Michael Palin - Around The World In Eighty Days

MICHAEL PALIN is a scriptwriter, comedian, novelist, television presenter, actor and playwright. He established his reputation with Monty Pythons Flying Circus and Ripping Yarns. His work also includes several films with Monty Python, as well as The Missionary, A Private Function, A Fish Called Wanda, American Friends and Fierce Creatures. His television credits include two films for the BBCs Great Railway Journeys, the plays East of Ipswich and Number 27, and Alan Bleasdales GBH.

In 2006 the first volume of his diaries, 1969-1979: The Python Years, spent several weeks on the bestseller lists. He has also written books to accompany his seven very successful travel series: Around the World in 80 Days (an updated edition of which was published in 2008, twenty years later), Pole to Pole, Full Circle, Hemingway Adventure, Sahara, Himalaya and New Europe. Most have been No 1 bestsellers and Himalaya was No 1 for 11 weeks. He is the author of a number of childrens stories, the play The Weekend and the novel Hemingways Chair. Visit his website at www.palinstravels.co.uk.

Basil Pao began his photographic career in 1980 on his return to Hong Kong after ten years in the United States, where he was an art director for Atlantic, Polygram and Warner Bros. He first worked with Michael Palin on the design for the book accompanying Monty Pythons Life of Brian. They have since collaborated on the books based on his seven travel series. In 2007 he wrote and photographed China Revealed: A Portrait of the Rising Dragon.

MICHAEL PALIN

A WEIDENFELD & NICOLSON EBOOK

First published in Great Britain in 2002 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
This ebook first published in 2010 by Orion Books

Copyright (c) Michael Palin 1989, 2008

The moral right of Michael Palin to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978 0 2978 6356 4

The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martins Lane
London WC2H 9EA

This ebook produced by Jouve, France

An Hachette UK Company

www.orionbooks.co.uk

Days 1-3
The Reform Club, London; the Orient Express to Venice; Venice

Days 4-6
Crossing the Adriatic on the Espresso Egitto; through the Corinth Canal to Athens; Crete

Days 7-9
Egypt: Alexandria and Cairo

Days 10-11
Suez to Jeddah on board the Saudi Moon II

Days 12-17
Jeddah; driving across Saudi Arabia to Riyadh; Riyadh to Qatar; Qatar to Dubai

Days 18-24
Crossing the Arabian Sea on board the dhow, the Al Shama

Days 25-32
Bombay; crossing India by train; Madras

Days 33-38
Crossing the Indian Ocean on board the Susak; past Great Nicobar Island and Sumatra; through the Malacca Strait to Singapore; lightning dash to board the Neptune Diamond

Days 39-41
Crossing the South China Sea

Days 42-43
Hong Kong

Day 44
By ferry from Hong Kong to Guangzhou

Days 45-46
By train from Guangzhou to Shanghai

Days 47-48
Shanghai

Days 49-50
Down the Yangtze and across the East China Sea to Yokohama

Days 51-53
By train from Yokohama to Tokyo; Tokyo

Days 54-62
Crossing the Pacific on board the Neptune Garnet

Days 63-64
Arriving in America; Los Angeles

Days 65-66
On Amtrak: through Nevada and Las Vegas to Salt Lake City; on to Glenwood Springs; drive to Aspen

Days 67-68
Aspen, Colorado

Day 69
The Burlington and Northern Railroad; through Denver, Omaha and Iowa; arrival in Chicago

Day 70
By train to New York

Days 71-77
Crossing the Atlantic on board the Leda Maersk

Day 78
Le Havre; crossing the English Channel

Day 79
Felixstowe to London; arrival at the Reform Club

Little did I imagine, as I was turned away from the doors of the Reform Club in London after completing my circumnavigation of the globe back in December 1988, that far from being an end to my travelling career, this was just the beginning. Around The World In Eighty Days was to become around the world in twenty years.

I had intended to stop once we reached the unyielding doors of the Reform Club and return to a normal life - slapping people with fish, running over Kevin Kline in a steamroller and singing the Lumberjack Song in German to selected audiences. The attempt to circle the world in less than three months without ever leaving its surface had, I felt, offered me enough adventure to last a lifetime.

But something had happened on all those long sea trips, on battered cargo boats and creaking container ships, on heaving Indian trains and racing dog sleds in the Rockies. Though I had travelled with a course of painful injections and bag full of pills and potions, nothing had protected me against the overpowering, aching desire to do the whole thing again. It was as if a door had been opened through which I could see a big beckoning world. I could see North Poles and South Poles and Equators and Tropics and rapids and volcanoes and it was all much more exciting than slapping people with fish. The success of Around The World In Eighty Days, and a very tolerant wife and family, made it possible for me to walk through this door and discover new people, new places, and experience sights and sounds beyond my wildest expectations.

Twenty years on, I and my crew, many of whom had accompanied me on that first journey, have been to every continent in the world, travelled hundreds and thousands of miles across every terrain from ice and snow to burning desert, and regurgitated it all in seven books and television series.

So I must thank my lucky stars, and Clem Vallance and the BBC in particular, for creating for me a role I never expected, that of a sort of tour guide to the world. I also have to thank those who so selflessly agreed to let our camera peer into their lives, for, as Ive learnt in all my series, its the people you meet who make the programmes work.

Bearing that in mind we decided that the best way to celebrate twenty years of travelling would be some sort of a reunion. The choice was easier than Id expected. Looking back over the years no single experience has remained more powerfully in my memory than our dhow journey from Dubai to Bombay. It was the first time I realised quite how much the success or failure of our series depended on those with whom we were travelling, in this case a crew of eighteen Indian fishermen from a small village north of Bombay. Despite their assurances of getting us to Bombay in six days, we shared the boat with them for a week. We slept on deck, sacks of pistachio nuts beneath us, we learnt to use a toilet which was nothing more than a box suspended over the stern of the ship, we gratefully ate the curries they produced from nowhere and we tried not to think about the lack of life-jackets, or the fate of the captains brother whose dhow and entire crew had perished in a storm the year before.