Full Circle With Michael Palin

A 10-part chronicle of humorist Michael Palin’s 50,000-mile trip around the Pacific Rim, beginning and ending on the island of Little Diomede in the Bering Strait., The intrepid Michael Palin undertakes a journey around the Pacific Rim, taking in 18 countries on the way. Arriving in Qingdao, Michael checks into his hotel – which is curiously like a Bavarian castle – and finds himself in a room that was once Chairman Mao’s. Having climbed China’s holiest mountain, he travels to Shanghai to see the new face of the nation, then takes a steamboat trip on the Yangtze River., Michael Palin undertakes his most ambitious journey to date, a 50,000-mile trip around the Pacific Rim through 18 countries. As he begins his year-long journey in the Bering Strait in a small walrus-skin whaler, things go ominously wrong from the start. This programme follows the first leg of the journey from Alaska to Siberia, negotiating geysers and hot springs, bad weather and transport troubles.