This special episode sees Michael revisit his fifth travel series – Himalaya. For Michael, this epic journey across the world’s highest mountain range is the fulfilment of boyhood dreams inspired by the 1953 ascent of Everest by Hillary and Tensing. Beginning in the famous Khyber Pass, he travels through Pakistan and India and ascends into Nepal and Tibet to reach Everest base camp itself, before venturing into the mountain kingdom of Bhutan. But Michael’s journey isn’t all about scaling peaks – it’s also about finding out what life is like for the people who live in some of the harshest environments on Earth. He is curious to see countries that were cut off by the mountains for centuries and that have developed their own distinct cultures and ways of survival, to discover the different ways that religion influences society here, and to meet the hardy inhabitants of the mountains.
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From stunning heights, witness the mountains, rivers, and people that make up China's great interior. Visit celebrations at the center of the Buddhist world and on the edges of river cities, soar over the world's most famous peak 29,000 feet in the air, and dive into an ancient city submerged under a lake. China's heartland is a place where urban and rural communities embrace the challenges of a changing 21st century world.
S1E4 • China from Above • 2018 • Travel
Bettany visits the west bank of the Nile opposite Luxor where, for 500 years, the Ancient Egyptians buried their pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings, among them the boy-king Tutankhamun. However, the historian crosses the local hills to the Workers' Village, where generations of skilled royal tomb-builders lived. As it turns out, they also dumped masses of domestic rubbish, which is now giving some insight into the highs, lows and preoccupations of ancient Egyptians. Bettany then heads south on the Nile's oldest steam ship SS Sudan, which inspired Agatha Christie to write Death on the Nile.
S1E3 • The Nile: Egypt's Great River with Bettany Hughes • 2019 • Travel
Giles Coren and Monica Galetti experience the warm embrace of Fogo Island Inn on a rocky, sea-sprayed outpost of remote Fogo Island in Newfoundland. White, angular and perched atop zig-zagged stilts like the local fishermen's houses.
S1E5 • Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond the Lobby • 2017 • Travel
A hundred miles south of Cairo a stretch of the Nile was once considered Egypt's main highway, used by Cleopatra to travel the country. More than 2,000 years after her, Bettany visits a vast desert catacomb where tens of thousands of mummified animals were once left as an offering. Further upstream, there is a chance to swim in the Nile, and look inside the tombs where Tutankhamen's discoverer, Howard Carter, first got hooked on Egypt. Bettany explores the longest tomb yet found, before heading to the Dendera temple, where Cleopatra herself may have once wowed her lover Julius Caesar.
S1E2 • The Nile: Egypt's Great River with Bettany Hughes • 2019 • Travel
After a winter break, Charlie gets back on the road. In Bucovina, he enjoys smoked trout, kayaking and a sojourn at a restored traditional community.
S2E9 • Flavours of Romania • 2023 • Travel
Colin Stafford-Johnson begins his Atlantic journey exploring the ancient ruins and wildlife of the Skellig Rocks - stormbound ocean pinnacles off the south western corner of Ireland, where early Christian monks built a monastery on the summit almost 1,500 years ago. His journey ends in Clew Bay, an iconic inlet halfway up Ireland's west coast and the place Colin chose to make his home.
S1E1 • Wild Ireland: The Edge of the World • 2017 • Travel