Beyond the holy grail

The ghost of Monty Python, the wacky British comedy phenomenon, follows Michael Palin as he travels the world for the BBC. It never ceases to amaze him when he's recognised in some far-flung country.

He recalls an Eskimo living on an island in the Baring Straits coming up and asking if he was the guy from Monty Python And The Holy Grail. "It's dark seven or eight months of the year, so they watch movies and satellite stuff a lot," he says.

Some of the things he sees capture the Python spirit. On his current time along the entire length of the Himalaya, Palin was tickled by the fishing methods of a tribe in Assam.

"They'd start at one end of the pond with wicker baskets, make a noise that panicked the fish which went into the baskets. Then the women would pick a fish out of the basket and put it down their cleavage. That's where they stored the fish. I thought this was terrific, a nine-year-old's ultimate fantasy," says Palin.

His journey today has brought him to the bowels of a London hotel to recount his latest trip, Himalaya, as the series debuts on TV. The book, audiobook and DVD will follow.

First, you have to question the title. Surely it should be Himalayas. No, says Palin. "Himalaya is how it appears on the maps. The range of mountains is Himalaya, the abode of snow. An 's' would be clumsier and westernised."

His trip through snow and ice, biting winds and high altitudes, added up to a 2,000 mile odyssey through Afghanistan, across India to the base of Mount Everest and into the Bhutanese capital before arriving in the Bay of Bengal.

As he gets older and still behaves like a 25-year-old, such trips are bound to get more challenging. "But this was tough because of the altitude and conditions, especially on the top of the plateau and places like that," he explains.

Coming so soon after making his last BBC documentary series, Sahara, he had little time to prepare. He likes to think he keeps reasonably fit and healthy, and took advice on what gear to take. "Otherwise I didn't do a great deal of preparation, apart from reading up about the area and the history. It was more mental than physical."

And there was one moment when even such an intrepid traveller as Palin came close to giving up. Getting ill is difficult to avoid because of eating different food but he admits: "I got very sick on this one." This wasn't just Delhi belly but a really bad cold, caught from someone on his team.

"There was a lot of walking on this trip. You have to walk because there's no other way. I got this terrible cold on the first day of the trek to Annapurna. The worst thing you can do is keep going up higher. The cold gets worse and worse, all painfully covered by the camera," he says.

'Towards the end of the trek, I got to the penultimate lodge - a small stone room, concrete floor, in a place where it gets bitterly cold from four in the afternoon. I could hardly move or breathe. That's the closest I came to quitting. But you can't say, 'Stop, let's go down and start again'. I did manage to carry on next day, but it was pretty nasty at the time."

He was "slightly nervous" about going to the North-West Frontier just after the Iraq war, when the British travel advice was not to go there unless essential. Once there, they were made to feel welcome and, as far as he knows, no one refused to speak to them.

That proved one of the most peaceful parts of the journey. Unlike Nepal, where Maoist Communist insurgents control a large section of the country. Palin and his team went "slightly off the beaten track" to film Gurkha recruiting days, only to witness officers taken away by intruders into the forest. The next morning, they still hadn't come back.

"We were encouraged to get out as quickly as possible," he says. "It's amazing how the atmosphere changed. It suddenly went sour and I had the feeling that the sooner we got out the better.

"For 48 hours it was quite tricky and we weren't allowed to talk to the press. Obviously we didn't want to do anything to endanger the life of the people who'd been taken."

The men were eventually released. Palin's other nervous moments included being taken up in a microlite plane with a Russian pilot who spoke no English and walking around a gorge on a very narrow path and a drop of 7,000ft below.

His other constant fear is losing film they've shot. "What happens if a roll of film rolls down the mountain? Because we're going into such remote parts of the world, the potential for film being damaged is tremendous," he says.

"This time there were security problems and the camera team refused to let film go through an airport scanners. Most people running these machines don't know what harm they might do, we had terrific fights at airports so we could carry the film with us."

One of the "very strange security episodes" happened at Srinigar airport where he was made to eat a sweet from a tin he was carrying to prove it wasn't poisoned. Someone else had to take a bite out of an apple, another had to eat from a packet of sultanas.

He has no plans for another big trip at the moment but feels that "travelling will always occupy me because I'm addicted to travel". What he doesn't want to happen is for the physical effort of keeping going to take over and leave less time to do what he really enjoys, meeting people.

He won't be treating himself to a nice holiday once he's finished promoting Himalaya. Now that their children are grown up, he and his wife prefer short breaks. "I don't go on long holidays any more," he says.

* Himalaya begins on BBC1 tomorrow at 9pm.

* The book is published by Wiedenfeld & Nicholson (£25) and is available on BBC Audiobooks (CD £19.99, cassette £15.99). Also available is Michael Palin's Travel Compendium, containing CDs of Around The World In 80 Days, Full Circle, Pole To Pole, Sahara and Himalaya, from BBC Audio books (£100). The DVD of Himalaya will be available to buy on November 22.

Published: ??/??/2004