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Received 16th January 2009
To Travel or Not to Travel
Times are hard, but we must resist the temptation to stay at home, pull up the drawbridge and look after number one. The economic crisis, this time around, is global. And to
understand it we need, more than ever, to keep in touch with the rest of the world, to see how others are coping and hopefully to learn something along the way.
And let's face it, you wouldn't be logging onto this
Website if you didn't feel, like me, that the urge to travel is not a tap that can be switched on and off at will. It's a persistent, niggling feeling, fed by curiosity and, hopefully by concern as well.
Those of you
who caught Around The World In Twenty Years, our BBC One documentary at Christmas, will have seen the joy and pleasure on all our faces when I showed the old Eighty Days DVD to some of the dhow crew we tracked down in
North-East India. I was as moved as they were. Despite being able to share very little of each other's language, the re-union showed that it's worth reaching out, and that the effort to re-connect can be reciprocated.
It
wasn't life-changing for either side, but the shared laughter and the enjoyment of our differences made me feel happy and safe, several thousand miles from home.
On that same journey we came very close to seeing the
other side of the coin. Only three weeks after we'd filmed in the Taj Hotel and Leopold's Bar in Mumbai, those who prefer to live by hatred and division had turned both places into killing grounds. And it's no coincidence that
the Taj Hotel and Leopold's were both places in which people from all over the world came together to meet and talk.
This, it seems was the very reason they were targeted. For those with closed minds, places like these
represent an intolerable threat to their own malign sense of certainty.
The attacks in Mumbai, and anywhere else in the world where people are prepared to kill rather than listen, are as clear a reason as there ever
need be to keep meeting, talking, travelling and connecting.
As for me, well, I've no great projects in the pipeline right now. Much of the year ahead will be spent getting Diaries Volume Two 1980 -1988, the Film Years
(working title) together.
It's due to be published in September, and I've no doubt it will send me on some promotional travels come the autumn. But I haven't stopped buying maps or cancelled my subscriptions to Geographical,
Geo or The National Geographic magazine. Nor have I stopped reading the wise and wonderful experiences of the Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski. His latest,
"Travels With Herodotus" has so much wit and wisdom, and he tells a
darned good story too. Check him out.
And check out a slim, evocative volume called Traveller by Michael Katakis (published by Burton and Park of San Francisco). I wrote the introduction because Michael represents all
the best things about travelling. He listens, he learns, he writes about his love of the world simply, clearly and with feeling. And he loves eating !
Happy travels. See you on the road.
Michael, London, January 16th 2009
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Received 10th October 2008
I'm conscious, as ever, that a lot of water has flown under the bridge since my last message. Since then I've been working hard at an edit of my Diaries 1980 -1988 in time for publication next year, whilst watching
Archie grow up and trying to come to terms with my identity theft by a hockey mum in Alaska. And no, Sarah Palin is not my sister, daughter or alias. And I'm Sahara Palin not Sarah.
After a grey old summer in London I'm
about to set out for the heat again with some of the old team, on a new journey, currently called 80 Days Revisited, which will hopefully be shown as a one-hour special on BBC-1 around Christmas. At the same time Weidenfeld and
Nicolson are publishing a new edition of Around The World In Eighty Days. Because some of the original pictures have gone missing in the twenty years since, we've trawled the archives and found some great new photographs and
the book will be completely re-designed. I've written some new material, including a new preface and a short new chapter describing our return visit. So here, good and patient Website friends, is the latest on the latest
journey.
Eighty Days Revisited
A new look at an old adventure
In Eighty Days Revisited we may not be going back to the Reform Club or ballooning over the Rockies, but we will be returning to the scene of
one of the best-remembered sequences of any of my travel adventures, the dhow journey From Dubai to Bombay, episode three of Around The World In Eighty Days. As we sailed agonisingly slowly down the Persian Gulf on board one of
world's oldest surviving traditional sailing ships we formed a unique relationship with our Indian crew. Mutual incomprehension gradually gave way to friendship and affection, as we accepted the fact that our lives, and the
success of our journey Around The World In Eighty Days was in the hands of this band of ragged, under-paid sailors from Gujerat.
After a week at sea together, I found our farewell at Bombay to be one of the most
emotional moments on all of my travels. As I said on film at the time : "It's almost impossible to accept that I shall never see them again".
Well, twenty years after we waved each other good-bye in the
crowded waters off Bombay I'm trying to prove that nothing is impossible by setting out on a search for the crew of the Al-Sharma.
With the same cameraman who shot the original dhow journey we shall re-visit Dubai and
meet those who found us the dhow in the first place, and then on to Bombay, now Mumbai, to see if, in the intervening twenty years that great teeming city has changed in more than just name. From Mumbai we take the over-night
train north and west to the little town on the Indian Ocean from where many of Al-Sharma's crew hailed.
What happens here is far from certain, but I'm hoping to make contact with as many as possible of my old
ship-mates. If all goes well we'll renew a unique friendship by sitting down together to watch, marvel and laugh ourselves silly at our adventures of twenty years' ago, when, together, we made our slow but happy way from the
Middle East to India.
This return journey, the first I've ever attempted, will be as much of a challenge as the originals. There are plenty of if's and but's on the way, but, for me, and hopefully for you, this promises
to make Eighty Days Revisited all the more exciting.
Michael P, September 2008
Received 12th May 2008
Passing Time
Thanks to all of you who remembered my birthday and sent nice messages. Especially big thanks to all those on Project Palin who signed my card. I may be very old, but it's great to know that
people in places as far afield as St. Petersburg, Connecticut, Melbourne, London and Toronto bothered to wish me well and the card has survived its travels much better than I have!
The last few months have seen me
complete a one-hour BBC documentary for the Timewatch slot. It's called The Last Day of The First World War and tells the story of what happened between the agreement to end the war at 5.15 in the morning, and the actual time
of the cease-fire 6 hours later. The tragedy is that many thousands were killed, even though the war was officially over.
A tough story, but gave me the chance to visit the First World War sites in Belgium and Northern
France and to see where it was on the Somme battlefield that my Great-Uncle Harry Palin was killed. It seems hard to comprehend what it must have been like for the soldiers fighting trench warfare. The neatly ploughed fields of
today saw an unimaginable scale of slaughter only 90 years ago.
I'm also working on a preliminary edit of the second volume of my Diaries - covering the 1980s, when all I seemed to do was make films - Time Bandits,
Meaning Of Life, Brazil, The Missionary, Private Function and a Fish Called Wanda - until the offer came to present a programme called Around The World In Eighty Days, which led to... well, Palin's travels.
We set off
from the Reform Club in September 1988, so this autumn will be the Twentieth anniversary and we're planning a one-off special programme which will be based around a return to some of the places and the people I filmed all those
years ago. No details yet , but, if it all works out, I'll let you know.
Archie is now two years old and a trainspotter. I'm a bit embarrassed about this as it all started when I lifted him on my shoulders to look over
a railway bridge near our home. Since then he shouts "Wailway!" whenever I see him.
I'm not in any great hurry to hop on a plane. I like London in May, and I'd rather give Heathrow a wide berth until they sort
out all the problems following the Terminal Five lurch, sorry, launch. Meanwhile, I've been using Eurostar as much as possible. The successful opening of the new terminal at the old St. Pancras shows that the railways can teach
the airports a thing or two when it comes to efficiency. Mind you, I should think a team of reasonably educated herrings could teach BAA a thing or two.
After twenty years on the road, or more generally on the
dirt-track, I feel quite content spending more time at home. Just keeping on travelling for the sake of it is not the point for me. I'm not so interested in ticking off the big names (North Pole, South Pole, Tierra Del Fuego,
the Amazon) just for the sake of it. You have to get something out of each encounter, a wider knowledge, a sense of history and a feeling for the people and their way of life as well as just the T-shirt.
So I've a lot
of memories and impressions, and I'm enjoying putting them in order, sealing them in my mind so they don't just drift away from my memory. Mind you, I still get very tempted when I hear of other people's adventures. John
Hemming was on Excess Baggage on Radio 4 last weekend, talking about the Amazon (which he knows so well) and making my feet itch to get back there and experience once again the magical beauty and natural wealth of the great
river and its rainforest.
But then Archie shouted "Wailway!" and I knew where my next trip was going to be!
Have a good summer. Be curious and be careful !
Michael
Received 31st January 2008
Calm after the Storm
I realise it's over four months since my last message. Since then New Europe has been out, both on television and in the bookshops and, increasingly, in supermarkets and on internet
retailers.
The response has been very gratifying. The largest single audience for a documentary on UK TV last year (7.8 million for Episode 1), and with the BBC 2 and BBC 4 repeats, a weekly audience average of around 8
million for the series as a whole. The book has just slipped out of the Top 10 after 17 healthy weeks there and total world wide sales are looking to hit 350,000.
The pressure of publicity, especially book signings,
catapulted me up to Christmas, and it's only now that the dust of filming, production and marketing has begun to settle and I can look back on New Europe and begin to assess its strengths and weaknesses.
I was very
happy with the production values, which remained as high as ever. In terms of the material, well maybe there just was too much to chew on. Although the BBC gave us an extra programme, the material we saw en route was richer
than any of us expected, and we would have needed another four or five programmes to cover all the countries as they fully deserved.
So, my apologies to some of the countries on our route that were not covered
sufficiently. All of them are in the book, and many good sequences we just didn't have space for can be seen on the DVD. Maybe we were a little over-ambitious to take on twenty countries, all of which have such different
characters and identities, histories and cultures, but the series was intended, like all the series I've made, to open a few windows on the world, and there was nowhere I didn't enjoy visiting, or learning about.
I hope
that where we have succeeded is to reveal Central and Eastern Europe to audiences in such places as Britain, Australia, New Zealand and America, who knew very little about it, and now hopefully will know more. We can't do
everything, but I'm happy if we've done enough to stimulate the curiosity of those who, like the Palin's Travel Website fans, like to do some finding out for themselves.
As often happens after a series, my appetite for
finding out more of the background to what I've just seen, is very strong, and I'm currently enjoying a Dutch writer's trip through 20th century Europe. It's called In Europe, by Geert Mak (Harvill-Secker) and is a terrific and
very readable insight into the turbulent history of Europe's last three generations. And there's a gem of a movie from Romania called "12.08, East of Bucharest". Bleak and very funny.
For all of those out
there who might suspect that all I do these days is play with grandson Archie, I've already been on the move in 2008, visiting Lisbon to see the world premiere of Terry Jones's weird and wonderful opera "Evil
Machines", and then further south to take Mrs Palin for a few days in one of my favourite places - Marrakesh. My feet itch and the wanderlust certainly hasn't cleared up, but this year I want to have time for other things
- like catching up on movies and books and art and generally seeing what everyone else is doing.
After 18 solid months on New Europe, the thought of a new long series is far from my mind, but as long as there are maps I
shall be looking at them.
Meanwhile, keep travelling - by train and canoe, if possible. Watch out for anything with Bruce Parry in it (he likes suffering almost as much as I used to) and have a restless 2008 !
Michael P, London, January 31st 2008
Received 25th October 2007
New Europe hits the silver (computer) screen
Hello everyone,
We just wanted to send you a quick e-mail to announce, with not a little pride, that Michael's latest series, New Europe with Michael
Palin, is now available on Palin's Travels.
You now have access to the entire book text, supplemented by Basil Pao's stunning photographs. Not to mention Michael's reading matter, route maps, terrifyingly accurate photo
and text searches and much, much more. And, we hear you ask, how much will all of this set you back? Not one penny. Not a single bean. It's all available at the nigh on unbeatable price of free.
We'll be running a new
competition in the near future, as well as New Europe polls and scenes from the BBC programme itself. So keep checking back, and see for yourself the excitement and hope borne out of New Europe...
Join us in New Europe at www.palinstravels.co.uk
Happy travels - the Palin's Travels Team
Received 10th September 2007
Sweet Sixteen
Exactly sixteen months after setting out on the first day of the first filming trip of our twenty-two week New Europe shoot, the results of our labours will hit the screens on BBC1 at 9
o'clock on Sunday 16th September. So, for any numerologists out there, sixteen is the number for New Europe.
A lot of behind-the-scenes work is going on at the moment as the finishing touches are put to the shows, and
the series is handed over from the filming crew to the post-production team. Alex Richardson, our superhuman editor and Birmingham City supporter, has to complete the final edits - around 58 minutes per show for BBC1 and a
shorter version for foreign sales. BBC1 gives us a nearly full hour, but there are very few television channels out there who don't want it chopped down for commercial breaks, promotional stuff etc. Which makes the DVD - with
full-length shows, plus sequences we just didn't have space to squeeze in - such great VALUE. End of plug.
I have been writing and recording commentary. Each show has around two and a half thousand words of narration,
and for me it's a very important part of the process, requiring a mix of tight, reduced information and a bit of fun as well. I like to try and make each episode into a story of its own and make sure the commentary captures the
excitement of the filming. I still have commentary for Episode Seven left to record, after which my creative input into the series is over.
The commentary then goes into the general sound mix put together by Alex and
Dubbing Mixer George Foulgham and his team. The music is added and the richness of our recordist John Pritchard's sound tracks are revealed as the various sounds of New Europe are balanced with words and music.
Then
that's it. Sue Grant, our production manager, along with assistant Michelle Hanley, tie up all the paperwork and the finished product goes off to the BBC, and we all feel rather lost.
For me, the publicity now takes
over. The book of New Europe is published on Thursday, so there's TV and book promotion to be done.
I don't mind doing it. It's part of the job, and book signings are about the only chance I have to meet the audience -
hoping there will be one !
I hope that the incredibly concentrated work everyone has put in these past sixteen months (and for the directors even longer than that) produces something that you'll find interesting,
entertaining, sometimes riveting and always good to look at. New Europe has been an eye-opener for me, and I hope that it will be for you too. These countries that have seemed so grey and indistinct are shown for what they
really are, full of life, colour, great people and lots of energy and hope for the future. I'm just sorry, that even in seven episodes, we haven't had time to do justice to every one of the twenty countries we passed through,
but those that don't get much on-screen time are in the book and on the DVD.
I've just come back from a week's publicity for my Diaries 1969-1979 in the States, and must thank anyone who came to the signings or talks in
New York, Boston and Philadelphia. You were great audiences. Many of you had seen the travel series, but the fact remains that they've never been given the level of exposure on US television that they have here, and as they
keep appearing on different cable channels, it's been difficult to build up an audience.
Our latest home is the Travel Channel, but at the time of writing I've heard no word on when they plan to screen New Europe. Any
feedback from US fans would be very welcome !
So, now I'm off to bite my nails and hope for the best on Sunday the sixteenth !
Talk soon,
Michael
Received 14th June 2007
Breaking News
Michael has broken a small blue Chinese vase which he used to keep his pencils in.
Filming on his new series wrapped up in Germany on May 4th. The title is now confirmed as
Michael Palin's New Europe.
The accompanying book is almost complete and goes on press (in Trento in Italy) at the end of June.
The series, which looks likely to be seven episodes, is currently being edited in
London, for screening in the autumn.
We'll be keeping you up-to-date with all the latest on the new series but, until then, all the best.
The Palin's Travels Team
Received 8th May 2006
Where Next ?
It's been far too long since the last message, but I'm pleased that the site goes on regardless and there are plenty of issues raised and travellers talking to each other without my getting in
the way !
Truth is that I haven't been doing much travelling myself over the last few months as I've been working on a volume of my diaries, covering the period 1969 to 1979, which are to be published in October this
year, and purely coincidentally, around about the time that Eric Idle's Spamalot, based on Monty Python And The Holy Grail (book now!) opens in the West End of London. I've also briefly revived my acting career, playing the
Narrator in Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls for Radio 4's classic serial. (Part One went out Saturday 29th April at 9 o'clock and Part Two on Saturday 6th May). It should be available online on the BBC Website. And you can also hear
my dulcet tones in Simon Gray's Quartermaine's Terms, on Saturday 17th June, also Radio 4.
Now back to the important stuff. In mid-May I and the regular crew from Himalaya and Sahara will be embarking on a new journey,
planning to make 6 one-hour programmes for BBC-1 on what we are currently calling "Palin's New Europe" - I've always disliked having my name above the geographical title but for the moment it distinguishes my new
Europe from Donald Rumsfeld's New Europe or Keira Knightley's New Europe or Wayne Rooney's non-Europe.
So what is Palin's New Europe ? At the moment it is a combination of twenty-one countries all of which were once in
the Soviet bloc and are now either part of or about to be part of the EU, as well as countries like Turkey which are considering applying to join the EU. We shall visit many countries, like Bosnia, Albania, Moldova and
Macedonia, of which we may know the names and not the detail.
The idea is to look at the way people live now in countries which will all be part of the EU over the next few years - hence the New Europe in the title.
Many of these countries didn't exist when I was born (63 years ago this May 5th !) and those that did exist have been through difficult times. I hope that the series will reflect an optimism about the new Europe, but we shall
show whatever we get.
I'm looking forward very much to learning something about my own continent. We shall try to get off the beaten track and to convey some of the beauty of the remote, unspoilt parts of Europe, whilst
never being more than three hours' flying time away from my new grandson, Archie, born on St Patrick's Day (March 17th) this year - and the most beautiful boy you could ever wish to see (apart from all the others!).
The
itinerary for our journey will be constantly changing and forgive me if I don't give away anything more about the series until we're decided on exactly what's going to be in it, otherwise we might raise false hopes and give a
few wrong impressions. I hope you'll appreciate if I go a little quiet whilst we do the filming. Much of what we shoot will be spontaneous, so I can't even tell you what we're doing ! But I'll definitely tell you what I can
whenever I can. I know that sounds like a real politicians answer !
What I can tell you is that there will be a book to go with the journey (Basil Pao is sharpening his cameras even as we speak) and that it will come
out, along with the TV series, in the autumn of next year, 2007.
I hope you regular and faithful followers of the Website will be making plans for more travels yourselves. There's much talk these days about the cost to
the environment of our insatiable urge to move around. My view is that until the aeroplane is dis-invented then we should continue to use it to learn more about our world. But you know my personal view by now. Simply flying to
a resort which looks just like home and learning and absorbing nothing of the country you're in IS a waste, not only of the world's resources, but also your own brain. Please travel but use this precious privilege (available
only to a tiny minority in the world) to try and understand, appreciate, value and enjoy how other people live. Only in this way can we who love travel, go some way to reducing the well of anger and resentment which motivates
those few, but influential people, who don't want us to get to know each other.
End of sermon. I must go and get the second of my anti tick-borne encephalitis jabs. Apparently the little bastards, sorry, our dear sweet
little brother and sister ticks, are lurking in the forests of Central Europe, along with the boars, the bears, the vampires waiting to bite my bits.
Happy travels ! Look and learn !
Michael
Received 11th November 2005
Feet Beginning To Itch Again. A new message from Michael.
Rumours are already out concerning a new travel series. Although we're in only preparatory stages of early preparation which, if
successful, could lead to full-time preparations for the preparation of a series, I'd hate to think you have to rely on the Daily Express for news of my travel plans, so here goes.
The BBC are very keen to do another
series. The crew, though ageing rapidly (some of them are almost as old as me) are very keen to do another series, and my only reservation was the that the success of Himalaya made it a hard act to follow, and there's no point
doing another series unless your heart is really in it. Whatever they say, it's mind first and body second on these big projects.
We've come up with the possible - and I repeat possible as no definite decisions have been
taken yet - idea of a journey through the New Europe. Those countries to the east that are part of our continent and yet about which we know very little. If our early researches prove fruitful we'd aim to set off on the road
again sometime next year and to produce a book and a series for the Autumn of 2007. Watch this space !
Recently I had plans to travel with Basil Pao to China and Tibet, purely as a holiday and to accompany Bas who is
taking photographs in preparation for his upcoming book on China. Those who might have read the account of my trip in the Times travel section on October 15th will know that some bronchial curse laid me low before leaving. I
did get to see the Great Wall for the first time, and the Forbidden City and the grasslands of Manchuria - oh and the giant pandas at Chengdu - but was prevented from revisiting the magnificent Tibetan plateau on the orders of
a Beijing doctor. Tibet, dusty and 4,500 metres above sea level, is probably the worst place in the world to recover from a persistent cough. A bit like going to Barbados to recover from sunburn.
So I returned home and,
apart from a great 4-day visit to user-friendly Barcelona, I've remained happily home-bound, editing the first volume of my diaries for publication next autumn. With luck I shall be in the middle of a Slovakian forest when
they're published, and out of range of any lawsuits !
One final thing. The problems of those affected by the Pakistan earthquake are actually increasing as winter makes movement from the remote mountain areas almost
impossible. Help is still needed and yet the response has been far less than that for the tsunami. These are great, tough people who would not ask for charity, but many of whom will die without it. So, if like me, you feel a
bond between yourself and the people of the Pakistan Himalaya, give now and, if you've already given, give again.
Sorry, one last thing from us Webmaster type folks. On a much lighter note. In his recent series, Michael
Palin and the Mystery of Hammershoi, Michael mentioned the "Friends of Hammershoi" and, with many people having asked about the as yet completely unofficial body, we'd like to gauge your response to such a group. If
you'd like to join, or simply read more from Michael on the
topic, just go to the Palin's Travels homepage.
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