BBC Radio Collections Series

Michael Palin's superb No. 1 bestseller about his incredible voyage across the Sahara.

Michael Palin's epic voyages have seen him circumnavigate the globe, travel from the North to the South Pole and circle the countries of the Pacific Ocean, but this was perhaps the greatest challenge yet: to cross the vast and merciless Sahara desert.

As the journey unfolds, the Sahara reveals not the emptiness of endless sand dunes, but a huge and diverse range of cultures and landscapes and a long history of commerce and conquest stretching from the time of the ancient Egyptians to the oil-rich Islamic republics of today.

On his way, he encounters dangers such as camel stew, being run over by the Paris-Dakar rally and Dakar nightlife, as well as returning to the original spot where THE LIFE OF BRIAN was filmed.

The Pole to Pole

by Michael Palin

Published 19 October 1992

For those who enjoyed the account of Michael Palin's journey in "Pole to Pole", this is the visual storybook of the series. Over 270 photographs are published here, taken by Basil Pao, who accompanied the crew on their trek from the North to the South Pole along 30 degrees east. Palin has written the extended captions. For the most part, trains, trucks, ships, rafts, skidoos, buses, barges, bicycles and balloons provided the transport and some interesting views. The photographs are arranged in order of countries visited, including the USSR, Turkey, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. They provide insight into the Journey itself, what happened behind the scenes, and the people and places along the way. Accompanying maps illustrate an epic journey that witnessed history in the making, noting the collapse of 70 years of Communist rule and the end of Apartheid.

The Full Circle

by Michael Palin

Published 1 September 1997

The third of Michael Palin's travel adventures for BBC Television covered 50,000 miles and all of the 18 countries that border the Pacific Ocean. Basil Rao's photographs bear witness to the wide diversity of landscape, culture and people encountered on the journey. The Pacific Rim is one of the world's most volatile areas, with economies that are expanding faster than anywhere else on earth - and here the earth itself is in a constant state of flux. Not for nothing is the Pacific coastline known as the "Ring of Fire" - volcanoes mark Palin's journey like stepping stones, and he climbs one which has recently erupted and is still smoking. He negotiates mountains and plunging gorges, crosses glaciers, dodges icebergs, follows great rivers such as the Yangtse and the Amazon, and confronts the notorious Cape Horn and the wild and windswept beaches of western Alaska. The people Palin meets include one of the few remaining survivors of a Siberian Gulag camp, head-hunters in Borneo, and Japanese monks. He eats maggots in Mexico, rustles camels in the Australian desert, lands a plane in Seattle, and sings with the Pacific Fleet choir in Vladivostock.