'I've been lucky enough to have visited
'some incredible places over the years.'
Holy smoke.
'Travel is my passion. It's in my blood.
'And I'm thrilled that I've been able
'to take you with me on these journeys.'
Hang on a second. Hang on, hang on.
'What you eventually see on your screen
'takes weeks to shoot, and months to edit.'
Look at this!
It's magic.
'We didn't always have time to show you everything we filmed.'
Stark naked and swimming like a fish.
'But we kept the unshown stories safe.'
I sort of pretty much love these, actually.
'So I've gone back, as far east as Japan,
'all across the world,
'to Cuba in the west.'
Are you a pirate? No.
Phew.
'And now I can reveal this treasure trove.'
On our way to...
'And also show you a little about how these programmes are made...'
These rather grand and beautiful houses are called -
Oof.
'..and why I love making them.'
Here's my new granny. Lovely, lovely.
Welcome to my Unseen Adventures.
Japan was a country that had intrigued me for a long time.
And I was very excited about going there in 2016.
It proved to be a fascinating place
with a unique mixture of ancient classical culture...
..and razor-sharp modern technologies.
Welcome to the hotel.
Yes. I will confirm your check-in information.
Thank you.
We travelled right down the full length of the archipelago,
some 2,000 miles...
Yes. So so so.
Very good. Very good.
..allowing us a glimpse into the Japanese way of life.
We covered so much that there were lots of great sequences
that we just couldn't squeeze in the first time round.
Starting...
Start with the four great islands.
One, two, three, four.
'We travelled in February to the north of the country.'
After 36 hours, we arrived absolutely worn out,
jetlagged on the island of Hokkaido.
Japan is really four colossal islands.
It's actually 4,000 islands,
of which 400 are inhabited.
But Hokkaido is the northernmost island.
Huge, very beautiful.
And it was absolutely freezing.
We jumped aboard the icebreaker Garinko
and headed out onto the frozen sea of Okhotsk.
My role here is to introduce the series
and welcome you to Japan.
And clearly the best place to do this
was on the ice-encrusted foredeck of the icebreaker.
Come with me
to the Land of the Rising Sun,
Japan.
Again?
MAN: And then turn round.
OK. I'm sorry about nearly falling over.
It's a little bit slippery here. OK.
Come with me to the Land of the Rising Sun,
Japan!
SHE CHUCKLES
I practically knocked myself over.
Behind me, Russia and the Okhotsk Sea.
Ahead of me, a journey
of 2,000 miles,
from this icy ocean down to the tropical beaches
of one of 4,000 islands.
Come with me to the Land of the Rising Sun,
Japan!
I'd heard great things about Japanese roads and cars.
So it was a pleasure to take the wheel from time to time.
Now, let's see.
The great thing about driving in Japan
is that, like in the UK...
..they drive on the left.
OK. JAPANESE SATNAV ACTIVATES
Let's go. That's Will's, I'm afraid.
No, because I plugged mine in.
Well, what is she saying? She just said hello.
It's all good. It's OK.
MAN SPEAKS JAPANESE
Let's do it again.
JAPANESE SATNAV ACTIVATES
How lovely. I don't know what she was saying,
but I've got my safety belt on and I've taken the brake off,
so I think everything is OK.
From the very start, Japan made a big impression.
It sort of sounds a strange thing to appreciate so much,
but the lavatories here...
..they are absolutely fantastic.
They seem to know when you are coming in,
they've got warmed seats.
The one I've just been to
has got 17 different kinds of papers
and things that you might need or want.
Sometimes it flushes the loo when you get up,
you don't have to flush it.
It's fabulous.
You could live in a Japanese lavatory.
Before we go on these great journeys,
I do a lot of research and I look at photographs,
and I study maps and things.
But somehow a picture begins to form in your mind,
and for some reason, maybe because of the news items
we see about Japan, it's practically always Tokyo.
A place teeming with people, and busy, busy traffic.
And very modern and up-to-date.
So to visit Hokkaido in the wintery north,
empty,
was absolutely magical.
This is strangely exciting,
because I don't know what I imagined Japan would be like in the winter,
but not like this.
It's like driving through Narnia.
Not only was it naturally beautiful,
it also gave me a glimpse into Japan's ancient cultures
and philosophy.
In Japan, the crane is a mystical creature
and is believed to live for 1,000 years.
Shinto is a religion
that started in Japan 300 years BC.
It worships supernatural deities
that inhabit all things.
Look at that.
And just as we arrive here, the sun comes out.
Look at that beautiful thing.
And I was delighted to see a festival
celebrating the fire god Kagutsuchi.
But less keen on the health and safety arrangements.
I didn't... I didn't...
I didn't quite know what I was expecting.
Not quite such flamboyant sort of liberalism.
with burning fire kind of twigs on the end of a stick.
It looks divine when they actually are going around,
but sometimes they fall off, and fly into the crowd
in great clumps. I've seen a tiny child
swinging something which is virtually the same height,
which was just sort of banging around.
Obviously,
there's a lot of sparks coming our way.
It's very exciting.
And I've got to say, I do love fire. I love the smell of fire.
The sight of the sparks going up into the sky.
And this is a kind of harvest festival.
Within a few days, we had crossed over
onto Japan's main island, Honshu,
and were nearing a place whose very name strikes fear.
In March 2011,
Fukushima was hit by a tsunami.
EXPLOSION
And as a result, the power station there
suffered several catastrophic nuclear meltdowns.
By the time we arrived,
the surrounding area had been an exclusion zone for over five years.
Mai, our fantastic fixer and translator,
took a front seat in Fukushima.
So here we are, Mai, this is the exclusion zone.
It looks absolutely abandoned.
Yes.
This is five years later and they are still boarded up.
Oh, it's tragic.
All these were people's homes here.
But even after all this time,
this area is still dangerous.
The road is barred off here.
So we have to... Turn round and go away.
Go away. Are they doing contaminated earth?
What are they cleaning?
They are cleaning up all the contaminated soil.
Just getting rid of the surface of it.
We had arranged to meet up with Mr Naoto Matsumura,
who had courageously stayed behind in the exclusion zone
to take care of all the animals that were abandoned there.
Oh, look.
Cats, cats, cats.
Dog.
Naotosan, is this your house?
My house.
Hello, puppy.
Of course, it's quite obvious
that all the countries we go to, I can't speak the language.
So we always have a translator with us
doing the interviews with me. I speak in English,
so the camera can record me doing it in English.
You have to translate. Yes, but...
NAOTO SPEAKS JAPANESE
She then translates it to the person, who has no idea.
They then answer in their own language, which we film.
'And I nod,
'thinking I know what they are saying.'
Sometimes I don't.
And the terror is that they are going to say something quite sad,
and you're going, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Thinking, imagining. I've been tripped up once or twice
by that, you know, or indeed they are telling me a very funny joke
and I've gone, "Oh."
Because I haven't quite understood yet.
And the other important thing you have to tell your contributor
is don't look at the translator. Look at me.
As if you are telling me.
And they go, "Sure, I understand."
No, really, it's quite odd, so do try to do that.
They go, "Sure." Cameras roll, and off they start,
and the interpreter... They spin their heads round.
You go, please...
Sometimes I'm going, "Me, me, me." Not on camera, going...
It's very difficult.
HE SPEAKS JAPANESE
Of course what makes it even more difficult
is that when you're talking to somebody,
and an enormous dog who adores you comes leaping up,
and you're trying to go, "Oh, yes, and how long have you..."
Woof.
This quite a young dog?
MAI TRANSLATES
NAOTO SPEAKS JAPANESE
Three years old.
Kissing. Thank you. Thank you.
And cats.
NAOTO LAUGHS
Naotosan, where were you when the earthquake happened.
MAI TRANSLATES
NAOTO SPEAKS JAPANESE
Down, down, down. "I lived here.
"I lived in this house." In this house?
Down, down, down.
Down, down, down. Come on.
Was it terrible when it happened, the explosion?
NAOTO SPEAKS JAPANESE
This is... Here, it's about
12 kilometres away from the nuclear power station.
And he could actually hear the explosion.
Coastal buildings around Fukushima were devastated
by the tsunami.
But the explosion and nuclear fallout that followed
left a much more serious problem to deal with.
I hate to say this, but it's going to happen again.
This is the land of earthquakes,
the land of tsunami.
And it's on the four tectonic plates all meeting.
It's on the Pacific rim of fire.
This seems the most vulnerable position.
Are they gonna rebuild here?
Japan is rightly famous for its onsen,
or boiling-hot natural spa waters.
We drove up into the snowy hills of Nagano,
and here it's not just the humans that enjoy
this stimulating phenomenon.
It's extraordinary here, because here we all are.
Each time the monkey does something, out come the cameras.
"Come on, darling." Paparazzi. We've turned into the paps.
I've been papped often. Anyway, this is my way back with the monkeys.
The worst is when you're getting out of the car
and they try to get under your skirt.
It's unbelievable.
It's unbelievable. They don't even bother to look at you.
They just jam the camera against the car window.
You can see their faces looking at their watch,
and just go far, far, far as you sit in the car.
AS A PAP: Lovely.
Onsen are always taken in the buff.
But I wasn't delighted
at the idea of cavorting naked in front of the very lecherous crew.
But always the consummate professional, there I go.
Erica very kindly took a shot
in which my knees were like this,
and they looked like two huge, escaped sagging tits.
So what I'm trying to do,
if I put them there,
can you see my legs at all?
This is as hot as a bath I would run for myself at home.
It's fantastic. And to think it's full of minerals
just gushing up naturally from water.
Because this is women-only,
and obviously the crew are... SHE MOUTHS
..I'm wearing a towel. A modesty towel.
I didn't want you to think this was my enormous body
beginning to flake off under the water.
This is a beige towel I am wearing, but normally,
if I was here on my own
I would be stark naked and swimming like a fish.
I loved Kyoto.
It's simply one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
And it was made more magical
by meeting the fascinating maiko girl,
who I had tea with and explored the city.
I hope that you have such success.
We had planned our arrival there
to coincide with the Sakura,
or the much-heralded arrival of the cherry blossom.
'It's a huge deal in Japan.'
We had managed to secure an interview
with the most revered gardener in Japan.
If you think of Alan Titchmarsh crossed with Monty Don,
and a bit of royalty thrown in,
it doesn't even come close.
However, when we arrived,
Sanosan and his men
were wrestling with a colossal piece of granite.
It looks quite perilous.
Quite Heath Robinson. But they are all working towards the same thing.
I just can't quite see what it is.
And now they're working on some winch,
which is doing something down there.
I'm clammy with fear.
Anyway, this is Sanosan,
who is the great tree man,
who is also, quite clearly, the rock-moving man.
So although I'd hoped to be speaking to him by now
about cherry trees and their importance in Japanese culture,
I, in fact, got a kind of lesson
on how to build a garden.
With rocks.
I feel much better about the way I do stuff at home now,
because this is my way of doing it. Put a bit of stuff in there,
and put a Sellotaped thing on there and hang that off there.
But to see this going on here, it's perilous.
I mean, they've got that great stone up.
They are putting their arms in underneath
and putting an old twig and a little bit of wood,
and you think that wood will sink.
No, this has all been here for 1,000 years,
for goodness sake.
And he's been here for 88 years.
I don't think we're going to get to talk to him about trees.
This is gonna take all morning. He's not gonna leave it.
Of course, he turned out to be a real character
and extremely wise.
Sanosan, what is the best way to look after a tree?
Do you just put it in the ground and put water?
Or must you do more than that?
SPEAKS JAPANESE
You love them? You sing to them?
Whenever I see cherry trees
in the UK,
I shall think of you, Sanosan.
Arigato.
I'll take my cherry blossom with me.
We have to go all the way back to 2014
for the vertiginous opening
planned for the Trans-Siberian series.
Overlooking Hong Kong harbour,
camera and sound are in position.
And it's my job to usher in the series
by gesturing towards the two enormous countries
that we'd soon be visiting.
And believe me, it's not easy.
I'm on the peak of the world
and over there, to the north,
are two of the most colossal empires on earth.
TROMBONE PLAYS
A trombonist.
Yes. We'll do that once more.
I'm here on the peak of the world...
DRILLING Chunter, chunter, chunter.
A little bit.
Don't care about it?
Just over here is some building work. OK.
I'm on the peak of the world. Just over there,
to the north, are two of the most colossal empires on earth.
I lived in Hong Kong for a couple of years in the late 1940s.
My father's regiment was posted to Hong Kong
in, I think, about
1947 or '48.
Anyway, I was tiny. I was either one or two.
And we stayed there until I was about three and a half.
We spent about two years there.
And, of course, everything I remember about Hong Kong
was from knee-high. I was a tiny, tiny little person.
So I can remember our big, dark, cool kitchen there.
We had a couple of guinea pigs which we kept on the little veranda.
Their names were Sammy and Michael.
They could whistle, they whistled at the sailors.
The sailors thought there were
lovely ladies up there, whistling back.
But everything I remember was so small, and so little,
and I think most of my memories may come from photographs,
which were taken at the time. Bathing in the sea
and being with Mummy. Not with Daddy much,
because, of course, he was on duty, with the Gurkhas.
It's a strange experience going back anywhere.
Perhaps it's because, at that young age,
you form such vivid memories.
I couldn't believe in 2014
that Hong Kong was the same place.
And now, in 2020,
unfortunately, it appears to be changing again.
When I was here as a child,
I think the tallest building was about six storeys high.
So you can imagine what a shock it is to come back
and see the skyline so changed.
And, of course, when I was young,
this was completely filled with junks,
little, tiny Chinese junks. This was alive with tiny watercraft.
When the Peninsula Hotel opened its doors in 1928,
it was set on becoming the finest hotel
east of Suez.
Now I can at last take you for afternoon tea
at the Peninsula.
It's one of Hong Kong's great traditions.
Here we are.
I think I can almost remember being here
when I was about three and a half.
Oh, my goodness. Obviously, from this high,
a tiny little person...
That's not very long ago.
But this huge, extraordinary lobby, it hasn't changed.
No, it hasn't. We are the oldest hotel in Hong Kong.
And obviously the lobby is so iconic,
starting with the tea dance and now the afternoon tea.
And all the history that surrounds the lobby.
This place has seen it all.
It was here that in 1941
the British surrendered to the Japanese,
who had established their headquarters on the third floor
of the hotel.
The Japanese had surprised the British colony
with an attack on the same day as Pearl Harbour,
the 7th of December 1941.
So, this hotel was only
six storeys tall.
And you can see how close we were to the railway station.
At the time, the Kowloon-Canton railway station
was just across from us.
Where was the train coming from and going to?
Actually, in 1910,
we were already able to go to London.
No? From here? Yes, from Hong Kong.
I believe it took only ten days
on the train, versus five weeks on the boat.
So you would say, "London Victoria, please?"
Yes. Yes.
It came as such a shock
to hear that you could go by train
from Hong Kong back to Britain
in the 1950s. We didn't know about that.
Because we were army families.
Army families always travelled on troop ships,
which took from Hong Kong, I think it was about five weeks.
Anyway, it was thrilling to know
that I was going to go from Hong Kong on a train
up into mainland China, up into Beijing,
and start the beginning
of the great Trans-Siberian Railway adventure.
It was an epic journey I was longing to start.
Beijing was phenomenal.
I believe 22 million people live there now.
And you get a sense of the sophistication and strength
of the ancient Chinese civilisations,
when you visit Beijing's immense and imposing Forbidden City.
Three Chinese characters,
the top one is Tai.
Tai means "supreme".
We persuaded my very patient guide, Don Mai,
out into the midday heat.
We have a saying, mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
Mad... Mad dogs...
And Englishmen...
Mad dogs and Englishmen, why?
Go out in the midday sun.
Built in the 14th century,
this was the imperial palace
and state residence of the emperor of China
from the Ming to Ching dynasties.
And it exudes unchallenged power and wealth.
If any clarification of China's present-day status were needed,
Beijing's Rolls-Royce showroom certainly provided it.
Wow, look, we've got stars on the ceiling.
I never thought I'd see Beijing from the heart of a Rolls-Royce.
China's economic miracle claims to have lifted
800 million people out of poverty.
And this new middle class has money to spend.
Over the last decade, fashion sales have tripled
to a staggering $200 billion per annum.
And this year, China's fashion industry
will become the second biggest in the world.
This takes me back to my modelling days.
Going to see the editor of Vogue.
I mean I obviously didn't always see the editor of Vogue, but...
Little bit nervous.
Hello.
I've come to see Angelica Cheung, please. Just wait one second.
'The editor of Chinese Vogue
'has become one of the most influential roles in world fashion.'
How lovely to meet you.
Yes, great to see you. Welcome to Beijing.
I'm Joanna, how lovely to see you. Thank you so much.
It's exciting. Look. We are in Vogue. This is just great.
This is my little world.
Oh, it's wonderful. This is where you work from?
Make all the decisions from here? Well, sometimes.
Sometimes on the plane.
Sometimes on the train. Very often in the car.
Can I come and see what your people are doing?
Yeah, maybe you know better now. Let's go have a see.
This is the art department.
Stefan is the creative director.
Candy, our fashion director. Hello, Candy.
This is, I think, what Patsy was. Lovely to meet you.
Patsy called herself a fashion director.
I don't think she'd ever been in an office.
Look at all that champagne over there. That's what they do.
They don't actually work. They just drink...
champagne.
And just being in the office of Vogue
takes me back to the '60s.
Before I became an actress, before I became a presenter,
I was a model.
And actually the world of fashion has always held me in its thrall.
It was the first real main job I did when I grow up,
left home, came up to London. And it has remained with me always.
There's nothing more thrilling than going to this country
or other countries to the great fashion houses.
To the great fashion magazines.
And seeing what is going on in the world.
Then, I have this secret room.
Secret room!
They are having a shoot tomorrow. This is beautiful.
So I just look at the clothes. Do you want to try it on?
I think it will look good, no? It looks beautiful.
Let's see.
Oh, it's sensational, isn't it?
Wow, look at that. Wowee.
This year is all about long coats. Long, long, long.
And with boots and things like that. Nice.
That feels really good. Yes.
What are the new styles? Sometimes you go,
"Oh, my gosh, I was wearing that about 35 years ago.
"This looks slightly different."
But it's just a thrilling language, let's put it like that,
a language I learned when I was very young.
And I can't quite shake off the feeling
of putting on a beautifully tailored coat
or putting on what my mother called a "hat face" for a photograph.
So you looked rather gorgeous. I kind of love it.
I know I'm past it now,
but I do adore it.
And Patsy had been a model.
I made sure that Patsy had been a model in the old days, too.
She was not as good as I was.
So, in a funny way,
you're in charge of shaping
how Chinese women of the future are thinking.
I think we belong to a generation in China
where you grew very quickly.
You absorbed a lot of things
from China, from overseas.
But it's also a generation
who like to think.
You know, think that you have a value.
It's not just about the craftsmanship
you introduce in the designs.
It's not just about the artistic value, the creativity
in the fashion.
It's also about the kind of person
we want our reader to become.
Can people buy these? Are they rich enough to buy them?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. These are actually more affordable
because they are by young Chinese designers.
Later on today, all the Chanel, the Dior,
the Max Mara, they will come in.
So we mix them together.
So you have the high end,
and you also have relatively affordable.
On the one hand, you have people
who can spend a couple of million yuan on clothes.
And on the other hand, you have the secretary who is still saving up
for their first designer handbag.
So you need to have stuff for the more beginners
and then you have stuff for the very sophisticated.
Coolio. It's a coat without a back.
I'm going to have to put that on. Do you want to try?
Because this is my life really. It's a symbol of my life.
From the front, she appears to be something.
And surprised when you turn around.
And then when you turn around, there's nothing there at all.
JOANNA LAUGHS
You are brilliant. MAN: Brilliant. Thank you!
LAUGHTER
# He's a dedicated Follower of fashion... #
No journey to China is complete
without seeing the Great Wall.
We travelled far into the countryside,
where this massive structure
is overgrown and remote,
and witnessed a glorious sunrise.
And for a moment away from the busy, crowded cities,
it was wonderful to feel the serenity
and expense of this beautiful, but bewildering, country.
But very soon we were travelling north again.
And back to business.
So the sound will not be on the camera.
Joanna is wearing a mini recorder.
Patrick, we've only got three minutes.
You join us frantically boarding the Mongolia-bound
Trans-Siberian express.
Go, go, go.
I just get in a panic about getting so much stuff onto trains
in such a tiny amount of time.
This is how people have sudden cardiac arrests.
There we are.
I've got for this trip, because they've got a hot-water tap,
pot noodles.
Look at that.
We're off.
I'd never been to mainland China before.
And we'd just spent the last two weeks travelling
right across this immense country.
A snippet of China,
but enough to get some idea.
We came to Jining, which is where we got onto the train today.
And then we trundled towards Mongolia.
And here at the border, we cross over,
and that's where they'll change
the railway onto a different set of wheels,
which are either closer or further apart.
I'll let you know about that later.
My guess is that they're going to be further apart.
These look jolly close together.
That's Russia all the way round to there, to Vladivostok here.
And here's China.
Colossal. Right up to there and right down to there.
And in the middle, squashed between these huge, great nations,
post-Soviet Russia, communist China, sits Mongolia.
Travelling on trains just makes me hungry,
and by sundown I'm literally clawing
to get at my fancy pot noodle.
What I'm hoping to do is to eat...
I've selected this "hot tingle" flavour.
I bought two "hot tingle" flavour.
Ah. Yes, please.
Oh, oh, oh.
Thank you. Thank you, my honey.
Thank you so much.
How much water does...
It's like a kind of Brillo pad.
This is the "hot".
Yeah, that's more like it.
I feel sometimes, you know,
a bit of a fraud about being in China
and from the outside.
Because I'm sort of predisposed to liking stuff,
and liking people
and loving what I see and not minding things.
So when I go to places and I just go,
"This is lovely, no, this is great."
And now suddenly we're leaving China
and I think of all the things that really...
..hurt me about China.
I haven't sort of touched on any of that on this journey.
Principally, because the people I was talking to
were not the right people.
You've got to speak to officials about that,
not the darling people in the streets.
But they weigh on my mind, you know.
I'm just going to attempt this hot and spicy noodle dish.
SPEAKS WITH HER MOUTH FULL
Unfortunately...
I'm...
Maybe...
Maybe there's a time limit.
Maybe it's just...
It's like...
It's like cleaning an aquarium...
with...
There we are.
Just before the Mongolian border,
we are shunted into a huge shed.
We have a bogey issue to deal with.
CLANKING
This is extraordinary.
We've got carriages just lifted up in the air.
Have we been lifted?
We've just been going "dzh-dzh".
And I still can't work out
whether the gauge is wider or narrower.
Isn't it funny? These things are called bogeys.
And it strikes me the English language,
which is so rich in so many things, has the same word for
a nostril event,
a golfing term,
and the wheels on a carriage.
Couldn't we have thought of something else other than "bogey?"
Anyway, with the new bogeys in place,
85mm wider, as you're asking,
we have now become the Mongolian train.
And head through the night across the steppes
on our way to Ulaanbaatar.
Crossing the border from China into Mongolia
did seem like entering another dimension.
Mongolia is one of the least densely populated
countries on earth.
It's five times the size of the UK,
but with only three million people, half of whom live in the capital.
Ulaanbaatar is not at all how I imagined it.
I thought it'd be far more kind of lethal grey,
brutalist Soviet buildings.
I can see some of them,
sort of stern tower blocks.
But it looks as though, just a guess,
that since its secession from the Soviet empire,
that the Mongolian spirit has sort of bloomed
all over again, and it's picking its own colours.
Look at these gorgeous green and orange and white.
Quite a lot of them are quite Buddhist colours.
Tawny golds, and orange and red.
Just gorgeous.
Look, look, look at these old trains.
Beautiful condition, all painted up and bright.
You can imagine how important railways are
to this part of the world. You've got no way of getting goods in
by sea, because there is no sea.
So it has to come overland.
Soon after independence from the Soviet Union in 1990,
Mongolia enjoyed a commodities and building boom.
And the capital is quite a contrast
to the rest of this wide-open empty land.
In 2014, the country was just
finding its political feet,
and television was playing a big part in wooing
its newly democratised people.
'At C1 Television,
'I was intrigued to be met by a fellow countryman.'
Thank you so much seeing me. Welcome.
Let me show you round. Thank you so much.
So, is C1 your baby? No, no, no.
Are you in charge of it? I'm the CEO here.
It is owned by a group of guys, some of them politicians.
And one of them said to me, "If I get elected,
"I want to have my own TV station."
So he became an MP, and he came to see me and said,
"Now I want my own TV station. You can build it, Ben."
You've got auto-script. You've got this lovely circular track.
That cool kind of delivering-the-news thing.
With journalists in the background, which is very au courant, lovely.
But TV has a ways been a difficult industry in Mongolia.
There's over 90 TV stations in Ulaanbaatar alone.
90? 90, yeah.
You amaze me. So it's super competitive.
When do you broadcast again? When will we hear the live news?
This is our news, which is on air right now.
But Mongolia is quite a small country. I know.
So it's quite hard to get... "What shall we do news on?"
Generally, news in Mongolia
is based around two subjects. In summer, it's all about roads.
They love talking about their new roads.
And then in winter time, the story always changes to
the air pollution.
Cos it's super polluted in Ulaanbaatar.
It's the second most polluted city in the world.
According to the World Health Organisation.
It doesn't deserve to be that, because this is a place of paradise.
Ben, it's been so good to talk to you. Wonderful, great.
I hope you enjoy your time here. We're loving it.
Mongolia is the most extraordinary country,
and Ulaanbaatar has always been sort of held out.
It's rather like Timbuktu, it's kind of the end of the world.
Ulaanbaatar. Of course, when you get there,
it's a sophisticated city,
filled with people who are completely marvellous.
And some of them are quite extraordinary.
You might remember the last time I showed you
this enormous equestrian statue
to the Mongolians' national hero.
Images of Genghis Khan
were banned during the Soviet era,
but look at him now.
130 feet of glittering stainless steel,
looking east to his birthplace.
I met up with the remarkable man behind the project,
ex-world wrestling champion
turned businessman and politician,
Mr Battulga.
Also the owner of one of those 90 television channels.
This is Mr Battulga.
Mr Battulga, how do you do? It's so good of you to see me here.
Joanna Lumley.
Mr Battulga was the one who had made the statue to Genghis Khan
on such a scale that you literally fainted.
You saw it standing, glittering,
in the middle of these great plains.
Huge mounted horseman looking fierce and so on.
Why did you think it was important
to have a statue of Genghis Khan?
SPEAKS MONGOLIAN
But what I didn't show you last time
was the even more ambitious scheme
Mr Battulga was dreaming up.
His plan was to build a new eco-city,
radiating out from a centre,
where was going to be the tallest Buddha ever made.
To spread his blessings out over the eco-city
for 300,000 people.
I couldn't wait to see it. I said, have you started?
Has this even started, this crazy idea?
And he said, yes. Well, we went out to see it.
And there, right out in the middle of nowhere,
were the makings of one of the largest Buddhas in the world.
And a site cleared ready to start building
Mr Battulga's dream city.
They had started building, they had got a great crane up there,
but, ah, I couldn't believe it.
I wonder...
I wonder if it's built.
I wonder if it's going to be built.
I wonder if the plans have been abandoned.
I'd love go back and see it.
Mr Battulga, what became of him?
I knew he was impressive.
For a start, he spoke in a very soft voice.
Quite often, extremely powerful people
speak in a very soft voice.
He wasn't only politically powerful, he was physically powerful.
Because he was a world wrestling champion or something.
Extraordinary.
When you see him very quiet, very modest. Very courteous.
Dandy, our fixer, took me aside and said,
"Mr Battulga is going places."
Just how far, I had no idea.
The year after we'd been filming there,
he became the president of Mongolia.
And he was photographed with Putin,
he was photographed with Trump.
Strong man.
Extraordinary man.
TRAIN HORN
The Trans-Siberian Railway
is so immense that we couldn't do it all in one go.
By the time we had returned for the second chunk,
two months had elapsed.
And venturing north into Russia,
we were confronted with the biting chill
and beauty of a Siberian winter.
Lake Baikal is enormous.
And it contains a staggering 22% of the Earth's fresh water.
That's more than the combined volumes
of all the North American Great Lakes put together.
We'd come here to film the only freshwater seals in the world.
But our delay made that almost impossible.
I wish I could see the seals,
the freshwater seals in the lake.
But I can't. It's very cold and they are not coming up to the top.
So I've come to this beautiful museum,
where I understand they've got three in captivity.
Ones that have been rescued.
So I make my skiddy way up the path.
And here we are, Baikal Museum.
It's something of a mystery how Baikal seals came to be here,
nearly 2,000 kilometres from the sea.
They may have swum up rivers,
or possibly the lake was linked to the ocean at some point
in ancient history.
However they got here,
they've been here for over two million years.
You can see from their figures that they have regular meals.
Do you throw for each seal? Yeah.
So this only goes to Baikal?
This is only for Baikal.
This is for Yola.
And this is for Dot the seal. OK.
'To give me something constructive to do,
'we'd arranged our filming around their breakfast.
'As presenters, we are always asked to join in on something.
'You know, "Oh, you're making something, a spindle out of wood.'
"Can I have a go at trying to do it.
"Oh, you're making chapatis. Let me have a go.
"Oh, you're doing brain surgery. Do let me hold that."
No, but they don't do brain surgery. But they like you to be involved.
And usually I kind of go, do I really have to do that?
Do I have to do this Greek dancing or whatever it is?
But one thing I never mind is anything to do with animals.
And so it was pretty much thrilling to help feed the seals,
except, to my horror,
the seals didn't know me, so they were afraid of me.
Anna is saying that they won't come if I'm looming over them.
They are afraid.
So even though they are hungry for breakfast,
they are not going to come,
because at the moment, the fish are just floating in the water.
'I suppose it's good that they are not too tame.
'But it meant that I had to retreat behind the glass,
'where they knew I was no threat.'
Come and eat... Eat this one.
Eat this one.
It's been done so beautifully,
the thoughtfulness
of making it clear, lovely blue Baikal water
and a block of ice.
But you can't help thinking that these clever animals
are pretty much caged.
I know it's for their own safety, but...
We've got a pond in the garden at home with fish in it.
We've got nine fish there.
Which have really been given to us by people who say,
"We used to have a fish pond and we're not having one any more,
"can you take the fish?"
And although we've got everything that they could possibly want
and I feed them and they've got reeds and rushes...
..I don't like anything that's locked up.
But it's better than being dead.
Expression, darling. Look at your face.
Look at your whiskers.
Head for me, Joanna. Next time,
join me herding camels in the far west of Uzbekistan.
Hang on a second, hang on, hang on, hang on.
We couldn't stop them. The crew got in the way.
They were getting quite cross.
I'll walk with them, but I can't manage them
and talk to camera.
In Samarkand,
I'll tell you the grisly story behind one of central Asia's
most magnificent mosques.
Timur saw that there had been a dalliance
and he had the architect executed.
And in India I learn a lesson the hard way on glorious Lake Dal.
Can I buy?
What was I thinking? I don't think
I've ever felt so ill in all my life.
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