India, towards Nepal, Tibet

and Mount Everest itself.

From there we'd explore the great Tibetan plain

and the Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, before descending to Bangladesh

and the Bay of Bengal.

The fact that we were starting on the northwest frontier

and almost the first day of filming would be on the Khyber Pass,

I mean that did, you know, that...?

Wow, that, that's a jolt of excitement.

I'm at the top of the Khyber Pass on the border between Pakistan

and out there, Afghanistan.

Through here have come some of the great armies of the world -

Alexander the Great brought an army through here,

Darius the Persian, Tamburlaine the Great.

And in 1842, the lone survivor of the British army's attempt

to pacify Afghanistan, came staggering up this road to announce

the annihilation of 17,000 of his comrades.

TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS

The Foreign Office had advised us against travelling to Pakistan.

We were filming in 2004, only three years after 9/11, and attacks

by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda had become frequent in the places

we would visit.

But taking the right precautions, we decided it was worth the risk.

Pakistan had a real edge to it, which excited me, because I love

going to places like that.

People say, "You perhaps shouldn't go."

Or "It's dangerous," and all that.

Well, people live there.

People have...bring up children there.

So you've got to sort of get that level as well.

Do you think there's any danger in people coming here?

No. Not... No.

Not even before. Pakistani people are very much hospitable people.

And they take care, special to their...guest.

I mean, much more than theirself.

The people were indeed mostly welcoming,

but here on the northwest frontier,

the law of the gun often prevailed, giving a boost to one

particular local industry.

RAPID GUNFIRE

You can hear Dara from miles away.

It sounds as if there's a pitched battle going on.

MULTIPLE SINGLE GUNSHOTS

But it's just business as usual in the town that lives on guns.

They have guns because that's what you do

in the northwest frontier.

Because it's a lawless place

and the army and the police really don't go there much.

And yes, there were dangers, but as soon as you get there,

you realise it's not as obvious as that.

Zahoor explains that on the northwest frontier, people carry

guns the way the English carry umbrellas, which might account

for the bizarre gentility of the place -

picturesque and perilous, laid back and lethal.

CONTINUOUS GUNSHOTS

Oh. OK.

The arms industry in Darra may be in the hands of small shopkeepers,

but they can produce an exact copy

of any of the world's major shooters.

This is the mini version of the Kalashnikov,

the Russian-made gun. Kalashnikov, right.

Yeah. The AK-47 everyone knows about.

Yeah, and who are these guns bought by largely?

See, we are in tribal territory.

And there are hundreds and thousands

of people living in the tribal free territory.

Yeah. Here, they do not need to have a licence to have a gun.

The young one, the old one,

from time to time, they exchange guns

like people exchange cars.

It wasn't a sort of aggressive feeling.

It sounds ridiculous, but it wasn't,

"We've got these guns and we're going to kill people."

It's just, "We make guns.

"We've made guns since the British army made the Lee-Enfield rifles,"

back after the the days of the Indian Mutiny.

And they're just very good at making guns.

So you go to a shop and people will sort of show you a gun,

like they'll sell you something like you're trying on a suit, you know?

"That suits you, sir."

Do you have, like, sort of James Bond...?

You know James Bond?

James Bond, ha. You do? Oh, yes!

He's got... I mean, he's always very well armed, isn't he?

Now, this is the pen.

You can sign... I don't believe it.

And you didn't even use your cheques.

I was joking.

He really has got one of these.

Now, can you see? Yeah. This is the top.

You take off this top, then you put the bullet here.

Yeah. .22 calibre bullet. Yeah.

And there you are signing, "Sincerely yours, James Bond."

Yes, exactly. You get a "boom!"

Aha! Look at that!

The great thing about travel is to question

your preconceptions.

Just because you have guns doesn't mean

you want to destroy the world.

Cricket is Pakistan's national obsession, played at any spare

moment on any spare patch of ground.

I enjoy going, very much.

Right from the beginning, they were extremely friendly.

And they were terribly good natured, the people there, and very funny.

Michael was a huge inspiration on me.

I just knew that one day, you know, I wanted to travel and go and see

some of the places that I'd seen on my screen.

Visiting places that are alien in culture is a wonderful way

for people to generate empathy, not rely just on the narrative

that we're often fed in the news, which is always doom and gloom.

How was that?

Yes.

Wow!

As always, on my journeys, I kept a diary to record my immediate

reactions to the places I visited.

But in Pakistan, my pen sometimes struggled to cope

with the sheer sensory overload.

This is Peshawar.

"On our way back to the hotel, we go through the old city.

"If you can turn a blind eye to the decrepitude of the buildings,

"some only held up by the two on either side of them, the insanity

"of the wiring system running, unravelling string across the front

"of the buildings, making them look like badly wrapped parcels,

"then you can only boggle at the profusion

"of people, products, activities.

"Everything is here from fans to fridges, to cooking pots the size

"of small ponds, and it's all up front and on display."

It's really difficult to get the kind of feel of a place

like that, which is an extraordinary frontier town.

It's just so many wonderfully strange

and bizarre things happening there.

Everything in this town seemed totally over the top and, for me,

rather beautifully baffling.

Luckily, my guide Zahoor was there to keep me right.

Here's your bus.

How do you know?

Because it says 6-8-0-8. Chitral bus?

No, this is the Chitral bus.

Yeah, OK. So I get on this one?

Oh, yes, please. Get up on the bus.

Good luck. Thank you very much indeed. Hope to see you.

Inshallah and good luck.

Thank you for helping me to understand Peshawar a little better.

Yes, OK. All right. Whoa!

Whoa!

That's mine here. OK? Thank you.

This bus does go to Chitral, doesn't it?

It doesn't, as it happens, and for one very good reason.

The road to Chitral has to climb a 10,000 foot pass

and down 43 hairpin bends on the other side.

Forget about buses,

it's frightening enough in a four-wheel drive.

We all know mountains, whether it's the Lake District

or the Alps, but when you go to the Himalayas,

you really are stumbling into something quite different.

It's awe-inspiring.

It's actually terrifying.

The roads, really holed and damaged,

and also very dangerous.

And look at that - right by the edge there.

This was hairy, I wasn't at all comfortable.

There's one road,

it's subject to rock fall, so when you're on a narrow ledge,

which is not even a highway,

rocks wouldn't just block it -

they'd probably knock you off into the gorge below.

You just have to take your, you know, fate into your hands,

and just say, well, "Good luck to the driver."

Look at this.

A vehicle heading your way has to push into the side.

Talk about holding your breath.

Our route now took us on a loop through the Chitral Valley.

Birthplace of polo.

CROWDS CHEER

Then we headed south again...

..and made for the country's neighbour and great rival, India,

through the border checkpoint at Wagah, where the simmering

tensions between these two nuclear powers are channelled

into theatrical confrontation.

It's seen as a place of sort of joyful rivalry,

it's pure theatre,

and the armies on both sides try to outdo each other in marching

in a threatening manner, which is really terrific to see.

I mean, it's partly so like Silly Walks, but it's actually also

extremely physically powerful.

And they're playing to the crowds and the crowds really seem

to like it, and they're all cheering their own side,

cheering their own guards.

No messing about there.

This is not camp.

This is naked anger and aggression bottled up and delivered.

CROWD CHEERS

HORNS PLAY

I was utterly fascinated by that border crossing,

that ceremony of the flag-lowering, with the crowds cheering.

It just gives you a window and an insight into a world that some

of us would never see.

I find borders incredibly fascinating,

how you can just draw a line...

..in the sand, or draw a line through a, through some rugged

landscape and say, "This is one country, that's another country,

"and once you cross that line, we're completely different.

"We speak a different language.

"We eat slightly different food.

"We act differently."

But we're all humans.

It's nuts!

Ah, great.

I hop into a local minibus, which takes me the ten miles or so

to the first Indian city.

Neither Muslim nor Hindu, Amritsar is a Sikh town.

I know a bit about Sikhs - the turbans, and the hair that should

never be cut, and I know their reputation as fierce warriors

and shrewd businessmen.

But to learn more, I make for Amritsar's most holy site,

the Golden Temple.

Though they seem quite a relaxed and worldly people, the Sikhs do

demand a strict dress code for the temple.

I know Sikhs, and knew Sikhs in this country,

but I didn't know a great deal about their religion.

When you go to Amritsar,

you are aware of what Sikhism really means.

There are an estimated 20 million Sikhs in India,

2% of the population.

They believe in one God for all, rich or poor.

With no human hierarchies or priesthood, idols or icons

coming in between.

It sounds commendably modest, but when I first see the gold sheathed,

Sri Haramandir, the holy of holies,

modest is not the first word that comes to mind.

Any traveller who comes to the Golden Temple can come in and stay

the night and be fed and given accommodation, completely free.

That is, that is, you know, what one should do for one's

fellow human being.

In the kitchens, volunteers take turns to prepare a simple free meal

for anyone who wants it.

Chapatti, dhal, pickle and water, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

This is the chapatti production line.

These are the dhal vats.

Every day in sweatshop conditions, thousands of kilos of lentil curry,

are stirred in Titanic cauldrons.

So, this is... I mean, essentially they give, this, a basic meal

to whoever turns up?

Yes. Within reason. But I mean, it's a huge place.

This must be a very big operation? Yes.

How many meals do they provide a day?

Well, basically, this cuisine, this kitchen

is open 24 hours to everybody.

Right. And every day, 40,000 to 50,000 people,

they come here and have food.

It was a really lovely window into seeing something

that is probably mysterious for many people.

We need more of this, because it's that whole lack of knowledge

that I think creates the conflicts and animosity in our society.

Because we don't know about other religions.

We just make these assumptions.

What sort of people are they?

I mean, are they poor people who can't get food anywhere else

or people like us who are making television documentaries?

Well, this is a basic thing of every Sikh temple.

I mean, essential for every Sikh temple.

Everybody has to come first in the kitchen.

So, here, everybody learns the lesson of equality.

Yes. This is the essence of the kitchen.

Yes, that's great.

Going to the Golden Temple was an extraordinary experience.

You know, what it meant to the Sikhs themselves to share all the work

needed to sort of help their fellow human being.

That's something which I never understood

about the Sikh religion before.

And that's probably because in this country, we don't talk

a lot about religion.

We tend to leave you to it.

But there when you're travelling in in India, in the Himalaya region,

you can't just leave the world to it.

Religion impinges all the time.

There's lots of levellers. And I think that's the great thing

about the faiths that I encountered

in the Himalayas, is that it's something that, doesn't matter

what your station in life, how much money you've got,

people are always encouraged to be at that same level

when it comes to faith.

And Michael's journeys, you know, really encapsulate that.

Leaving Amritsar, it was time

to continue our ascent into the hills...

..on a railway steeped in imperial history.

The line to Shimla, formerly Simla,

summer capital of the British Raj.

India have been very much part of childhood stories.

It was part of, sort of, British folklore.

Of so many people, including my own father,

who went to work in India some time in their lives.

My father helped build one of the dams in what is now Pakistan.

The British had engaged with India for a very long time.

I really wish that I'd asked my father much

more about the world.

And what it was like living in India in the '20s.

He never really talked about any of that.

There are one or two letters from him, there are photographs

where he seems terribly happy.

And the lads were having a great time out there, but they all knew

that it would come to an end.

And during the late 19th and early 20th century,

the days of British Empire in India,

there was definitely a sort of paternalist feeling

that we were there to show the Indians how best

to run their country, which was appalling, really.

And my attitude to travelling is to be completely the opposite.

TRAIN HORN BLARES

There's no dining car, but there is home cooking,

courtesy of a generous fellow passenger.

Oh, thank you very much.

Wow, that's...lovely.

What is this?

This is poori. Poori. Poori.

Poori and...? Made out of wheat flour.

Wheat flour? Yes.

These are potatoes.

Oh, lovely! With Indian spices. With Indian spices.

Lovely. This is your picnic for the family?

Yes. This is my holiday time with my family. Oh, lovely.

And why did you, why did you choose to go to Shimla?

Because it is nearby.

Where are you from?

I'm from Delhi. All right. Yeah.

You have to start very early today, did you? Yeah.

Four o'clock, I wake up in the morning. I cooked food.

Six o'clock, we left. Yeah, I cooked this. At four o'clock?

Oh, that's... Wow, that's...

It's a labour of love. We left our residence. 7:40, boarded the train.

TRAIN HORN BLARES

Is Delhi hard work? Is it a very high-pressure city?

Yeah. Very much pressure.

What do you do?

I'm working with the Government of India, Ministry of Defence.

Oh, right. Secret work?

Yes, well...

Michael is as likely to have an interview with somebody

who he happened to bump into in the streets,

at least that's the impression.

And they're totally natural and they aren't stressed

and they don't feel they've got to make a particular point

or a presentation. The result is it's a real human reaction.

He put on a sort of blueprint of how to behave

in foreign countries, which is his great courtesy,

but familiarity and friendliness.

He's at ease with himself and he's got no, he holds,

no bad thoughts.

Shimla was very much a British imperial creation...

..because it was too hot in the Plains during the summer.

The whole administration of India would decamp

up into the hills, to Shimla.

Simla, the Hill Station is now Shimla,

the bustling provincial capital.

But the imperial legacy remains and the Viceroy's Palace -

Victorian self-confidence set in stone - still dominates the town.

One fifth of humanity was ruled from that room up there.

One fifth of humanity, as much as that?

That was the British Empire at that time? Yes.

It is absolutely colossal and on the top of the hill there.

If there's ever a building which says, you know,

"So, well, up yours," it's the Viceregal Lodge.

So, where's this? This is the big...?

This is The Ridge. Parade ground.

This is the big Ridge, the town's largest open space.

Yeah. And we're walking along a natural watershed now, Michael.

The flow from that side on our right goes down to the Bay of Bengal

and from the left, to the Arabian Sea. Extraordinary!

Is that partly why they chose this spot, Simla?

A wonderful... Dividing India, you know?

Yes. Or sitting astride India! Sitting astride it, yes, yes.

Whatever way you look, it's an imposition, isn't it?

From Shimla, we moved on to a place where the troubled legacy of Empire

was even more tangible - Kashmir.

The visit to Kashmir was quite revealing, really,

because there you've got this tension between Pakistan and India.

And yet it was the most serene, beautiful, calm, wonderful

sort of physical environment out there on the lake.

In Kashmir, heaven and hell come pretty close.

Swanning about like Cleopatra in a barge on Dal Lake,

I feel completely at peace.

But in the city of Srinagar, on the shores of the lake,

a nasty war slowly grinds on.

At Partition in 1947, it was expected that majority-Muslim

Kashmir would become part of Pakistan.

But the British and the local Hindu ruler kept it in India,

igniting a conflict that's still simmering today.

The whole problem with Kashmir was that it was largely a Muslim area,

and they want to rule it themselves.

I shall be staying with Mr Gulam Butt,

proprietor of Clermont houseboats -

once the most sought-after on the lake.

Mr Butt. Hello! You must be Mr Butt.

So happy to see you here. Yeah, well, it's nice to be here.

You've obviously had a few people before me. Yes, they all,

they all stayed there. Even George Harrison...

George Harrison, my dear friend!

He was here. Was he?

With Ravi Shankar and his wife... Yeah? What year was he here?

That was 1966. 1966. He was here, yes, sir.

Have you still got people coming now? Yes.

Unfortunately, not - mostly because since 1990, you know...

I know, been a lot of troubles, yeah.

..the turmoil and troubles we have since 1990,

because of the problems and all that.

Here, a place of great beauty is undergoing a profound crisis.

Profound crisis, really.

"Wake to grey skies and rain.

"Filming delayed.

"Retire to the best bed on the journey so far,

"and read the Dalai Lama's book, The Art of Happiness.

"We've been granted an audience with him in a few days' time,

"and I began the book a little out of duty.

"Now I find I'm getting a lot out of it.

"There's something infectious about his optimism -

"an optimism which comes from confronting, rather than avoiding

"the unacceptable, and acknowledging, understanding,

"and demystifying it."

Perched high in the Himalayan foothills near Dharamshala

is the village of McCleod Ganj.

Alongside local poverty is a parallel economy

geared to the demands of well-heeled Westerners.

And the reason for all this is religion.

Neither Hindu nor Muslim, but Buddhist.

Ten years after the Chinese took over his country,

the Dalai Lama, fearing death or imprisonment,

fled across the Himalaya from Tibet.

India's Prime Minister Nehru risked Chinese wrath

to offer him sanctuary.

And this is where the leader of Tibetan Buddhism now lives,

surrounded by his faithful followers.

What I felt about Dharamshala is there's lots of people

living in the aura of the great man himself, the Dalai Lama -

his presence there means so much to so many people

that you think when you get to meet him that, you know,

one will immediately collapse on the ground in the glow of

his wisdom and enlightenment.

The Dalai Lama greets his Western admirers first.

Then it's the turn of the Nepalese and Tibetans.

Only they get packets of herbal pills - blessed by his holiness -

which will cure coughs and colds.

If the international pilgrims seem almost blase,

the Tibetans who stand in line are quite visibly awed by his presence.

Then, all of a sudden, it's our turn.

Your Holiness.

"At 2.25, we're advised that he will be coming.

"I arm myself with a khatag - a thin, white scarf -

"which is a mark of greeting and respect among Tibetans."

You're a busy man, aren't you? HE CHUCKLES

"Try not to dwell on the fact that I'm about to embark on a 40-minute

"talk with the spiritual leader of one of the great religions...

"..and can't remember a single one of the questions

"I rehearsed in my room last night."

Your face is very familiar to me, because of the BBC.

Oh, really? THEY CHUCKLE

Well, your face is very familiar to me.

You watch the BBC, then?

Practically every day. Do you? Oh.

Because I have more trust.

Really? Yes.

And mainly, there's some beautiful documentaries.

Including your own, you are visiting different places.

And sometimes, I wonder, I wish to join with you.

I could see many places. Ah!

THEY CHUCKLE Well... And many different people.

He seemed to be a very, very nice bloke indeed.

Without any of the, kind of, mystique that I thought might...

..erm, might be there.

You're the best travelled of any Dalai Lama in history.

And, I mean, you are - you have a very hectic schedule.

Why do you think it's important to travel?

From my childhood, I always had curiosity,

or desire to know more about different people,

different culture.

And, as a Buddhist monk,

I also have been interested to learn more about

different religious traditions.

We're going to Tibet, as I say, in a month, which is very exciting.

What sort of situation do you think we'll encounter there?

What is Tibet like at the moment?

I hear there's a revival of interest in Buddhism.

Will we see this, and will it be the real thing?

Since you are going there, so you yourself must find out

what's the true situation.

Of course, although I'm here outside Tibet,

not inside Tibet.

But, as a Tibetan,

I want to extend my welcome to you to visit my old country.

MONKS CHANT

This is the tragedy at the heart of the Dalai Lama's story.

China won't allow him or many of his followers

to go back home to Tibet.

Young Tibetans like Tukton Siwei have never seen

their ancestral homeland.

Your parents had to leave Tibet, I assume, did they?

Yes.

They came to India in the 1960s, when his son-in-law was here.

During that time, they were in a group.

Yeah. Yeah.

Do you think you'll ever get to Tibet?

No. I would like to go, really.

Yeah, but then, it's really difficult at this moment.

We have special procedures to follow.

I was reminded how lucky I was.

In a few days, I would be seeing Tibet for myself,

while these people remained in exile,

determined to keep their culture alive.

And so, we left Dharamshala, and the real climbing began.

Now it's time to tackle the mountains.

We'll be trekking up to the 13,500-foot base camp

of Annapurna, whose summit dominates the horizon,

along with the classically beautiful peak of Machapuchare - "fishtail".

The idea is to see a bit of the country and get acclimatised

to high altitude before we take on Everest and the Tibetan plateau.

Followed by our Sherpa guides, Wongchu and Nawang,

I set a less-than-blistering pace.

I'm already feeling breathless,

but notices warn that things can only get worse.

"Mountain sickness."

If you get the mountain sickness, then you must drink a lot of water.

And then you must use the soup and garlic soup,

in the tins, and go slow, walk slower.

Well, that's easy, yes. When you get a headache or something,

altitude, you must move down in a low place.

"Early symptoms, headache, loss of appetite,

"dizziness, fatigue on minimal exertion."

Oh, I've got a bit of that!

"What to do?

"Get in touch with your nearest Sherpa.

"Descend, descend, descend."

Well, that's pretty clear.

Yeah.

It's not a cakewalk, is it?

To go into the mountains at all in Nepal, you have to use Sherpas,

and Sherpas are the local Nepalese.

They've been brought up in the mountains.

It's extraordinary to watch them at work.

It's not the Olympic 100 metres!

They scamper up.

They're carrying, in the basket, 40 or 50lbs, or more.

60lbs, they're carrying, as they just scamper up.

And it's very demoralising cos it makes you feel,

even if you're feeling well,

very laggardly and hopeless.

On this journey Michael is walking for 15 to 17km a day,

which is all at high altitude,

which I think is pretty astonishing.

And you can see Michael's sort of fragility and vulnerability,

I think, really, for the very first time in any of his series,

of, "This is actually really, really hard."

Maybe it's a little sadistic part of me,

but I feel, as a travel journalist,

at some point you have to suffer for your art,

and Michael suffered.

There was one point where he asked the travel guide,

"Are we stopping here?

"Are we ready to just have a quick break?"

And the guy went "No!" and carried on walking.

And you just see Michael go, "Swine,"

and then carry on walking with him.

Lunch here? No, on the hill.

Swine.

I love those parts, you know,

and I think that's when you get the best out of a presenter,

because it's real, you can't lie, you can't fake that.

These mountains were the most challenging I'd ever tackled

and as we climbed ever higher, the effects of altitude sickness

started to kick in.

As you climb higher, the oxygen in the air decreases,

so you have to breathe even harder to get any air in your lungs.

You're also climbing, so you're expending more effort.

So, it just slows you down.

You have to stop and you have to breathe very carefully.

You have to fill your lungs again.

So, it's quite uncomfortable walking.

Cor blimey. Wangcho's going at a pretty fast pace.

Mind you, he has been up Everest twice...

It's the afternoon

and I think walking this morning was somehow easier.

You stop for lunch...

..and suddenly it's really hard to get started again.

And every step suddenly seems like 12.

You know, the stairs, the steps,

they're very well maintained but they're never regular,

so you're going at a different speed.

Anyway, stop moaning, Palin.

On you go. Enjoy the Himalaya.

Finally, taking pity on me, my guide, Wangcho,

agreed to a breather

in a spot that had its own stories to tell.

Oh, wow.

We're getting higher up now.

Wangcho, I'm beginning to feel it. 3,000 metres, are we?

Are we above 3,000 metres? Yes. This is a very nice place.

This is a nice place.

It's cool. It's shady. What is it?

This is a Hinku cave.

A Hindu cave?

Hinku. Hinku, sorry.

What is Hinku?

Hinku means, before this, some Hindu God

and some Himalaya gods are living here. Right.

That's what they call it.

And also for a long time, Yeti lived here.

Yeti lived here? Yep.

God... Really?

Yes, really.

Do you believe in the Yeti?

I saw this on the mountain.

Wangcho, my guide,

was a wise man and knew the mountains very well,

so when he starts talking about the Yeti, I remember thinking,

"Well, do I believe this or not?"

I've heard many stories about the Yeti

and have dismissed them.

What did it look like?

It looked like a monkey and a bit like us.

A big monkey. How big, how tall?

Same, like us.

Really? Are you sure it wasn't one of us?

Sure it wasn't some climber, a bit lost?

No, it's the Yeti.

And yet hearing him talk about it

and talk about it with such unselfconscious acceptance

made me feel, "Well, yeah, maybe there is, maybe, you know...

"..somewhere up there I'll meet him."

Yeti or no Yeti, this mountain was pushing me to the limit.

Halfway through the trek, and for the first time

some doubts are creeping into my mind.

Oh, dear.

I don't know how I'll go on today.

Last night was pretty awful.

I've got a throat like sandpaper.

Altitude's rather unforgiving from what I hear.

Things don't get any better as you go up.

But still, there's nowhere else to go. Nothing for it.

I keep on. Hope I prove them wrong,

and climbing does make you feel better.

I was feeling pretty bad by this time,

and yet we had to keep going

and there around us was this spectacular,

beautiful, mountain scenery.

So, this is somebody keeping going

and trying to be as jolly as possible,

but wanting also at the same time to be honest

and say, "I feel bloody awful."

I think there's a certain point where it's good to acknowledge

that you're feeling lousy.

It's also important just to show that the altitude sickness

is something that happens a lot of the time in mountains like these.

They may look beautiful,

but you can't just start at the bottom and walk up.

You've got to acclimatise as you go along.

There was a point when I got up to,

I think it was the hut,

really almost at the top of the Annapurna Trail,

must be about 14,000 feet.

I was so exhausted when I got there that I said...

It's about four in the afternoon or something,

and we'd had tea and lunch,

and I said, "I'm just going to go to bed."

Can I have a lie down, please?

"I wake up, wrenched from sleep by some chest-racking cough,

"and I'm seized by near panic.

"Everything is pitch-black,

"silent and cold as ice.

"I've no sensation of where I am.

"All sorts of things go through my mind.

"The one thing I can't dismiss

"is that I might have to think the unthinkable.

"That, for the first time in any of my journeys,

"I may have to face the possibility of failure.

"I'm 60, after all.

"There has to be a point at which the body puts its foot down.

"For a depressing hour or so, I can't escape this profound feeling

"of being defeated, physically and mentally, by the Himalaya."

I woke up and I wasn't sure where I was.

And I was just lying there

and there was no sound,

and I thought, "Oh, my gosh, is this it?"

I sort of...

"Is this

"what it's like, you know, to pass on?"

Suddenly, I heard next door to me, from the next door hut,

this terrific sort of bronchial cough,

and I suddenly realised, "I'm alive!"

You know, you wouldn't hear this in heaven!

Once I'd woken up in the middle of that night of darkness,

two or three hours later and there was the most stunning view

and it was absolutely beautiful.

And I felt completely and utterly restored, just like that.

HE SIGHS

The end is in sight, Annapurna base camp.

I think I'm going to get there.

I just have a feeling I'm going to make it.

Well, I suppose this symbolises our achievement over the last five days.

This is the summit of Annapurna, and really, I mean,

it's this breathtaking,

extraordinary, powerful scenery round here.

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.

I suppose I did feel, at times,

"I shouldn't be doing this,"

but then you're always passed by somebody who's 83.

Doing something like this is probably the best thing

I can possibly do, rather than sit at home and think,

"Oh, God, what was I doing 40 years ago?" and all that,

and "Should I go see the doctor about this ache and pain?"

Go on with your work, get moving, get out there,

and you forget completely about how old you are and you're just very,

very glad that you can still see so much of the world.

This was as high as we would go,

for now.

Descending and turning east once again,

we made for Nepal's evocative capital city, Kathmandu.

After the emptiness of the mountains,

Kathmandu comes as quite a shock.

Almost a million are squeezed into Nepal's capital,

built on the widest valley in the Himalaya.

VEHICLE HORNS BEEP

Like Dharamsala and Amritsar,

this is a place of deep religious significance

where Nepali Hindus say farewell to their loved ones.

Down at the ghats,

business is brisk as funeral pyres and their attendants

are worked flat out to cope with demand.

BELL RINGS

I think every Hindu or every religious person

wants to come to Pashupatinath,

and where it is the place to be cremated.

Sons carry the body and walk bare feet

and they bring the body to Pashupatinath.

They actually walk through the town, barefoot, and bring the body here?

Yep. And there's no burial in the Hindu religion?

No, no burial.

It's always cremation. Cremation, yeah.

BELLS RING

They shave their heads.

A sign of mourning, you shave your heads, the men.

"The priest talks to the family and they then lift

"the body onto the pyre.

"It's the body of a woman. Younger than I expected.

"Basil leaves and water are placed in the dead woman's mouth

"as prasad, food consecrated and blessed by the gods.

"The oldest male heir applies a lighted taper to the body.

"Shaking with emotion,

"he then walks to the end of the pyre

"and buries his head on her feet.

"I feel I should look away, but I can't.

"I know nothing about these people,

"yet in this brief ceremony,

"I feel a wave of empathy, not just for them,

"but for loss, for the end of a life.

"I come from somewhere where death is kept private,

"almost as if it's an embarrassment.

"Here in Pashupatinath it's very much hands-on.

"The reality of death, the fact of death,

"is confronted, not avoided."

BELL TOLLS

And it really changed my thoughts about how we dispose of bodies.

Most people in this country tend to be cremated,

but we leave that destruction of the body, if you like, to somebody else,

whereas the essence of what was happening in Kathmandu that day

was that the family, although men only,

but the family were dealing with it themselves.

We were heading into one of the most barren and inhospitable

places on Earth.

The great Tibetan Plateau.

They call this "the roof of the world,"

and for the next few weeks, I won't drop below 13,000 feet.

The prayer flags that mark the high passes show that despite

strenuous efforts by the Chinese in the 1960s and '70s,

religion still exists here.

What no longer exists is a country called Tibet.

We are now in what is officially known

as the Tibet Autonomous Region,

a part of the People's Republic of China.

Whatever you call it, it's a land of superlatives.

Wow.

Look at that!

Ha-ha.

Wow!

Well, great moment.

My first view of Everest.

I mean, apart from photos in restaurants and things like that.

And just the most glorious, mighty view.

And it's the very, very heart of the Himalayas out there.

Giant mountains, four or five of them, all over 8,000 metres,

and Everest there just slightly touched by the cloud.

Absolutely epic.

It really does make it all worthwhile.

And it's also the highest I've ever been in my life.

I'm at about 5,300 metres now,

which is over 17,000 feet.

So, a big first, and the sun's shining!

Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

Now all we've got to do is get there!

It was truly astonishing and unbelievable,

the great panorama of the Himalayas were down there.

I don't know if it was just some trick of where you were,

you almost felt you were above all the other mountains.

There was Everest in the middle of them all, but it was like

looking at a model of the Himalayas,

laid out in front of you.

And Everest, there, sort of a bit like, you know,

those statues of Queen Victoria you see in various Indian parks.

The Queen there in the middle of it all,

just slightly higher than everything else around.

Drawing closer to the foot of Everest itself,

we relied more than ever on the hospitality of the few hardy souls

who lived their lives up here at the top of the world.

A community that, like so many in the Himalaya,

was founded on faith.

Rongbuk consists of a monastery,

half a street, a guesthouse.

and an almost unbelievable view of the highest point on the planet.

It's bitterly, bitterly cold.

The wind blows through the pass.

And yet, here are these young men, sort of given up their lives

to become monks in the highest monastery in the world.

Why would they live up there?

Answer being, I think, that it's seen as a great honour to be a monk.

It's an honour to be part of a community like that.

And I think it's also to do with the fact that the more personal

physical sacrifice you make, the greater your wisdom,

the greater your chance in the next life.

It's hard to imagine what degree of devotion enables them to survive

the bitter cold and isolation up here in Rongbuk.

It's a cold, cold place they have to be.

I've brought you this.

The gift I present to the abbot seems to offer a clue.

THEY EXCHANGE GREETINGS

It's a tanka, a painted scroll from Kathmandu.

It depicts the Buddha, the Enlightened One.

They look at it with real affection.

The harder their life is,

the closer it will bring them to an understanding of him.

The amount of different religions that he comes across there

from Islam in Pakistan,

you know, to Sikhism in India,

and then to Buddhism in Tibet.

It's all happening within this mountain scape

of the Himalayas.

And part of it kind of made me think,

"Well, maybe it's because they live in

"such harsh and difficult conditions,

"you need some sort of faith to keep you going."

What Buddha would have made of the Rongbuk guesthouse, I don't know.

Run by the monks, it's spartan to say the least.

The consolation is having Everest as my neighbour

and the weather out there looks good enough to raise hopes

for a climb up to base camp tomorrow, Sunday...

..and the good news is our transport's arrived.

The only problem with being so close to Everest

is that you're very high up, there's very little oxygen,

and you have to keep breathing very hard.

When you're just slightly dozing off,

you suddenly wake up, gasping for breath,

trying to just get that oxygen in.

So, it's actually bloody uncomfortable at night.

"Sleep when it comes doesn't stay long.

"Somewhere in the middle of the night

"with Everest seen through my cracked window,

"bathed in near full moonlight,

"You think, 'Oh, wow, I'd pay for this.'

"I suffer a couple of hours of shortage of breath.

"The wind howls, making the prospect of the toilet block

"even more miserable."

I know Everest is out the window.

I know it looks lovely, but I'd exchange it, you know,

for something two foot off the ground

if it had showers and a flushing toilet.

The toilet block was for all the people there.

There was just two holes in the ground, basically. Very little cover.

And I can deal with most things,

but I couldn't deal with that particular toilet block.

I went out into the fields with my little roll of toilet paper,

which blew away across the Tibetan Plateau.

I thought, "God, you know, I've toilet paper around Everest.

"I shouldn't be doing that. This is entirely wrong!"

Just one of those things.

And yet the view from that room,

through, as I say, a cracked window

with yellowing sellotape sort of trying to seal the gap,

was of the north face of Everest,

and it was stunningly beautiful.

I wasn't actually planning an assault on the north face,

but we were heading for a spot that, for me, felt just as exciting.

Everest base camp.

Prayers for our safety have been written and hung up

with all the others to be carried with the wind up to the gods.

I find walking still quite an effort at this height,

but as we head towards Everest

I have a feeling that adrenaline will overcome altitude.

As so often on this journey,

progress was at the pace of a yak.

The wonderful thing is you're with the yaks and you're on foot.

You slowly get to know a place. You're not just getting

out of a vehicle and meeting someone and shaking hands.

You are walking into a landscape

whereby you slowly become immersed in it.

And, of course, that's what Michael had to do.

There's a slowness to it,

but it's a sort of deeper connection,

I think, to the place and its people,

and I think that's really lovely,

is that we really feel like we are walking the paths with him.

And in the mountains, mealtimes weren't to be rushed either...

Sunday lunch is taken at a little over 17,000 feet.

This is what we call black tea. Yeah.

And that's butter. Oh, black tea. Thank you.

Thank you.

Cheers to you all. From head to feet!

THEY LAUGH

Thanks, guys, very much for getting us up this far.

Mm.

Ah, it's nice. Great. Nice? Yeah, it's kind of...

Yeah, it's good, actually. It's salty. Salty tea.

Favourite tea.

I believe very, very strongly that sharing food

is one of the most important elements

in making contact with people.

It's the way of sharing. Once you sit down to eat together,

you...in every culture and every civilisation,

erm, that's really where you share

your thoughts and your moments, because everybody's...

..everybody's sharing in the good that the food and the drink

are doing to them, just celebrating the joy of just being alive

and not having to rush off anywhere.

Not that there were some places to rush off to!

Do these guys have any sort of, eh...

..anything other than tea that... Yes, definitely.

..warms them up on the way?

They have some Chang here.

Chang? Yeah, barley beer.

Barley beer? Ah. Chang. Chang. Is it good?

The tea was good, so... Would you like to try that?

Yeah, I'll try that. OK.

It is rather an attractive bottle.

So this is made of, eh - this is barley, really, fermented barley?

Thank you. Ah. Right, lovely.

Is this strong?

What do you do? First, this is for Buddha.

Ah, right. Second for God.

A third one for heaven. Yeah.

Oh, right. Then you can...

..three times. OK, OK.

Yeah. Usually. This is for the chomolangma.

I should take my gloves off, really. The first one for chomolangma. First one for...

..chomolangma? Chomolangma, which, of course, is what?

Is that what you call Everest? OK. Chomolangma!

OK?

Second one, Buddha. Next one for Buddha? Yeah.

For Buddha! Yeah. For Great Buddha.

Third one for human. Third one for human? Human being, yeah.

The third one for human beings. Woohee!

Right. Then...

And then, drink. Yeah.

OK, cheers! Down the hatch. Cheers!

Bottoms up, as they say in the Sahara.

Living in really difficult, harsh environments,

you're constantly sort of up against it, up against these challenges.

Erm, you know that everybody else is too.

And so there's much more - the hand of friendship is always extended.

Oh! Mm!

Watching Michael's shows, he has formed these bridges

between different cultures, but he does it with such a remarkable style.

I don't think that ten-year-old me ever imagined that one day

he'd be sharing lunch with Sherpas on the side of Mount Everest.

But then again, perhaps he did.

Maybe that's why it happened.

You know, there are always things in your childhood that you remember

as being something extraordinary and the world changing as a result

of what had happened. And one of the great things I remember

was, erm, the ascent of Everest,

and the fact it was announced brilliantly on the day

of the Queen's coronation

eh, was, eh...

..made it even more sort of, erm, epic.

I had this book and treasured it for a long time.

And I went to New Zealand 1998,

and actually met Edmund Hillary, and I'd taken the book with me

hoping I might meet the great man.

And I not only met him, but he actually introduced me

in some talk. Edmund Hillary, the man had gone up Everest,

saying, "Well, you know, I'm really pleased tonight.

"I have Michael Palin, one of the great intrepid adventurers."

And I thought, "Come on!"

But anyway, there it is, signed by Edmund Hillary.

But there's another Everest story with an even greater hold

on my imagination.

I suppose one of the great events of my childhood

was the conquest of Everest in 1953.

But as a boy, I can remember being even more fascinated

by the idea that Everest might have been climbed

30 years before.

In 1924, a guy called George Mallory made base camp here for an attempt

on the north face of Everest.

A few weeks later, he and his climbing partner,

Andrew Irvine, were observed disappearing into a cloud

only a few hundred yards from the summit of Everest.

Neither of them were ever seen again.

It's one of the great mysteries.

Did they or did they not climb Everest in 1924?

That seems kind of right somehow, so that no one person would say,

"We've conquered this."

Just looking at the drama that must have gone on,

and the intensity of emotion that must have been connected

with the last few thousand feet of that rock,

cos there were people waiting, especially with Mallory and Irvine,

watching them, watching the little specks in the snow

get smaller and smaller, but get closer and closer to the top.

And they must have been willing them on,

there must have been such, eh, a kind of...

..such an intensity of expectation at that time.

There I was, looking at the line,

the ridge that these men would have travelled

up to the summit before they disappeared into a cloud

and then were never seen again.

Mallory and Irvine had disappeared up that slope.

And I looked up and it all seemed,

you know, so simple, it just seemed it would just keep on climbing.

It brought me very close to what had been a story

and a kind of adventure.

I was nearly 60 when I...

..walked up a bit of Everest!

But I did it, you know? And it seemed, eh,

like it sort of completed something.

After leaving base camp, we reached the highest point on our journey,

18,000 feet.

From here, it was downhill all the way to Bangladesh

and the sea.

But plenty of adventures lay ahead of us.

And our route now took us across the Tibetan plain

towards Lhasa, the world's highest capital city,

where another boyhood dream was about to come true.

Astride a rocky outcrop in the heart of the city is one of the most

charismatic buildings in the world.

13 storeys high, it looms over Lhasa like a giant Buddha.

Chairman Mao wanted to blow it up, and I can see why.

If a nation could be symbolised by a single structure,

Tibet was the Potala Palace.

I remember seeing this extraordinary building in photos

in my encyclopaedia when I was young, quite unlike anything else I'd seen,

the essence of foreignness and strangeness.

And, of course, I'd never expected to see it, because at that time Tibet

was closed and there was no chance of seeing it.

Now, of course, I can come here. Tibet's open again, but sadly,

the Dalai Lama, whose palace it was, has gone.

And it's now just a museum.

The Potala Palace was completed in the 17th century and no expense

was spared to make it a home fit for a God king.

Before the advent of skyscrapers, the Potala Palace

was the tallest building in the world.

If you make it to the roof, you'll find the most enchanting

of all the palace's 1,000 rooms,

the eastern sunshine apartment.

This was the Dalai Lama's bedroom.

At the top from the roof, your relationship to the city below

is that of an eagle to the ground.

If ever there was a physical feeling of being on top, of looking out

over your subjects, of being lord of all you survey,

it's embodied here in the Potala. Figures like ants

down in the streets below

makes Buckingham Palace look like a bungalow!

I.. Yeah, it's rather one of these things, a cocktail party chat.

I was talking to the Dalai Lama...

..I WAS talking to the Dalai Lama and he said

that when he was young, he loved looking at atlases and maps,

and he would look out of the windows of the Potala Palace

across the plain and he said, "One day I'll go out

"and I'll see all these places."

And I said, "Oh, that's just the same as me in Sheffield!

"You know, I thought, will I ever leave Sheffield?

"There were you in the Potala Palace and me,

thinking very much the same sort of things.

Pictures of Tibet and the Potala Palace

had seized my young imagination.

What I didn't imagine was just how cold it would be.

Tibet is the coldest country I've ever been.

I was cold all the time I was there.

I don't think there was a heater in the whole of Tibet.

The irony is, the warmest I ever got in Tibet

was when I took my clothes off.

About 100 miles north of Lhasa, amid swirling steam, I discover

a totally unexpected nirvana.

Oh! Poh!

Oh, wonderful!

The problem with Tibet is, it's a very big place

and very difficult to heat. And this is the first time

I've been really warm in two weeks in Tibet.

And I've had to come to this Olympic-size swimming pool

north of Lhasa at about 14,000 feet

to really be warm! And it's lovely! Who needs clothes

when you've got the hot springs? Ha-ha-ha-ha!

Oh, oh, oh!

I got to this place, the roof of the world, really.

Bitterly cold outside, but a hot spring.

And take my clothes off and get warm!

Yes! Whereas all the rest of the time we'd just been putting on

more and more clothes, everything you'd ever bought in the world,

you were wearing, and that's only at night!

Lightly defrosted, I pressed on across the enormous emptiness

of Tibet. I wanted to find out, what was life like up here

for the few people who called it home?

400 miles northeast of Lhasa, summer has arrived on the plateau

and the yak are fattening themselves up.

Sonam and his brother are moving their herd to make the best

of the fresh pasture.

Nothing seems to be happening.

I'm totally unqualified for any milking of any kind,

let alone yak milking. Come on, then, come on. There you go.

There you go. Oh, yes.

We didn't just turn up. Someone had said,

"Can we come and film you and would you do it on a certain day?"

And the first thing that surprised me, which is a very touching thing,

really, cos you imagine a yak herder in his sort of thick yak skin robes

and all that, and a sort of bandana,

but no, he was in a rather smart suit,

looked just like a sort of commuter in Shanghai or, you know,

Portland, Oregon or anywhere else.

So that was a bit of a blow! He didn't look very exotic.

But he was very nice and very friendly.

Soon have enough for a cappuccino!

The tent that is their summer home is predictably yak-dependent.

It's made from their hair and heated by their droppings.

Ah! Thank you.

It's a bit warmer in here than out there on the high plateau.

Hello. Hello, little ones.

The children were behaving very much the way children would behave

at home, if I had my own grandchildren, or something.

I'm Michael. Not that you're interested.

We've not known each other for long, have we, Sonam?

But somehow, although you can't speak my language,

and I can't speak your language, we somehow know what we're on about.

Eating, sharing food together, children. It's a very similar thing.

Children are always the same, you know, aren't they?

They're always, one of them is going like that and is very happy, and the other one's going...

It's the same in England, it's the same in Tibet, where you are.

And we ended up just talking, rather like I'm telling you

this story now, myself and Sonam, about how children are.

Funny thing that, isn't it?

Who needs phrase books?

Hello. Hello.

I've rarely been as comfortable and as exhilarated

by the connection between two different sets of people,

kind of different languages and different backgrounds,

as I was in that, eh, in that tent with Sonam and Mrs Sonam

and the two little children.

It was so like home.

Oi! I saw that, I saw that!

Not everyone gets the privilege of going to these places and meeting

these people and then suddenly, through Michael, you're meeting them

and you're engaging with them, and especially with Michael,

who's just such an amazing companion to watch, you know,

and his...his ability to...to make it light

and to bring people alive, was something that we were all

the grateful recipients of watching.

But we still had some hard travelling ahead.

All too soon, it was time to leave this friendly family...

..and Tibet itself, and continue my journey.

I headed east, and then south,

into yet another spectacular landscape.

Tiger Leaping Gorge.

I was on my way to Nagaland.

THEY SING

In Nagaland, which is extreme sort of northeast

on the borders of India and Burma, and a tribal group

called the Konyak Nagas, erm, who've lived in that area

for, you know, thousands of years, and are now being

slightly pushed back and marginalised.

But traditionally, the males were head-hunters.

The Naga comprise a dozen different tribes,

of which these, the Konyak Nagas,

were the last to give up the proud tradition of head-hunting.

On these necklaces, each brass face means a head taken.

And I see quite a lot of, eh, heads.

The, eh, the skulls - is that a trophy from the head-hunting days?

Yeah.

This gentleman here, is he a very distinguished man?

He looks, with a headdress like that, rather important.

Might have been a warrior once. Yeah.

You can see by the tattoo on the face. Yeah.

What's the largest number of heads that anyone's ever taken?

One I know that's from home... Yeah.

..which got 66 heads. Wow!

He's no more.

I met this man who had five of them,

so I was talking to, you know,

a reasonably successful head-hunter

and it was difficult to know what to talk about.

Tattoo, yes.

Tattoo to the chest. Yes.

What does that mean? Does that mean...

Oh, it goes all the way down? Yeah.

Lifted his, sort of, shirt and showed me

an incredibly complex tattoo.

There's a lot of history in there.

My stomach's very boring, look at that, very boring.

So I pulled up my shirt

and showed him my, sort of, pink un-illustrated Western chest.

Oh, yes. There we are. Whoa!

I think you win.

You win on the decorative stakes.

I mean, it could have gone completely the wrong way, I suppose,

and I could have been seized by several men and taken off.

I think I got the right moment

and the right man to have that moment with,

so suddenly from being a fierce head-hunter,

he was also a man who liked a bit of fun.

They're still part of India,

some of them are just across the border, Burmese,

but one wonders really

how long their identity is going to really last,

how many more generations as the modern world extends.

The American Baptists church sent missionaries out with great success

and they built some big cathedrals here for the Konyak people.

How strong is Christianity here now?

99% of the population is now Christian.

99%... Yes. ..are Christian?

Why have so many become Christian?

It's because of education.

Education, right. They've come in contact with the outside world.

Ah, right.

So does the Christian religion provide the education? Yes.

At the Baptist Cathedral in Mon,

2,500 Naga voices are raised.

CONGREGATION SINGS HYMN

These are Christians absolutely packed into a church

in a fairly remote corner of north-east India.

A focus of the clash of cultures, religions,

cos it's on the Burma-Indian border.

Like all the sort of the small mountain tribes, the government,

are trying to assimilate them more into a centralised country,

in this case, India.

It happens in many, many parts of the world as the central

government wants to expand itself and doesn't really want

to have minority groups outside their control.

I think these people are threatened.

Their way of life is threatened,

which I think is not a good thing at all.

I think we want to learn from people like this and many, many lessons.

From Pakistan and Kashmir to Tibet and Nagaland...

..many of the Himalayan societies I'd visited were in some kind

of turmoil, their cultures clashing with each other

or with the wider world.

But close-by Nagaland is a country that has largely resisted

the march of modernity.

A kingdom of mountains and forests

where tradition is respected and protected.

Bhutan.

There's room to move here.

Bhutan is the size of Switzerland

with a population of little more than a million.

It has one of the strictest environmental policies in the world.

More than a quarter of the country is National Park,

where not even fallen wood can be gathered without permission.

Bhutan is as spectacular as a lot of the other Himalayan countries.

Because it had resisted foreign invasions,

because it had resisted absorbing foreign workers

and foreign workforces, largely, it had preserved a way of life,

which wasn't just, sort of, for show and wasn't just for festivals.

It was the way they lived.

And it seemed to be, sort of, working.

It gave Bhutan a particular identity.

The influence of Buddhism is everywhere,

like this dramatic clifftop hermitage.

There are a lot of holy spots which seem to crop up all over Bhutan.

What was special about here?

VOICEOVER: Legend claims it was founded by a saint, Guru Rinpoche,

who rode here on a tigress 1,200 years ago

and turned himself into something so nasty that the evil spirits fled

and left the valley to Buddhism.

Another view. Wow, fantastic.

I really, really loved my time in Bhutan.

You really feel like you're stepping back in time and you feel like not

that many people have got to see some of these vistas.

There's something about the sort of the majesty and the magnitude

and the sort of impressiveness of the mountains

that sort of lends itself to magical thinking.

There's no surprise that the people and the beliefs there have nature

and the landscape very much at the heart of it.

Religious symbolism is at the heart of Bhutanese life.

If you want a safe journey, you don't pass a prayer wheel

without spinning it.

One for you.

Round, round.

I find it fascinating that it's not about economy.

It's not about resources.

It's not about making loads of money.

It's about happiness.

It's about being eco-friendly.

It's about living at one with their environment.

You will come across a valley, you will come across an environment,

which you think, "This is heaven. This is paradise."

There's something about it.

There's the grandeur,

but also the fruitfulness of some of the fields.

This is where man was meant to live.

Beautiful place for a site, isn't it?

It's quite enclosed.

This is one of the best camps. Yeah.

How many days before we start to go down now, really?

And how many days before we get to Paro?

Oh, about three days from now we'll be in Paro.

Three days? Yeah. Right.

For the festival.

Yeah, so that's kind of pretty much downhill from here or...?

Yeah, downhill all the way.

"By tonight, the majestic peaks of the Himalaya will be behind us

"for the last time.

"So while the tents are being struck,

"I pick my way up the hill for a last look.

"I feel my own personal pangs of regret at leaving all this behind.

"There are few places outside the Himalaya where the relation

"of man to nature can be experienced on such a gigantic scale.

"And something like that may not change your life,

"but it does stretch it a bit."

This is a bit of a sad moment, really, cos up there

behind the clouds is probably the last of the great Himalayan peaks

that I shall see on this journey.

Jomolhari, about 24,000 feet, just over 7,000 metres.

I'll miss the big mountains.

And, I mean, nowadays, I think those are the only mountains in the world.

Anything less than 20,000 feet is just tiny!

So, farewell, the big monumental Himalayan peaks.

Farewell, Jomolhari.

And so, at last, we descended from the roof of the world...

..to a place that couldn't be more of a contrast.

Bangladesh has had a hard life.

It won independence from Pakistan in 1971,

amidst a war, massacre and famine, which few in the West even noticed.

George Harrison was an exception.

MUSIC: Bangla Desh by George Harrison

# Bangladesh

# Bangladesh

# Where so many people

# Are dying fast

# And it sure looks like a mess... #

I thought it was very important that the Himalaya should not end

where the mountains ended, but where the unique environment,

which is entirely created by the mountains

and by the physical geography of the Himalaya, ends,

and that is really where the rivers meet the sea.

# Bangladesh, Bangladesh... #

There's the Irrawaddy, the Mekong, the Salween,

the Brahmaputra, Ganges,

they all flow from the Himalaya.

So, here you had the complete antithesis of the Himalayan ranges -

flat green fields.

Millions of people living in dense cities.

I felt this was where the journey ought to end, because this is really

what living under the influence of the Himalaya gets you.

It's 90 miles from Mongla to the Bay of Bengal.

The only boat that'll take me down there is an ex-lifeboat

with a viewing platform grafted on top of it.

On either side are the sinister, uninhabited banks

of the largest coastal mangrove forest in the world.

These are the Sundarbans, habitat of the Royal Bengal tiger, which,

despite frequent appearances on the travel posters,

runs the Yeti a close second for elusiveness.

In a tiny space next to the lavatory,

our cooks prepare the last meal of the journey -

locally-caught crab, lobster and the best prawns in the world.

They made us one of the best meals I had on all my journeys.

We were going down this huge wide delta.

There were various single fishing boats

and they kept stopping there and asking what fish he had,

and then another one.

I can remember thinking at the time,

"Come on, we should be getting there."

And then you realise this was all part of getting

the best fish soup ever together,

and you're just going, "Oh, this is just sensational."

At last, the moment has come.

After six months in the mountains,

I can sniff the unfamiliar smell of the open sea.

As I head off onto the Bay of Bengal on millions of tonnes of mud

that was once Himalaya, I feel I've made the last in a chain

of connections between the sea and the mountains we've climbed,

and the gorges we've walked, and the rivers we've sailed,

and all the people we've met along the way

suddenly seem very close.

With that, my epic Himalayan journey was at an end.

It had been an adventure that surpassed

even my boyhood dreams.

You've got absolutely everything.

You've got extraordinary landscapes,

physical power and strength of nature.

You're also looking at the sort of human element

who lives in the Himalaya.

Bottoms up! Down the hatch!

Hello.

That's what's so lovely about this programme.

It's about going for these extraordinary places

and really appreciating the experience of it all.

This definitely, physically, was the most difficult

and the most potentially arduous.

I just have a feeling I'm going to make it.

My crew, of course, did all these things with me.

It wasn't just me against the mountains.

It was a team of us.

I feel like Michael was at his best here.

It felt like a labour of love

and it felt like one of those childhood dreams.

I just kept that sense of wonder.

I still saw it with a child's eye in a way.

Himalaya was a very powerful force in my imagination.

Never, ever, ever, ever, ever expected that I would actually end

up climbing halfway up Everest.