Most of us love going on a journey.
I've been incredibly lucky,
exploring countries on six different continents.
Now that travel has become a bit tricky,
it's not a bad time to have a look back.
In this series, I'm going to be showing you some
of my most memorable adventures.
WHISTLE BLOWS, HORN TOOTS
We're on the way.
The landscape is incredible, the vegetation, everywhere you look,
green, all different shades of green.
If you can try and imagine paradise, that's it.
This...this is a real treasure of Haiti.
I've met hundreds of incredible people.
Hello, welcome to Libya.
SIREN BLARES
Welcome to El Salvador. Thank you, mate.
Welcome to Uzbekistan. SHE LAUGHS
I'll be catching up with some of them.
Because they're cheap, they have nimble fingers...
Oh, mate!
This is a land of utter extremes.
This is where heaven and hell are said to collide.
And I'll be sharing what I've learned on my travels...
I have no words, just good luck, OK? Thank you. Good luck.
Whatever you do. Good luck.
..about the challenges and the solutions
for our incredible planet.
There are buffalo once more on the American plain,
and that's a bloody wonderful thing.
I'm heading out to explore a bit of beautiful Devon.
Along the way, I'll be showing you some of the dodgiest, most bonkers
and dangerous situations that I've ever found myself in.
Bloody hell.
I think the reason to travel to dangerous and extreme
parts of the world is because they're often the most
important and challenging.
Now we're heading into territory that, until recently,
was controlled by Daesh.
And, in the darkest situations, people inspire and surprise.
What did you do before the fighting erupted?
You were a teacher, now you're a soldier.
You've seen and you have experienced a lot,
but still there is the teacher inside?
Good luck, OK?
I'm sometimes asked what's the trickiest or most dangerous
place I've visited.
There have been a few candidates.
There's a lot of armed cops around. We can't film clearly, overtly.
I can't look at the camera, because they'll guess.
And then we could be arrested ourselves.
From the tension of southern Turkey...
..to drug-gang neighbourhoods of Central America.
DOG BARKS IN VICINITY
Bloody scary.
But one benighted corner of the world definitely comes
right near the top of my danger list.
I've travelled through East Africa several times.
First in 2005, on a journey which took me to Somalia
and the capital, Mogadishu.
The government of Somalia had effectively collapsed,
warlords had taken over.
It was just about the most dangerous place on the planet.
For security, we had to employ
12 heavily-armed local gunmen - mercenaries.
I'm very well...
When was the last time you were involved in any action, any trouble?
The threats to us included kidnap, murder and chaos.
HE SHOUTS INDISTINCTLY
Stop, stop, stop, stop!
You're worried about me falling off? Yeah.
We've come to the main market in Mogadishu, it's actually the
biggest market in Somalia, so a little bit crazy. As you can see,
we've got our guards with us. They're going to be with us
the whole time we're here
and, hopefully, they're going to look after us.
So these guys on my right now have all got guns.
Apparently, they're bodyguards for a rich businessman.
But they're not so keen on being filmed and we don't
really want to annoy them.
I think he just hit his gun on your leg.
Did he just hit his gun on your leg?
Be careful where you point the camera.
All right.
Put it down, down, down, down!
They were just filming outside a money transfer agency
and, just as we were filming the agency, a guard took offence
and started cocking his gun right at us.
When there's no working government in a country, people have to get by
any way they can.
The guards took me through the back streets to meet
a famous local character.
Hello, Mr Big Beard. Lovely to meet you.
Yeah. What is your name? Simon.
Simon! Simon.
Mr Big Beard had a thriving business.
So these are the Somali passports. Yeah.
And this is what people in Somalia have to do.
They have to come and get one of these passports and buy it,
basically. They're not able to apply to a government for a passport,
because there isn't a government.
So they have to come to Mr Big Beard and he will give them a passport.
Oh, oh, oh!
He's not happy with the photo.
It's a big head, huh. Big head? Yeah.
Oh, I see. CAMERA CLICKS
Oh, dear. Oh!
Is that OK? OK.
And can I be the ambassador, the ambassador, Somali ambassador
to the United Kingdom?
No, no, no. Ambassador of Nairobi. Ambassador in Kenya.
OK, just like that. I'm now a Somali diplomat.
Filming a journey like that, we try to reduce our baggage
and have a light footprint, but there's still crucial kit to take.
I'm heading across Devon to meet up with Jonathan Young,
one of the rather brilliant cameramen
who filmed my programmes and do the real heavy work.
Hey, Jonathan. Hey, Simon. How are you doing?
Thank you.
Thank you. I got it.
Distanced. Yeah.
So these weigh an absolute ton, you won't be surprised to know.
Actually, have you got the plate for it?
So this... CLINKING
..is the crucial bit.
This goes into the flak jacket there
and it's a sort of ceramic plate.
It's actually possible to crack them by dropping them,
so you've got to be very careful,
but it will absorb the impact of even quite a high-velocity round
and protect your internal organs.
It'll stop a bullet from a Kalashnikov or something like that.
At least, that's the idea.
OK, so...
HE GRUNTS
So this is what we've worn in tricky places around the world. Some people
just like it like this, so it protects your upper half,
but, personally, I always
insist it has this bit as well.
I feel much safer that way.
I think it's time for me to reveal all.
I'm going to show you the...
Well, what is possibly the single most important piece of equipment
I've taken on any of these journeys.
My armoured underwear!
Seriously, these are called blast boxers.
And this yellow fabric here is designed
to protect your undercarriage when things go badly wrong.
It's supposed to stop shrapnel
from penetrating your femoral artery,
leading to rapid catastrophic blood loss.
So I wore this exact pair when I returned to Mogadishu
in Somalia, when travelling around the Indian Ocean,
when chaos had given way to full-scale war.
It was seven years since my last visit and the situation
had deteriorated.
Much of poor, blighted Somalia had fallen into the grip
of the heavily armed and exceptionally violent al-Shabaab
militant group, close associates of Al-Qaeda.
INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER
We're ready to go. We're ready to go, over.
Mogadishu was being torn apart by fighting.
All the buildings look as though they've got bullet marks.
Well, that's the truth of the matter.
Fighting has been in every corner of this city.
We're talking about 20 years of statelessness, no government,
people have guns shooting about, so the result is what you see.
I was with Lieutenant Colonel Paddy Ankunda,
and his mainly Ugandan troops.
Part of an African Union peacekeeping force tasked
with seizing back control of Mogadishu from al-Shabaab.
So this is now the frontline.
It was the frontline of a war in which thousands had died.
We show you the positions... Yes.
..that belong to the al-Shabaab.
You see that building with a mast?
And that's, what, an al-Shabaab stronghold? Yeah.
This road was actually constructed by the al-Shabaab
in order to join Daynile with Bakara market, they had to build this.
GUNHOTS Jeez!
GUNSHOTS
They have seen a vehicle of the al-Shabaab.
When they see a car, they shoot.
GUNSHOTS
But this is too open, guys. This is too open? This is too open
for you, so take off your heads from the firing line, huh?
There were front lines throughout the city.
We were taken to another area where soldiers were locked in urban
warfare and it was sometimes hard to tell who was shooting at who.
GUNSHOTS
What was that? What's going on?
We need to find out what it was. Yeah.
GUNSHOT
My goodness.
And we emerge and we're in somebody's back garden.
In this close-quarters fighting,
gains and losses were being made one street -
and, sometimes, one garden - at a time.
GUNSHOTS
Here, Simon. Left, left!
GUNSHOT
On that side of the wall, you have al-Shabaab. Are they're trying...
Preparing to launch an attack?
They are running. They're running? Yeah, they are crossing the road.
Are they holding guns? Yes.
GUNSHOT
They are coming...
How does he know it's al-Shabaab?
That side, that side, that's al-Shabaab now.
The whole of that side. Everybody on that side?
Commander, let's go.
Paddy's men realize the fighters on the other side
were setting up rocket-propelled grenades to launch an attack
on our position. Probably because we were there.
You see that guy? We had to flee,
with snipers giving us covering fire.
Of course, war zones are terrifying places,
but I'm only in them briefly.
For the people who can't escape them, violence and terror can go
on years, decades.
That's something I don't want to forget.
Around one in seven of the population of the planet
live in countries that are fragile or affected by conflict.
That's around one billion human beings
and many of them can't simply get up and leave,
they are stuck there.
I, by contrast, thanks to this,
my proper passport, have incredible
freedom to travel and go, usually, wherever I want.
Whenever I'm about to board a plane and I'm stuck in what I sometimes
call the tunnel of death, the air bridge between the gate
and the actual aeroplane, and there's a queue
and I'm feeling grumpy about the whole experience,
I really try to remember my good fortune.
And I think of a young woman called Fatima.
I met Fatima in Kenya on my journey around the equator in 2006.
In a remote desert area, I went to a huge refugee camp.
WAILS
It was home to hundreds of thousands of people who had escaped the war
in neighbouring Somalia.
Having been in Mogadishu,
I had some small idea of the fear and violence they had run from.
People have forgotten about the chaos, the crisis in Somalia.
You look into their faces and you just realise
that they're hoping and waiting for the rest of the world to come
and give them some assistance.
Fatima was then 23 and had been living in the camp
since she was six.
When you think of the future, do you feel positive or negative
about the future?
I am always positive about my future, always positive.
Do you think you will go home to Somalia?
Would you like to go home to Somalia?
No, I will not. For that one, I do not go to Somalia.
Why not? Will never.
Why not? Because I know the problems I faced.
I know my people have been killed.
With no official papers and no passport,
Fatima couldn't leave the camp.
She was stuck.
I can travel anywhere in the world.
Now, I have this magical thing called a British passport and it
means I can just travel around and you're confined here in this,
it's almost like a prison, it sounds like.
Does it feel like a prison?
We say the open prison.
That's what we normally tell to people.
What would happen to you if you just carried on walking?
What would happen if you wanted or tried to go to Nairobi
or to a local town? You can't go to Nairobi.
You can't go to even the nearest, 90 kilometre, town, which is called
Garissa, because, to go there, you have to use a vehicle.
And, in between Garissa and here, that's where police are patrolling.
If they stop the vehicle,
they will ask everybody, "ID card." And we don't have that ID card here.
Fatima had been educated in the camp.
She was smart and funny.
I knew she could have achieved anything with the right opportunity.
I've met thousands like her around the world who just have none
of the chances, the luck and that accident of birth some of us
can take for granted in a country like the UK.
I've thought of Fatima so many times over the years.
She's been a constant reminder to me of my good fortune, my luck,
to have been born in the UK
and to have had the chances that I've had.
We don't know what happened to her.
We have tried to track her down, but we've been unsuccessful.
I just hope she's found safety outside the camp
and happiness as well.
There are thought to be 70 million refugees like Fatima in the world,
fleeing conflict or persecution.
That's more than the population of the UK.
They're often people with simply nowhere to go.
They can stagnate and suffer for years in vast refugee camps,
like the one holding a million Rohingyas
who had fled persecution in Burma.
What's going on here? INDISTINCT SPEECH OVER TANNOY
Can we stop? Can we stop?
Or in camps in the desert of southern Algeria, where I met
the forgotten refugees from conflict in Western Sahara.
My children, they are very interested to one day
to see their grandfather or their uncles.
They never have seen them.
I'm very aware that any risks I take on my travels
pale into insignificance compared to the dangers many refugees face
on their journeys.
In 2016, I travelled around Greece and I visited the island of Lesbos,
just off the coast of Turkey.
Look at that view! Straight ahead, look at that.
That is Turkey.
Greece has been receiving an influx of refugees and migrants,
many of them coming from or fleeing the conflict in Syria.
Oh, my God, they're coming now.
They're crossing now.
HAND BRAKE CLUNKS
I've got a slightly sick feeling in my stomach,
because some of these boats do not make it.
If they don't, there is absolutely nothing we can do standing here.
Thousands of migrants and refugees were drowning in the Mediterranean
each year as they fled wars, poverty or sought a better life.
I would say there's 40 people on that boat.
There's some women, there's children as well on board.
My God, maybe...
Look at this.
You've come from Syria?
Where in Syria? Aleppo, or...?
HE SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY
He's got a child's toy around him.
How long has it taken you to come across?
How long you want to come? One hour. One hour across the water.
How much money did it cost? $1,000.
To go from there to here? Yes, from Turkey.
What do you think Europe will give you?
I'm studying pharmacy.
You're studying to be a pharmacist. So I am pharmacist.
What have you brought with you?
What do you have, your possessions?
You have this.
Everything else is gone. In the sea. Yes, yes.
Good luck!
This crisis was part of the world's biggest wave of mass migration
since the Second World War.
There's just more and more coming.
This is the edge of Europe and there are hundreds of people coming.
SIMON GREETS CROWD
It was particularly upsetting to see so many young children.
Their lives in complete upheaval.
He's very tired. I bet they are.
I am camera. You're a cameraman?
Cameraman.
Thanks.
Good luck to you. Thank you.
HE RESPONDS TO SIMON
Thank you.
SIMON SNIFFLES
I have no words, just good luck, OK? Thank you. Good luck.
Good luck. Whatever you do. Good luck.
In another life, in another country,
he could have been a colleague, a friend.
When you watch the news,
it can be hard to understand that refugees and the victims
of faraway wars are people just like us, with jobs, families,
hopes and fears.
But, perhaps, sometimes, in our urge to help them,
the individuals, we can sometimes forget about the people,
the communities and the countries who get left behind.
But if we absorb millions of people from struggling countries,
we may never give those struggling countries a chance to stabilise
and succeed, because, so often, the people who make it here,
it's like an obstacle course.
It's the brightest and the best who are often the ones who make it.
The ones who would be most likely to help build a country
are the ones who quite naturally need, want, to leave.
Around a billion people are migrants, moving from their homes
for a multitude of reasons.
Not all migrants are refugees fleeing conflict or persecution.
Some are in search of a better life.
But, of course, wealthy Europeans do the same.
They move for work or sunshine and they get called expats.
On my journey around the Mediterranean, I travelled
through Morocco and went in search of some of the thousands of Africans
trying to get into Europe.
The Moroccan government hadn't given us permission to film, so the team
and I went in undercover, posing as tourists.
We're hoping that if we use a small touristy camera,
then we won't get stopped or detained.
How close are we now, Terry?
Not a lot of military around.
So we stand a chance of not getting caught.
Well, that's...that's good.
We need to go quickly.
We can see some movement in the...in the bushes at the bottom
of the valley.
We found them.
I met a group of young men hiding in the forest, who were waiting
to try and climb the huge fence which separates Morocco
from the nearby Spanish territory of Ceuta.
How long have you been in the forest?
Nine months.
You made it over the fence.
Yes. The razor wire.
Yeah.
For these young guys, just getting here took drive, guts, gumption
and persistence.
Talents that could be so helpful
for the communities and countries they'd left, but they hope to find
work in Europe and bring their families to join them.
It seemed an unlikely dream.
God, they're saying good luck to us.
On the same journey, I travelled to Almeria in southern Spain...
..where so much of our fruit and veg is grown in a sea of awful,
anonymous plastic greenhouses.
You can see in here...
..I think these are aubergines,
thousands and thousands of them.
Many of the workers here are African migrants.
One showed me the conditions he lived in.
The only accommodation available to Suliman
was a decrepit four-bedroom house he rented
with 15 other migrant workers.
So there's a shower room...
..with a very dodgy electrical setup in here.
Goodness.
So how many people use this kitchen?
I just went to lean on the sink here.
And, look, it's not actually, uh...
It's not solid in any way.
Do you actually have to pay rent to live here?
That sounds shocking.
Suliman's dream of a good life and job in Europe hadn't worked out.
The pay was low, the working conditions often horrific
and all right in the middle of a wealthy region of Spain.
Look at this. This is an enormous resort and well-watered golf course.
I wondered what Suliman thought about the consequences of migration
for Africans and Africa.
He had a controversial view.
Just a short while ago,
I was on the other side of the sea in a forest in Morocco, talking
to a group of young lads
who are risking their lives to get here.
What would you say to them?
I think we often talk about migration based on relatively
selfish pros and cons.
"Are immigrants good or bad for us?" is often the tone.
Very rarely do I hear people on the left or the right of politics
talking about the consequences for poorer countries of millions
of people upping and leaving.
But when I go to those places and I talk to people there who often
feel they've been left behind,
they complain about Western countries
pinching and poaching their university educated
through complicated immigration quotas.
They think of it as being a brain drain, often.
I can understand why individuals leave.
Of course I can.
But, collectively, I do fear that the consequences of mass
migration can sometimes be countries
which struggle to stand on their own two feet.
Dangerous situations come in all shapes and sizes
when you're filming around the world.
This road is clearly a bit dangerous.
In 2017, I travelled across Russia,
a country that covers a sixth of the world's land surface.
It's an incredible, spectacular place.
Where on Earth are we going? I love it.
And Russians are warm and welcoming.
Aww!
Thank you very much indeed.
But, as you may be aware,
the authoritarian government of Vladimir Putin isn't always
too keen on the West.
BAND PLAYS
I started my journey in the far east of the country.
And then headed towards the city of Vladivostok.
This is enormous. This is like Golden Gate Bridge or something.
And it's painted the red, blue and white of the Russian flag.
Wow.
I travelled on to Russia's remote border area with China.
It wasn't long before the Russian authorities began to take
what you might call a keen interest.
OK, we've been pulled over.
Now it's the police.
A few miles outside Vladivostok, we were stopped by the police.
The officers demanded our drivers get out of the vehicles.
Right, they're pulling away.
Look at that, they're taking him away.
HE EXHALES
Our drivers were eventually released, but that was just
the beginning of fairly endless harassment.
We headed back into town to catch a train.
Ah. Entrance.
Is it normal for you to just push the cameras away?
So heavy handed, guys. Why? What's the need for that?
This is incredible.
So we're rapidly running out of time to make our train.
Welcome to Russia.
We did manage to catch a train
and headed across Siberia's vast boreal forest.
It's an area suffering from illegal logging and colossal deforestation.
There had been allegations corrupt officials were involved.
Wow.
Look over this side.
It's been completely felled and logged.
Goodness me.
In the local town, we were soon the centre of attention once again.
OK, so that car is coming right behind us.
Are you wearing seatbelts?
Police checkpoint. We're being pulled over.
Hide the camera, hide the camera.
It's just unbelievable.
Police coming, camera down.
We were stopped again and again.
One time, the police even apologised,
saying they were just nabbing us on orders from the security services.
I still had my mobile.
So we've been...
So we had to follow the police back to their police station,
where we were told that some experts were going to check our passports.
We've been here for a couple of hours so far, sort of grinding us
down with the monotony of this.
HE EXHALES
The next morning, we set out early.
So, we just tried to leave our hotel this morning, the police
were waiting for us outside the hotel, there's nothing
on the street, they've stopped us immediately.
So now they're giving us
a blue-light escort to the train station
to get us out of here. They just want us...
Elsewhere, I did see a different side of the country,
but the behaviour of the secret police in that region
gave me an important insight into Putin's Russia.
Just imagine what they do to people who don't have a TV crew with them.
HORN BLARES
Despite the challenges and occasional dangers,
I love travelling.
Every hour of every day on the road, or the rails,
there are experiences to remember forever.
Honestly, it's not just about me, me, me.
We have to get our shots.
I'm just travelling, filming in Burma, Myanmar.
And I'm on a train heading into Yangon.
The train lacks glass windows, which is wonderful,
but also lacks proper closing doors, which means
people can do naughty things like this.
And I find myself often having to do this.
Not quite holding the underpants, but...
..he's a big bloke.
Anyway, don't...
..just don't tell BBC health and safety, OK?
Thank you.
We're not stupid. All of us want to come home.
Everyone wears a seatbelt and we're careful on the roads.
So, a quick behind-the-scenes moment here in Myanmar, Burma,
we are by the side of a road.
And Jonathan is just setting up the camera there on a tripod.
Jonathan!
Thank you. Not entirely sure we've chosen quite the safest place to do
this, as coming at us from both sides seem to be
all of the articulated lorries in Asia.
I'm sure it'll be fine.
CHEERING
Sometimes, danger has come from an unexpected direction.
CHEERING
My own team have manoeuvred me into tricky situations.
Buenas, hola. Hola.
Buenos dias.
I like being out of my comfort zone.
Mucho gusto.
But, I mean, this was bonkers.
So no broken bones, no dislocations. Is that a deal?
HE SHOUTS
Mexican female wrestlers.
Or super-fit Russian patriot, mixed martial artists.
With our budgets, I don't get a stunt double.
Bloody hurts.
What about our serious questions that we've got to ask you...
..about female emancipation?
Agh, that hurt.
I think I'm going to puke.
And they were gentle with me.
I did have quite a few bruises after that, to be honest,
but, of course, filming my journeys is much harder on the team
than it is on me.
They have to do everything I'm doing, but often going backwards
carrying heavy cameras.
And big cameras can become a bit of a liability for us sometimes,
perhaps when people are angry with us
or when we're trying to be discreet.
So then we can switch to smaller cameras, of course, or, nowadays,
we can film on our phones.
Some situations are so dangerous, even covert filming
is out of the question.
Having armed guards wouldn't keep us safe, but there are still ways
of operating and filming if you can find the right person.
In 2015, I was lucky enough to travel around the Caribbean Sea,
through Central America, to Honduras.
I headed to its biggest city, San Pedro Sula.
It's actually much lighter outside than it appears from in here.
For safety reasons, for security reasons, the vehicle
we're in has got heavily tinted windows and even windscreen as well.
It means people can't see there's some foreigners in the vehicle.
Honduras is one of the most violent and dangerous countries in the world
outside of an active war zone, terrorised by drug gangs.
The gangs have thousands of members
and I wanted to meet some of their leaders.
There was only one place to go.
We're now going to what's said to be the headquarters
for many of the gangs.
We're going into the city's prison.
It turned out the prison guards only controlled certain areas.
Inside the main part of the jail, the prisoners were in charge.
Buenos tardes.
At one point, I'd suggested to our local fixer
a small squad of special forces guys could protect us inside.
He just responded with a hollow laugh and said none of us
would leave alive.
Flippin' heck.
There was only one man who was trusted by all sides
and could hopefully keep us safe.
So the gentleman in the white shirt there,
he's the bishop of San Pedro Sula, we just had a quick chat
and a meeting with him.
He is helping us... Or he is facilitating us being here.
He is effectively going to be our security, we think, in some parts
of the prison. Being with him will hopefully guarantee
that we are safe.
Bishop Emiliani had helped organise negotiations between the gangs
and the government, earning respect
from the most dangerous gangs in the world.
OK, we're about to enter the 18th Street area of the prison
and the monsignor is taking us inside.
The 18th Street gang has a brutal reputation.
It's an international gang and drug trafficking organisation with roots
in Los Angeles.
Chief of the gangs? Yes, yes.
They want us to put the cameras down. Cameras down?
After some negotiation, gang leaders allowed us inside.
There were no guards in sight.
Families were visiting.
It was astonishing.
Here are people working.
Wow. This is incredible.
There's shoes, soles, here being cut out.
There's some people up here working away.
This was supposed to be a maximum security jail,
but the inmates were in control.
Everybody is working. Everybody is doing something.
They handed out the food, kept keys to the cells and decided
who received a decent bed or a punishment.
It felt like a combination of sweat shop and market
with cafes and shops.
This is astonishing.
This is like...like a town.
Yes, like a town. Yes.
Apparently, there is 80% employment inside the prison.
That's not only impressive in most countries, it's a hell of a lot
higher than it is outside in the rest of Honduras.
It was a crazy place, as dodgy as life gets.
I was told the guys in charge of one area took control
after beheading their predecessor and feeding his heart to a dog.
I have never seen anything like this.
We're inside a prison, I have to keep telling myself that.
Many of the inmates were in for serious crimes like murder.
Brutality enforced a bizarre sense of order inside the prison,
which only highlighted the failure of the Honduran state outside.
Across Central America, poverty, violence and corruption have led
to hundreds of thousands of young men joining brutal gangs.
Several of the prison inmates told me they joined when they were
just young children.
Monsignor, how...how can we understand this?
The gangs will take children as young as eight years old.
Life is so often about luck.
Where you are born can gift opportunity or scar you for life.
The guys in the prison are responsible for their actions.
But many of those recruited young would have had little chance
to escape the clutches of the gangs.
My God, that was, um...
That was a very intense and rather overwhelming experience.
It's very hard to really convey anything but a fraction
of the incredible sights and sounds and senses that you experience
in a...in a situation like that.
I've seen the reach of the global drug trade on my travels
around the world.
In Colombia, Central Asia, Africa
and in southern Italy,
when I travelled around the Mediterranean in 2016.
We needed permission from the highest levels of the Italian
government to film a dangerous and sensitive mission.
What are we doing? What's your plan?
So we are on overwatch duties
for a convoy of narcotics
that's being taken for destruction.
The value of the drugs in the convoy is anything
up to around £200 million.
It is a load that would inspire almost any gang
to attack a truck at the back.
My God, look at them all.
The convoy is just below us.
There's an unmarked car at the front
and then marked vehicles surrounding an armoured van.
All the time, they're looking for anything unusual on the roof
for spotters, for people following them.
Here we are in Italy, at the heart of the European Union,
and there is a...paramilitary convoy
escorting drugs for destruction.
This is the front line in Europe's war on drugs.
They've put the perimeter around the van.
They've taken up armed positions.
Bloody hell.
Look at this.
One is 200... 200,000 euro.
It's just unbelievable.
There is just masses more.
I have never seen it on this sort of scale before.
It's astonishing to see this much.
The traffickers in this region
are an Italian mafia called 'Ndrangheta.
They're the most powerful organised crime group in Europe.
But there's a paramilitary special forces unit hunting down the
crime bosses, called the Cacciatori.
Are you military? Are you police?
We do both things.
So we get the information to know where people is and then also
have the training and the tools to
go in their house and arrest these people.
Heading out.
Lieutenant Dario and his armed team took us along on an active operation
deep inside 'Ndrangheta territory.
It's not territory of Italy, you know.
It's territory of 'Ndrangheta.
There is no state there. That's an incredible thing to hear.
They don't want any form of state.
Using violence and intimidation,
the 'Ndrangheta control whole towns and villages in this area.
They have an elaborate system of hideouts and safe houses.
Simon. Oh, my God!
This was the entrance.
So this house was raided,
and there was a fugitive, who'd, what, hidden under the floor here?
You can see the stairs.
Oh. So the whole step that was here is mounted on rails,
to pull it backwards and forwards.
I mean, that is ingenious.
And this leads to the room where actually they hide themselves.
OK, it's a little bit tricky.
Can you believe what they've done?
Four. Four beds.
This was their life.
What's this?
Oh, my God! There's a whole other tunnel here?
Let's go.
Totally bizarre.
Is this in the same house we were in?
It's another house.
A network of tunnels and bunkers
extends beneath much of this village.
I've never seen anything like this.
The tunnels were so tight,
I had to film myself and cameraman Craig behind me on my phone.
It's like Alice in Wonderland meets Narcos.
SIMON LAUGHS
Look at you! All right, mate?!
What the hell are we doing?!
CRAIG: Come to the Mediterranean, go to the beach!
SIMON LAUGHS
What? What is that?
Drainage.
What, you mean the sewer?
Of course, so, as soon as they can get into here,
they can move around the whole town.
Less than an hour later,
I was back inside a relatively comfy hotel room.
It was completely surreal,
but that is so often life on this planet,
madness and normality.
It's easy to think that the world is a violent and dangerous place,
and parts of it are,
but, in my experience, the overwhelming majority of people
are friendly, honest, and often keen to help.
And, even in the most unlikely situations,
people can surprise and inspire.
My recent travels down through the Americas took me to El Salvador.
Like Honduras, and so many countries in Central America,
El Salvador is another dangerous place.
Every year, hundreds of people there are murdered by drug gangs.
It's astonishing how,
openly, the police, wearing balaclavas,
are holding a man on the ground, and people just walk around,
as if it's the most normal thing
because it is here.
But people here don't just submit to the violence.
I found an organisation that inspired and offered hope.
In the gang-torn capital, San Salvador,
18-year-old student Sandra works 24-hour shifts
for the Commandos De Salvamento,
a group of volunteer emergency paramedics.
On a 24-hour shift,
Sandra and her team will respond to dozens of calls,
from traffic accidents to gang shootings.
They allow me to tag along.
They've just said that we're going to a dangerous area.
They weren't sure about taking us,
but we said we're just going to stay in the ambulance,
we're not going to get out.
MAN GRUNTS AND GROANS
He's been beaten up by a lot of people? Yeah.
Who speaks English?
Somebody right there? Somebody right here.
Hey, hey, hey, I can hear you.
How are you doing?
Great. I'm BLEEP up, hey?!
Oh, my God. I'm just going to the hospital,
but I got, I got stabbed in my head,
and they're taking me to... BLEEP ..to the hospital.
To the national hospital.
That's right. National hospital. How you been?
I'm not a volunteer. I'm from, I'm from British television.
Oh, you're British? Yeah, you look...
Oh... BLEEP!
Give me... Come on. I thought you were British!
Give me the BLEEP!
Hey. All right. How you been doing?
Welcome to El Salvador!
Thank you, mate. Yeah.
Oh, God, yeah. All right, I've got to come out of your way.
OK. Good luck. Hey.
So he's being taken into hospital there.
Helping people injured in the violence here
is the work of brave angels,
but the Commandos do even more than that.
They recruit youngsters, like Sandra,
who are risk of either joining drug gangs or being targeted by them
and teach them to work as paramedics.
Well, Sandra, sorry for just busting in here like this.
Is this where you stay, as a volunteer,
or are you actually living here?
You're 18. What do you,
what do you want to do with your life, Sandra?
So I think we're going to see Dr Sandra in the future.
This group gives youngsters family and identity.
They teach the value of each human existence.
Perhaps most importantly, they show that, even in a country ravaged
by the violence of the drug trade, amid immense danger,
there is hope.
Personally, I find everything here, and everything they're doing,
completely inspiring.
In a very dark place,
in a very dark situation,
they are a candle burning bright.
Good luck, guys.
Next time, I'm on sea and land,
sharing my journey through our wild world...
Here they come. Oh, my God!
That's not supposed to be like that. Come, come, come.