Michael Palin - Pole To Pole

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

Photographs by Basil Pao

A WEIDENFELD & NICOLSON EBOOK

First published in Great Britain in 1992 by BBC Books
This ebook first published in 2010 by Orion Books

This edition copyright (c) Michael Palin 1999
Photographs copyright (c) Basil Pao
Maps by David Atkinson

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.

Thanks are due to A.P. Watt Ltd for their permission on behalf of Paul OPrey to reproduce the extract from his introduction to Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1983 edition) on page 215, and on behalf of Ronald Huntford to reproduce the extract from The Last Place on Earth on page 287.

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

ISBN: 978 0 2978 6358 8

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

For almost a year after my return from travelling around the world in eighty days, well-intentioned ideas for sequels were generously offered. I had only to show up with a suitcase for the 10.15 to Bristol for someone to ask, Off round the world again, Michael? A chance sighting of me far from home would prompt a cry of recognition: Whats this, Michael round Penrith in eighty days?. Taxi-drivers would hold me personally responsible for new traffic schemes: You should try going round this lot in eighty days!. A moments hesitation at a road junction would not go unnoticed: You can get round the world in eighty days but you cant find your way across Oxford Street!.

It was beginning to drive me up the pole and Clem Vallance, ever the opportunist, suggested that if I was going up one pole I might as well do the other. His idea was simplicity itself - on an atlas, anyway. A journey from North to South Poles along the 30 degree East line of longitude, chosen because it crossed the greatest amount of land.

I wanted to call it Pole to Pole by Public Transport, but owing to the absence of a bus route through the African bush or an Awayday across Antarctica, this had to be dismissed as wishful thinking. In the event, though we relied on aircraft to get us to the Poles themselves, we completed the rest of the journey overland, on a mixture of ships, trains, trucks, rafts, Ski-Doos, buses, barges, bicycles, balloons, 4-litre Landcruisers and horse-drawn carts.

The bulk of the journey was made between July and Christmas 1991. With one ten-day break at Aswan we travelled and filmed for five months, passing through seventeen countries and making over seventy overnight stops.

We were unable to film at the North Pole in July as no plane would take the risk of landing on the summer ice, so the section from the North Pole to Tromso in Norway was filmed separately, in May.

1991 was an exceptional year. A quarter of the countries we visited had undergone, or were undergoing, momentous changes. Communism disappeared in the USSR and apartheid in South Africa. We arrived in Ethiopia four months after the conclusion of a civil war that had occupied parts of the country for thirty years and in Zambia on the day Kenneth Kaundas 28-year reign ended.

Pole to Pole is, like Around the World in 80 Days, based upon diaries and tape-recordings kept at the time. They describe the pain and the pleasure of the journey as it happened. I have deliberately not used the benefit of hindsight to change any of those entries. What you get is what we saw and experienced in those extraordinary months between the Poles - warts, bedbugs and all.

Pole to Pole was in every sense a team effort. First and foremost on the team was Clem Vallance, whom I must thank for the original idea, the meticulous preparation to bring it to fruition and for his guidance and good company on the road.

Nigel Meakin, Patti Musicaro, Fraser Barber and Basil Pao travelled with me almost everywhere and I owe them enormous and almost inexpressible thanks for not only being the best technicians in the business but for being the very best travelling companions. Mirabel Brook shared the brunt of the preparation work and much of the travelling with patience and humour. Roger Mills, who had been my co-director on 80 Days, made sure the work was fun, and after work was even more fun. Angela Elbourne, another 80 Days veteran, was, if it were possible, less flappable than ever. Mimi OGrady in the London office was our dependable and ever-present lifeline to the outside world. At Prominent Television I must especially thank Anne James for working so hard to get the show on the road, Alison Davies for painstakingly and encouragingly putting my ravings and ramblings in order, Una Hoban for signing the cheques and Kath James for keeping the world at bay while I was away.

There are many more people without whose help, energy and enthusiasm Pole to Pole would not have happened. Besides those already mentioned in the book, I would like very much to thank Paul Marsh, who patiently and valiantly tried to teach me Russian, Roger Saunders, Chris Taylor, Sue Pugh Tasios, Gabra Gilada, David Thomas, Alex Richardson, Jonathan Rowdon, Anne Dummett and last but not least Suzanne Webber, Suzanna Zsohar, Linda Blakemore and Julian Flanders at BBC Books.

For travel information I relied heavily on the excellent