'I've been lucky enough
'to have visited some fantastic 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.'
Look at this. It's magic.
'What you eventually see on your screen
'takes weeks to shoot and months to edit.'
Oh, my Lord.
'We haven't always had the time to show you everything we film.
'But we kept the unshown stories safe.'
Stark naked and swimming like a fish.
'So I've gone back as far east as Japan...'
SHE GIGGLES '..all across the world,
'to Cuba in the west.'
Are you a pirate? No.
Pff. Tch.
'And now I can reveal this treasure trove.'
Lovely.
'Also, show to you a little about how these programmes are made...'
These rather grand and beautiful houses are called yell... Oof.
'..and why I love making them.' Welcome to my Unseen Adventures.
'We start these adventures in one of the most remote places
'I have ever been.'
SHE GASPS Look at that.
Gee whiz.
'We filmed in eight countries for the Silk Road series.'
Hello, honey.
'From Venice to the Chinese border.'
This is majestic.
'But this, we thought,
'was an excellent place to start an episode.'
CAMEL GRUNTS
'The Kyzyl Kum Desert in the far west of Uzbekistan.'
In theory, it doesn't sound so difficult -
I just walk across a desert leading a couple of camels,
saying a couple of lines to camera.
But actually, it became unbelievably difficult.
Steer with the front one.
Head for me, Joanna. OK, certainly, sir.
Going towards Kiff. Come on, come on.
CAMELS GRUNT
The thing is, they want to go home. They're hungry.
The camel man hadn't fed them, so they were starving.
So it took on a sort of pantomime horse quality
of me rushing after them and holding onto the rope
and being dragged along.
Hang on a second. Hang on, hang on, hang on.
So, Joanna, you just go to where you feel best.
We don't know where we're going.
Well, can we take them in a different direction?
No, cos that's... that's home, that's where food is.
We had to keep on bringing the camels round again,
we couldn't stop them, the crew got in the way,
they're all falling over, everyone was getting quite cross.
It's quite hard.
It's... I mean, I'll walk with them, but if I can't,
I can't manage them and... and talk to camera.
Shall we just... Because there's all this as well.
..have the man managing them and you beside them?
Much better that I'm walking along. We're coming.
'It's quite normal for things not to go exactly to plan,
'but you just have to stay calm and adapt to the situation.'
I'm in the far west of Uzbekistan, in Central Asia,
and around me for 400 miles is desert in every direction.
This scene really has been unchanged for 2,000 years, great camels,
ships of the desert.
They take me through strange places like that.
They can carry unimaginably heavy loads
and it was really thanks to these guys that the Silk Road
was able to operate at all.
That's great, lovely, thank you.
'The city of Tashkent, Uzbekistan's capital, is 500 miles away,
'and it felt like a completely different country.'
I had such a picture in my mind of what Tashkent was going to be like
and I was absolutely wrong.
Because it had been under Soviet rule for 50 years,
I imagined it would be full of sombre, kind of heavy, dark,
tall, utilitarian buildings.
But in fact, the Russians loved Tashkent so much
because they used to go there as a holiday resort
that they made it absolutely beautiful when they remade it.
And to me, it felt... Well, it felt like Paris.
'Tashkent was just dazzling. The streets were gleaming,
'the architecture stunning.
'Even the metro system was something quite special.'
SHE GASPS
Look at these glass, gorgeous pillars.
Isn't this beautiful?
'I managed to gate-crash this do, and who knew that Uzbeki weddings
'are some of the most flamboyant and expensive in the world?'
Look at this! Isn't it fabulous?
'But the gems I'm about to show you
'appeared in the most unexpected places.'
Look at these! Sapphire.
What colour is this? This is Swiss Blue.
I like this. I love Swiss Blue.
This is London, that's London in a thick fog.
London at midnight. London at midnight.
Ooh, looking through it, to London blue.
'What is extraordinary is that I'm actually in a nuclear facility,
'which, in the Soviet era, carried out military experiments
'and space research.
'Now they've turned their hand to making these magnificent jewels.
'The science behind this is obviously hugely impressive.
'But... don't ask me how they do it.
'Ask Professor Ibragimova.'
Surrounded with oxygen. Oxygen, oxygen, oxygen, oxygen.
But sometimes it's pinkish, or slightly bluish.
How to transform this quartz into topaz.
Add aluminium, this is what happen.
Please, miss. Ten to 14 electrons.
Oh, I forgot to add the second.
Yeah, now you've got the second, I'm following you. Yeah.
Did you understood? 'Mm, sort of.
'One thing I did want to clear up
'was how much these big rocks are actually worth.'
This gorgeous little stone, well, "little", weighs a tonne.
It's actually worth $100,000.
SHE INHALES
'The next place I'm taking you to
'is somewhere I had longed to visit for half my life.'
Samarkand is Uzbekistan's second-largest city
and it's existed for thousands of years.
It's a place of legend, it draws travellers towards it.
And, in fact, a lot of the travellers
which were on the Silk Road came like a magnet to Samarkand.
James Elroy Flecker, the great poet, wrote a poem
called The Golden Journey To Samarkand about exactly that,
traders and travellers all being drawn towards it
and one of them, Eshak, says,
"We travel not for trafficking alone,
"by hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned.
"For lust of knowing what should not be known,
"we take the Golden Road to Samarkand."
'Like Xanadu or Shangri La, Samarkand seemed just too fantastic,
'but I was on my way to see those great glittering domes
'and turquoise buildings. They're real, and I was travelling there!'
Just not quite the way that I'd imagined.
This is absolutely extraordinary,
I'm on a train from Tashkent to Samarkand.
I mean, I think I'd imagined... Well, not obviously on camels,
but I'd imagined a kind of scuffly dirt track,
a little bit of a third worldy-type train
with chickens fluttering out of the air.
Instead, I've got coffee in a mug with Chanel written on it,
the most beautiful fruit salad you've ever seen.
I'm sitting in a second-class carriage
with the most immense amount of room and splendour and cleanliness.
It is fantastic.
I can't think, why didn't we know about this?
Why didn't we know about Uzbekistan?
I'd come here for my holidays every year if I could.
Get yourself to Tashkent and take the train to Samarkand.
It's... This is not...
It's all about will. But do you see this?
Do you want that? Oh, darling, I'm sorry, Kiffo.
That's absolutely fine. OK, let's go.
I suppose that they're making an announcement
we're soon coming in to Samarkand.
Wait for that to go?
They're just making an announcement, we're soon to arrive at Samarkand.
I'm looking at this old book, this French book about photographs.
It's extraordinary, because Samarkand was pretty much in ruins
at the turn of the last century, and it was during the Soviet regime
in the 1920s that they decided to build it up, and fabulous.
I'm always saying "fabulous" and "wow",
and people have ticked me off,
sometimes people say, "Must you keep on saying that?"
And the answer is, yes.
I'm going to get ready to go.
Put your cameras down, we've got to get ready to go!
'Being part of a team has always been important to me.
'As an actress, of course, you're part of a cast, so that's a team,
'you all have to rely on each other.'
And I've been travelling
with the same crew for about, gosh, it's, oh, it's over ten years.
And so we've got to know each other, we travel actually like a family.
Um, they are a little bit younger than me,
so I like to think of them as my younger brothers,
or occasionally, my sons.
Just very, very occasionally, my grandchildren,
from the way they behave,
but they're usually terribly good and terribly kind
and very helpful, and they tell me when I'm looking...
not quite up to scratch, or tuck bits into me,
or there's a wire showing or a cable showing.
So, teamwork, all the shows I do are about team work.
Warts and all.
And as far as the crew goes, lots of warts, I'm afraid.
It's odd to say this, but the most unexpected thing
I remember about Samarkand was its magical bread.
Hello, ladies. SHE GASPS
Oh, look. Gosh, she's got... Look how shiny!
'The women selling it on the streets were very cagey about their sources.
'But I managed to track down some being made
'in the back streets of the city.'
The smell here, it smells like paradise.
It's cooling off enough for me to hold it, and show it to you
very quickly and then put it down, cos it's unbelievably hot.
THEY LAUGH It's so hot.
'Besides its bread, what you need to know about Samarkand
'is who built this city and made it the capital of his empire.
'Amir Timur, or Tamerlane,
'carved out one of the biggest empires the world has ever seen.
'In the process, Timur is believed to have killed
'around 17 million people -
'that was about 5% of the world's population at the time.
'We marvelled at Timur's magnificent mausoleum.'
And now he's lying to rest in this phenomenal,
extraordinary, calm, quiet, beautiful place.
'But I want to tell you now the grizzly story
'behind one of Samarkand's architectural masterpieces.
'Tamerlane was merciless, but he spared the lives of talented artists
'and artisans, and put them to work on building his magnificent capital.
'The building I'm about to show you was built for Amir Timur
'by his favourite wife.'
I'm... That walking fellow was in the way.
And it's so wide here. You've got to watch that.
Amir Timur, Tamerlane, had 18 wives.
But his favourite, and the first one, was called Bibi-Khanym.
She was the oldest, and Bibi-Khanym means "first lady".
He adored her, she adored him,
and when he was away on one of his campaigns,
she decided to give him a treat he would never forget.
So, Bibi-Khanym commissioned an architect
to design and build the most colossal mosque ever,
easily the largest in Central Asia.
And this is it. Huge, monumental, absolutely colossal.
Beautiful, traditional gateways, the wonderful tile work,
stunning, thrown up pretty quickly, bits dropping off, but nevertheless
absolutely spectacular because Bibi adored Timur
and Timur adored Bibi. But...
..the architect also adored Bibi-Khanym.
'Just as I was about to give you the final twist in the tale,
'we were stopped by three generations of Uzbeki women.
'It's these random encounters that I really love.'
How old are you? How old am I?
I am very old, honey, how old are you?
How old? I am 12.
You're 12? Grandmas.
Grandmother. It's lovely to see you, proud of your girl.
Lovely girl. How many children?
I've got one child, two grandchildren.
And my grandchild, like you, is tall.
Work? Work. Film.
Film? Film.
Producer? No, I'm presenter.
Cameraman, director, sound engineer.
Thank you. Thank you.
Goodbye.
That tall girl, just like my granddaughters,
who are great, tall girls too.
Very sweet. OK, let's tell you about the architecture.
Just walk a bit now and get in to that.
Look at these domes, they are sensationally pretty.
Decorated everything so delicately, so boldly,
And look at this.
So beautiful. And Bibi-Khanym was so thrilled with it.
And the architect had fallen deeply in love with her,
and he kissed her on the cheek.
When Timur returned from his campaign,
he saw that there'd been a dalliance going on and he was furious about it
and he had the architect executed.
And although he was cross with Bibi, he didn't kill her.
In fact, she outlived him, and this outlived them both.
It's incredible, but up until the 1970s,
the great city lay in ruins and if it... it...
I can't say that, sorry, the cat walked past the window.
That's nothing, it shouldn't be.
Could you keep away from behind the camera? Thanks, love.
It's incredible, but up until the 1970s, this great city lay in ruins.
And if it hadn't been for Soviet-backed restoration,
Samarkand would not be the place that it is today.
'A bit like the Forth Road Bridge,
'the upkeep of all Samarkand's buildings is a never-ending process.
'Nazar was 75 years old when I met him,
'and is a ninth-generation master wood carver.'
Do you design the panels yourself?
How did you lose the tops of your fingers?
Did you chop them when you were a boy?
Whereabouts in Samarkand
are examples of your fine restoration work?
'Samarkand's bewildering range of historic treasures
'surpassed what I had imagined,
'and you have to work hard to see a fraction of what's on offer.'
That's quite a climb up there.
Before I leave, I just wanted to come to this extraordinary place,
the Shah-i-Zinda. It is a collection of mausoleums
and most of the people buried here are women.
It's so touching, I just wanted to come and pay my last respects here
before I leave the golden city of Samarkand.
'This site is a series of exquisite mausoleums
'built up over the course of eight centuries.
'Qasim ibn al-Abbas, a cousin of the Prophet Muhammad,
'came here to preach Islam in the seventh century,
'and was beheaded for his trouble.
'His tomb crowns the site,
'and we were invited by the Mullah to hear prayers in his honour.'
PRAYER CHANTS
'Next, we're off to India to see just what it takes
'to capture this fascinating land on film...'
Kiff's going to be angry, Kiff's always angry.
'..to unveil some more treasures...'
I just want to buy something here.
'..from my trove of unseen footage.'
It had the most ghastly consequences.
'In 2017, the crew and I spent almost two months filming
'all across India to make a series of three programmes.
'India was celebrating 70 years of independence.
'It's the land of my birth,
'and this complex and stunning country is especially dear to me.
'We decided to start our trip to India in Kanyakumari,
'which is on the very, very southern-most tip of the country.'
We had to fly during the night to Delhi, and then stay awake
and catch our connecting flight to the south of the country
at about... I think it was about three.
So we'd virtually had a whole night without sleep.
And we arrived down in the south, but we were lured to Kanyakumari
because we'd been told about the great golden orb of the sun rising
out of the Indian Ocean and all the people streaming out,
backlit with the sun,
and I should stand there and it would be absolutely glorious.
'Well, on the morning, we got up before dawn, of course,
'and it was lacerating rain,
'it was the wind blowing, a force-eight gale, it was flapping
'and everything was looking grey and completely not like India.'
"Oh," we thought. "This is terrible."
Because what you really want to do is get the first shot of the show
in the bag, then you feel you're off on your journey.
WIND GUSTS
Would you not? Oh, is hair better than hat? You say.
'That day, I had chosen a bright yellow blouse
'that I'd thought would look good in the morning light.
'I hadn't thought about how noisy it would be in a force-eight gale.'
This shirt is noisy. Spinnaker, isn't it?
And it's raining, too. Other than that...
Other than that. I know, I'm making quite a sort of feast of it.
Tell me, tell me.
'What were we gonna to do?'
What was our first shot to camera going to be like?
What was our introduction to India going to look like on screen?
This is the meeting place of three great expanses of water.
To the east, the Bay of Bengal. To the west, the Arabian Sea.
And here behind me, to the south, the mighty Indian Ocean.
I'm on the southern-most tip of one of the most intriguing,
bewildering and thrilling countries on Earth.
Come with me through India.
'No-one seemed shy, and back in 2016, India had gone selfie mad.'
English? English.
What is your name? My name is Joanna.
Joanna. Joanna.
And your name? CHILD REPLIES
Oh, very good. Ma'am, one photo?
Yes, we will do that, darling, we will do the photo now this second.
'We did eventually get a wonderful opening scene,
'just not quite the one we'd planned.'
TRAIN HORN BLARES
'The first stop on our Indian adventure was the city of Madurai,
'which is just a couple of hours north by train.
'You may notice that I'm carrying an extraordinarily hefty
'leather suitcase. It's been in the family for years.'
And these are just some things I've bought along for the trip,
they're things that remind me of India,
or have got India connotations.
And I've bought in this suitcase, all kinds of things,
like, for instance,
this is my parents getting married up in Sunaga in 1941.
And this is Daddy, he's a captain in the Gurkhas.
'My old suitcase was jam-packed with memorabilia from a bygone era.
'The idea was to unpack it slowly during my travels.
'In the end, this was its only cameo appearance.'
And although I was too little to know it,
my mother grieved terribly at having to leave India.
She always spoke fluent Urdu and my father used to talk in Gurjari.
Those were their secret languages
between each other when they didn't want the children to understand.
This was Mummy's old pocket English-Hindustani dictionary,
and later on, I'm going to become fluent in Hindi
during this short journey.
I'm going to be able to say things like, "Have you finished reading?"
SHE REPEATS THE PHRASE IN HINDI
"Do you get tea and vegetables daily?"
SHE REPEATS THE PHRASE IN HINDI
But anyway, this is fascinating,
and I'm just ashamed I searched and searched to find it.
I only found it the day before I came,
otherwise I'd be fluent already.
These are unbelievably old, I think these go back to 1901 or something,
the field glasses that they had.
But they're actually completely beautiful.
Look, and I can see you perfectly from here.
That was actually a lie, but do you know what I mean?
I know I'm going to be able to see perfectly
through these divine little glasses.
It could be that I was looking through the wrong end of them.
'The city of Madurai is dominated by the 14 colourful towers
'of the astonishing 2,500-year-old Hindu temple there.
'It was initially the principal object of our attention,
'but it's in the back streets that you find the best characters
'and learn most about a country.'
'I can't believe that I'm sharing this moment with you again,
'but I got measured up for a fabulous shirt
'in the market surrounding the temple.'
32. 32.
38 there.
Please don't listen to this. I'm going to dub over it afterwards,
it's going to say 36, 24, 37.
What's happened?
I've literally trebled, trebled in size.
'Humiliating, I know.
'But I still have and love this top, and it reminds me of Madurai.'
Beautiful garlands made of tuberoses,
which is that really sweet... these little sweet, white flowers
and tiny pink rosebuds.
These are beautiful garlands. Yes, yes.
This flower is like this one day. One day?
One day alive.
But this flower here, three days live.
Three days. So these are more expensive?
Yes, yes.
'I was mesmerised by the dexterity and finesse
'of these garland-makers.'
This is just beautiful, this is one of the most skilful things,
he's making garlands for people to buy to take to the temple,
using this gorgeous fibrous palm leaf,
which he strips down into thin bits.
And then this soft, soft cotton,
which I think he can break with his hands as he just does it,
he does it like that.
Um, tell me, sir, how long have you been making garlands like this?
Ten years now. Ten years?
And is it very difficult?
Very easy.
It's very easy?
You try? No, I don't think I can,
I don't think I can.
No, I think I'll leave this to him.
I think you do this so much better than I do.
What I love about travelling is that, in some way,
every country you enter, you become a different person.
Nobody there really knows you, and I've got to say,
even though I'm quite well-known in countries which have television,
because I've been on screens for so long,
a lot of the countries I go to have no idea who you are,
so you're completely anonymous.
What I love doing is sitting and watching.
Sitting on a train watching people, sitting at a cafe in a street,
just walking and looking and staring.
Don't fill your days so full of stuff
that you don't have time just to sit and stare,
because that's when you really take in countries.
And don't always go to see the finest and the best
and the most obvious sights.
Go off the beaten track,
go to a small village which hasn't got a grand temple,
just go and be in that village, go and walk about,
see if you can talk to somebody.
I love travelling, I literally couldn't live without it.
This is what you would call a fairly casual manicure,
you just sort of throw it on roughly on the end of your fingers
and goes on the skin, doesn't really matter.
Just sort of slap it on. Just taking a little bit more care, I think,
with her own toes than she did with her sister's fingers.
Can you see this lovely, slightly scattergun, approach
to putting on nail varnish?
Put some on the back of the palm as well, it doesn't matter.
It's lovely, and are you going to have your hands painted?
No, no, no.
Tell me, which is your favourite god?
Meenakshi. Meenakshi?
SHE GASPS Ah, Meenakshi!
WAILING IN BACKGROUND There's a great sorrow here.
'The Meenakshi Temple is a highly auspicious Hindu site.
'And thousands of the faithful visit the temple every day.
'And, not surprisingly, some become overwhelmed by the experience.'
It's possessed and in a trance, my gosh.
You can see dancing in front of the three-pronged temple there,
it's been going on a bit. I thought it was somebody in terrible grief,
but in fact it's just trance-like dancing for the gods
and then being possessed by the spirit
and speaking in tongues, I think.
Thank you. You're welcome.
Good, thank you darling. Very, very good.
'Our visit here centred around an awe-inspiring ceremony.'
Oh, look, look, look what's coming.
The trumpets are starting.
It's been performed here every night for thousands of years.
This crowd just following on behind.
'Late into the night, the temple is still buzzing with activity.
'This procession celebrates the love between Lord Shiva
'and his consort, Parvati, and their union in the bed chamber.'
Ravishing.
'The next morning, I had a tragedy to deal with.'
I'm so depressed, because my beautiful suitcase,
I broke the handle.
But I've been told that near a sign which says "car parking",
that there's a leather worker who'd be able to fix it for me.
Got to say, it doesn't look terribly promising.
I wonder if you can help me.
I have broken the handle of my suitcase, you see?
It's very old.
Do you think you can mend it?
Want it removed, huh? Uh-huh.
This? And maybe, what, double, like that?
And stitching? Stitching.
Same colour. Same colour.
Thank you. That's good.
Dear little suitcase.
It's been all around the world, it's done everything under the sun,
it's made of buffalo leather, I thought its life was over.
How many hours, how long?
Two hours? Two hours.
Thank you.
I can't watch this, cos it's like having my teeth taken out.
And here she is, this darling old suitcase.
There's its beautiful little new handle.
But there's something...
There's some sort of nostalgia about these old suitcases.
This is buffalo hide.
I've got to say that I always hate kind of leather things,
cos I always think of the poor little dead animals,
and being a vegetarian, I'd much rather have nylon.
But when I look at this and I know it belonged to my mother
and it's been all around the world and it's really robust,
I'll keep it, I'll just keep it.
I usually keep treasures in things like this, it'll be full of things,
so when I'm dead, people will go, "What's this?"
And they'll open it up and it'll be full of treasures.
Things that I've bought back from far away.
Or just old stuff I've forgotten to sort though.
From Madurai, we drove up through some beautiful country
into the Western Ghats.
I remember being dumbstruck at the scenery
and terrified by the mayhem on the roads.
CARN HORNS BLARE
I'm not completely used to the driving in India,
which is largely just, go forward until you can't
because something else is coming straight at you.
So, I usually sit in the back seat, not because I'm grand,
but because I find it quite life-shortening
sitting in the front seat.
'Venturing higher up into tea country,
'we were lucky enough to encounter these chaps.'
This is extraordinary.
And another one, and another one.
Just quietly coming in their own sweet order.
I'm so, so thrilled.
One of the great dreams of my life
to see an Indian elephant in the wild.
'But we didn't reveal to you the fascinating chat I had
'with an old family friend.'
This is rather exciting, cos I'm going to meet Robin Brown
for the first time in about ten years.
His mother and my mother were very good friends, they're both dead now.
But they had in common India, and Robin, who's, I think,
a little bit older than me, he was rather an exotic figure.
Robin and I took very different paths in the swinging '60s.
As I went off to become a model and then an actress,
he, like thousands of others at the time, headed east
in search of enlightenment and an alternative lifestyle.
He'd gone out, I think with a sort of hippy trail
all those years ago in the '60s, became bewitched by India,
got an old Enfield bike and rode all over the country.
I wonder if he's changed,
I wonder if he looks like a bit of a hippy, which he used to.
Oh, here he is!
Hey. Wow.
Oh.
Joanna, it's nice to see you finally.
Oh, Robin, how good to see you.
Finally in India together. Together.
So, Robin. Yes.
Isn't it funny, cos I was born... You weren't born in India, were you?
No, I wasn't. My father, being an Army Officer,
he was always trying to get seconded to India,
we could have a great time in the mess
and run up tabs and chits everywhere.
How did you come to India? Did you fly out?
No, no, all of us hitch-hiked. Yeah.
It would take weeks, months.
In those days, the zeitgeist was, to hell with western consumerism,
we're gonna hitchhike to Kathmandu or we're going to do this,
and completely stoned and get enlightened, that was the thing.
You'd be hanging around in King's Road
and it would be, "What? You haven't gone to... Wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh."
It was absolute de rigour.
Then once we'd managed to get here,
I'd learnt so many things on the way, they were fairly bullet-proof.
Getting to Afghani border, you'd halfway made it.
We'd reached Afghanistan, and the Afghan customs wallah would come out
in his German uniform and he'd say, "Have you got hashish?"
"What, who, me? No, no, no."
So the guy would go, "Here." Bang, kilo slab,
"Welcome to the Kingdom!"
When you came out here, did you have a job?
When you first came when you were a young man.
Staying alive was the job, I think, not dying of dysentery or...
Have a job? No, job was just being what we were.
Were you aiming for anywhere? Were you aiming for...
Kathmandu. Kathmandu, of course.
Kathmandu. Yeah.
Of course, with all the famous songs.
Thingy, that one, turned Muslim, what's his name?
Yeah Cat Stephens. Of course, your memory's perfect.
Would you give me a spin on your bike?
Well, why not? Can I wear that helmet and sit behind you?
Absolutely. And not go fast, cos I'm a trembling memsahib.
No, no, no, I'm more scared of it than you are.
# Kathmandu, I'll soon be seeing you
# And your strange bewildering time
# Will hold me down... #
'We travelled 5,000 feet up to Sikkim,
'in the foothills of the Himalayas.
'The air was cool and the atmosphere was serene.'
When the cloud lifts, and it will,
I'd be staring at the five peaks of Kanchenjunga.
I'm so disappointed, I'd so wanted to see Kanchenjunga!
'But far away across the mountains,
'we had an audience with the Dalai Lama.
'Meeting His Holiness was humbling, inspiring and great fun.
'But while we were up in the mountains, we stumbled across
'another story which, at the time, felt completely out of place.
'Back in 1860, a Scotsman wanted to make this leafy hill station
'a seat of British political power.'
It's so gorgeous here in these shady trees.
Joanna, you're gonna have to actually walk in.
Wh- where... Where's in?
The eighth Earl of Elgin,
and not the Elgin who procured those beautiful but controversial, er,
marbles from Greece... Sorry, marbles. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
The eighth Earl of Elgin -
not the Elgin who procured those beautiful but controversial
marbles from Greece, but his grandson, James Bruce -
was made Governor General and Viceroy of India in 1862.
He loved this cool retreat so much that he decided that this would be
the summer capital for the British in India.
Unfortunately, just two years after he took office,
he died suddenly here in Dharamshala.
And the British capital,
summer capital, went up to Shimla, which is 140 miles due east of here.
But he wanted to be buried, he wanted to stay here in Dharamshala
because he loved it so much. So Mary Louisa, his widow,
had him buried here amongst his favourite deodar trees.
Good man. Anyway, here's a little corner of a foreign field
that is forever Scotland, I would have thought.
Before we went up to Kashmir, which is where I was born,
I wanted to do a piece to camera saying how important it was for me
for the viewers to see Kashmir
and to have the same emotional attachment to it
as I've always felt. To love it and to admire it.
And so I wanted to do a little piece to camera saying,
"This is why," and so on.
Anyway, it didn't... It didn't really quite work out as planned.
Give me your bag.
Lost it slightly, I've bought no makeup with me
so I'm very... I'm very anxious that I now look like a natrid
and old, kind of somebody who's been left behind with the flood.
This is McLeod Ganj, and it's in the foothills of the Himalayas.
We've travelled everywhere, we've been so far, I've loved it up here.
This is kind of a little bit like Kashmir, where I was born,
but this isn't Kashmir... cos it's a bus, it's a truck.
I'm not gonna like this, Kiff's going to be angry.
Kiff's always angry.
CHUCKLING
HORN BLARES Help me, help me.
And I so want it to be lovely, I so want it to be gorgeous,
and the Kashmir that I can show you will be the Kashmir of my heart.
PASSING TRAFFIC
I'm coming to the end of my gorgeous trip through India...
PHONE RINGS ..right up through. Bloop, bloop!
From the very south to the very north,
east to west, absolutely stunning.
The next trip, of course...
BLEEP, it's not "trip", sorry.
I'm so muddled at the moment I can't tell you.
My head is like a bees' nest.
I left Kashmir when I was a baby, but I went back when I was 35
and it was absolutely beautiful. BEEP off.
It's so... It's so draining working by the side of a road,
second-guessing how long the traffic will be.
OK. No, not quite OK. PASSING TRAFFIC
'I had mixed emotions coming back to Kashmir this time.
'Politically, it's been really unstable.
'We had to get special permission to film there,
'and we're lucky to come in a window of relative peace.'
CHANTING Call to prayer.
It's extraordinary, it feels like a completely different country,
doesn't feel like India at all here.
It just feels... Well, it feels like Kashmir, that's the truth of it.
'But Kashmir will always be dear to me. It's where I was born
'and where so much of my family's history is based.'
But this is where my grandparents lived for a bit,
where my mother and father were certainly married.
It's so gorgeous to be back and to think even though I was just...
just a baby, teeth growing, probably crying through the night
with pink cheeks, I was sleeping in here.
Srinagar was known as "paradise on Earth,"
and has always been Kashmir's centre of life and commerce.
'The next morning, we'd planned a pre-dawn visit
'to the Dal Lake floating market.'
It's chilly.
Mind you, it is spring time, which is why the leaves aren't out.
But everything just beginning,
willows and poplars all around the lakes.
It's fabulous!
Oh, I'm sailing away, I want to go back.
I want to go back, can we go back?
'This timeless scene seemed unearthly,
'and I was longing to see what they were buying and selling.'
He shoved my boat away, that's good. Thank you.
And they just appear to be selling leaves to each other.
Some of them are kind of long, they look like radish leaves,
I don't know what they are, they look quite delicious.
Excuse me, sir? Can I... Can I buy some?
Can I, can I...? No.
So I missed that one.
Oh, I could buy some turnips. I just want to buy something here.
'I've got quite a reputation with the crew
'of just eating and drinking anything that's offered to me.
'Usually it's out of courtesy, because people will suddenly
'come out of their house or approach across a desert carrying something.'
And on camera they approach and I take it and go,
"Nom, nom, nom, how lovely," um, because it's courtesy.
But usually, I just have to eat anything.
And this time, um, some part of my mind went AWOL
because all these plants were grown in the Dal Lake,
and what you never do is drink water from the Dal Lake.
It had the most ghastly consequences.
So...
Now, they come in really huge bundles.
This, is this for me to eat?
God, that looks fantastic.
How much is that?
80 rupees?
Thank you very, very much. Goodbye.
Is that not the most gorgeous...
Couldn't you just, couldn't you just...
'What was I thinking?'
I can't tell you, we were up to do the very final piece,
wrapping up the whole of the India programmes, up on the...
the mountain looking over the lakes and down over the Veil of Kashmir
and Srinagar.
I don't think I've ever felt so ill in all my life,
I had, you know, the black runs, as it were.
Up every hour, just, no matter how much water I drank...
Oh, anyway, I was near to dead. In the morning, I said,
"I don't think I can do this."
And guess what they said, guess what my crew said?
"Yes, you can!"
I'd taken all those kind of pills that you take
to make you into concrete from the neck down,
dragged myself across the lake with a full smile painted on,
and we managed to get through it, I just don't know how.
We were miles from any kind of restroom, there was no loo in sight.
Oh, wow, look at this. This is the Veil of Kashmir.
And this is the end of our extraordinary journey.
We came to Delhi, which is the capital of India, New Delhi,
what isn't to be found in Delhi?
And from Delhi we went to the Ellora Caves.
We didn't, we went to Mumbai.
Don't have to label everything. SHE GRUNTS
Sorry, Joanna. That's all right.
We've got so much that people are just going, "Get on with it,
"we saw the programme."
But somehow just standing up there at the very end
and summing up our India journey,
it made it all feel worthwhile.
And Doctor Theatre always comes in to help.
By the end of it, I was completely cured.
'Next time, join me for some more unseen adventures in Iran.'
On our way to... SHE CHUCKLES
'In Georgia, we have lunch booked with a dictator.'
I have the strangest feeling that I'm being overlooked.
'And in Haiti, we set sail in search of pirates.'
I wouldn't mind going back soon.
It was terrifying, I was black and blue.
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