'For most of my lifetime, half of my own continent had been chilled by a Cold War and concealed behind an Iron Curtain. Now there was the prospect of being able to travel through …
'It was a journey of dazzling extremes. Beauty and ugliness, sophistication and squalor, unceasing urban noise and monastic tranquillity . . . This is a record of a year of …
'The Sahara embodies scale and mystery, the thin line between survival and destruction, the power to take life or to transform it . . .'Of all Michael Palin's epic voyages, this …
'A battleground of immense geological forces that is a centre of human tectonics as well, with sacred and secular, tradition and technology, all pushing up against each other . . …
'Home seems impossibly far away as we step out onto a rough base of ice and snow. The temperature is -25°C. This is considered warm . . .'Michael Palin's journey from North to …
'The reason why the 80-day journey retains its appeal is that it is still the minimum time needed to go round the world and notice it. To see it, smell it and touch it at the same …
'Once a traveller, always a traveller, and as long as there were maps and guide books and airline schedules I was still fatally susceptible to the lure of the open road . . …
'Hemingway's world was close and uncomfortable and itchy and sweaty and frequently exhausting . . . This stuff was too good to be wasted on school exams. I must be bold and …
