Pole To Pole

Storyline

Michael Palin, of the British comedy troupe Monty Python, sets out on a journey where he will travel from the North Pole to the South Pole along 30 degrees of longitude. The longitude was chosen because it covers the most land. The entire journey takes 141 days, covers 12,500 miles and takes Palin through 16 countries. Along the way Palin experiences local culture, history, geography, customs, food and people. Palin travels by land utilizing cars, buses, trains and ships over air travel wherever possible. Though the series opens with Palin taking a plane to the North Pole, the sequence was filmed just after the remainder of the miniseries was filmed to take advantage of better weather conditions and the condition of the pack ice. Palin travels through the archipelago nation of Spitsbergen by snowmobile. He visits Santa's village in Norway, Tromso, visiting the statue of Roald Admunsen, the first person to visit both poles. He stops off at Leningrad (now St Petersburg) and is given a tour of the city by a Vladimir Lenin impersonator. In Odessa, he receives a strange, mud-based skin treatment. In Istanbul he is given the full treatment at the city's oldest Turkish bathhouse by a large, mostly silent but pleasant attendant. He arrives by boat on the African continent at Alexandria and continues on down the Nile. Travel through the African continent proves to be difficult when transportation methods become unexpectedly unavailable and he has to find different means. Travel from Khartoum to Gedaref in Sudan at the Ethiopian border is especially challenging: the team rides in several Toyota rover vehicles that frequently become stuck on a road consisting of giant ruts made by trucks during the last rainy season. They also must be guarded by a small group of volunteer militia members because of the presence of dangerous Sudanese rebels that may be lurking in the hills and forests along the route. Palin also stops at the small village of Lerata in Kenya where part of the movie he'd starred in, The Missionary, was filmed. He is pleased to see that the roof the production crew had built for the school was intact and he gives the class the inflatable globe he carried with him during his Around the World in 80 Days miniseries he'd done a few years before. Palin goes on safari in Kenya, riding in a hot air balloon over the Serengeti Plain and fulfills a lifelong dream while visiting the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. Near Kigoma and Ujiji, he stops briefly at the monument marking the spot where Dr Stanley Livingstone and Henry Stanley had their famous meeting. Palin then travels down Lake Tanganyika on the famous MV Liemba ferry. In Zambia a local witch doctor tells him he has an "evil shadow". He stops at the Shiwa Ngandu estate, overseen by Lorna and John Harvey. Sadly, only six months after Palin's visit, the Harveys were murdered. Palin sees Victoria Falls, goes whitewater rafting on the Zambesi River and travels into South Africa, visiting the famous Western Deep Levels Mine, the deepest gold mine in the world. When he reaches the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa Palin must abandon the 30 degrees of longitude of the journey: the BBC is unable to get him aboard the SA Agulhas, the ship that would have delivered him to the Earth's southern continent. Palin boards a plane that takes him to Santiago, Chile & continues south to Punta Arenas, where he will catch a smaller plane to the South Pole. Palin arrives and finds the reception there chilly: researchers at the South Pole inform him that he is unable to stay at the research station there because his expedition is not a government-based one. Still, Palin is able to visit the precise spot of the South Pole, ending his journey. He remarks that even though he faced many difficulties and illness along the way, he's happy "they did it this way."