Burma and Buddhism are intertwined, thanks to centuries of ancient mythology and thousands of golden monuments of worship. It all began with the Pagan Kingdom about 1,000 years ago, when Anawrahta, a great king, and Shin Arahan, a Buddhist monk, together incited one of the greatest religious reformations in Asian history. Join us as we explore this spiritual revolution and how it triggered a wave of temple-building in honor of the Buddha.
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Throughout Burma, temples, stupas, and statues of gold pop out in the lush, green landscape. This golden architecture has become Burma's calling card, but how and why did that become the standard here? Join us as we travel across Myanmar, the jewel of Asia, and reveal the history and myths surrounding these shrines, each one created as an offering to the Buddha. We will visit such treasures as the golden pagoda of Mt. Kyaiktiyo, which rests perilously atop a huge boulder, the 344-foot Shwedagon Pagoda, and the revered Mahamuni Buddha Temple.
2015 • Travel
Burma and Buddhism are intertwined, thanks to centuries of ancient mythology and thousands of golden monuments of worship. It all began with the Pagan Kingdom about 1,000 years ago, when Anawrahta, a great king, and Shin Arahan, a Buddhist monk, together incited one of the greatest religious reformations in Asian history. Join us as we explore this spiritual revolution and how it triggered a wave of temple-building in honor of the Buddha.
2015 • Travel
Joanna meets the Maharaja of Dungarpur, who shows her around his lakeside palace. In stark contrast, Joanna visits a Dalit community - considered to be India's lowest caste - in Gujarat, and hears of the everyday discrimination these people experience under India's still deeply entrenched 3,000-year-old caste system. She later joins in a Hindu house warming ceremony, where a cow and calf are brought into the new house for luck. Braving the roads of Mumbai, Joanna takes a ride in the city's only all-female taxi company and visits the Times of India, where her uncle was editor of the paper in the 1930s and 40s. She then overcomes her vertigo to explore the World One Tower, soon to be Mumbai's tallest luxury residential building.
S1E2 • Joanna Lumley's India • 2017 • Travel
Charlie wraps up his explorations in western Transylvania, where he descends into an ancient Roman gold mine and drinks a locally made palinca.
S2E10 • Flavours of Romania • 2023 • Travel
He explores how the artistic life of three Japanese cities shaped the country's attitudes to past and present, east and west, and helped forge the very idea of Japan itself. In Kyoto, James reveals how the flowering of classical culture produced many treasures of Japanese art, including The Tale of Genji, considered to be the first novel ever written. In Edo, where Tokyo now stands, a very different art form emerged, in the wood block prints of artists such as Hokusai and Hiroshige. James meets the artisans still creating these prints today, and discovers original works by a great master, Utamaro, who documented the so-called 'floating world'. In contemporary Tokyo, James discovers the darker side of Japan's urbanisation through the photographs of Daido Moriyama, and meets a founder of the Studio Ghibli, Isao Takahata, whose film Grave of the Fireflies helped establish anime as a powerful and serious art form.
S1E2 • The Art of Japanese Life • 2017 • Travel
This week, Julia arrives in the Dodecanese, a far-flung group of islands at the gateway between Europe and the East. In the medieval capital of Rhodes she uncovers a treasure of trove of Byzantine Art Travelling inland to the mountain village of Apollona; Her trip ends with a visit to the neighbouring island of Symi, an architectural wonder like nowhere else in Greece.
S1E5 • The Greek Islands with Julia Bradbury • 2020 • Travel
Simon Reeve begins his most ambitious journey yet - travelling the entire length of the Americas. In this first leg, Simon travels from Alaska, down through Canada to Vancouver.
S1E1 • The Americas with Simon Reeve • 2019 • Travel
Simon travels through three of the world's most extreme environments as he takes in the salt flats of Bolivia, Brazil's Pantanal wetland region and Paraguay's Chaco Forest. In Bolivia, he meets a family making a living carving salt from the vast white expanse of the Uyuni flats, while in Brazil he has a close encounter with South America's apex predator, the jaguar. In Paraguay, Simon visits a Mennonites school, where traditionally clothed children are drilled in Bible texts and there are no smartphones to be seen.
S1E4 • Simon Reeve's South America • 2022 • Travel