Michael Palin: On The Road Again

In these days of Twitter and Facebook and instant messaging, a gap of nine months between website messages seems positively Neanderthal, so I apologise. It's not that I take a long time to type, it's just that I haven't been zooming around the world with my normal regularity. Until last month that is, when, in the space of three weeks I visited Dubai, Brazil and Tiverton.

Dubai was about books, for I had been asked to give the opening talk at the Emirates Literary Festival. I did a quick round up of my working life which I called "Forty Years Without A Proper Job" (though it's actually forty-six years now since I collected my first pay check) and there was much laughter.

The next day I went up the tallest building in the world - the Burj (meaning 'tower) Khalifa. The top's not yet been kitted out, so we only got to the 124th floor. I don't know what it is, but the higher you go the less impressive the view is. Of course you can see a long way, but your relationship with the surface of the planet is so remote that the city below looks like a model, or a diagram. But I've lived in a two-storey house for forty three years so what do I know. The lift WAS impressive. 124 floors in less than a minute. That's a Formula One lift, that is.

Books have taken up most of the last nine months of my life as I've had my head down trying to complete my second novel (the only published one so far was "Hemingway's Chair" (1995) "Brilliant - M Palin" It's almost completed now and has the working title of "The Truth". Writing novels, as I'm sure you'll appreciate, is just not something that sounds exciting on the website.

Much more exciting is that after Dubai I spent eleven days in Brazil. I'd spent one night there in 1996, on the way from South Africa to Chile to fly to the South Pole, and had seen nothing except the salesmen on Copacabana Beach. This trip took me from Rio, down the coast to the good-looking old town of Paraty, then up to Salvador and back to Rio via the Minas Geraes town of Tiradentes, heart of the gold rush that made Brazil such a magnet in the 17th century.

It was a reconnaissance trip for a new four-part BBC 1 series, and accompanying book - which should be ready in the autumn of 2012 - when all eyes will be on Brazil as host for both the World Cup of 2014 and the Olympics of 2016. It was a thrilling journey, full of great sensations, and provided I can stay on my feet, I think this Brazil series has the potential to be very special. Watch this space !

But now to the question you all want answered. Why Tiverton ? Well that was in my capacity as President of The Royal Geographical Society, which has over the last year kept me in touch with the world without ever going further than our headquarters in Kensington Gore - where anyone interested in Geography should go - we'd love to see you. There's a terrific library of books, photos and maps and we're always on the look out for new members - especially young members. Plug over. Tiverton was not as wild as Brazil, but the green Devonshire hills made me wish I'd brought my walking boots. So it looks as if next year will be spent less with my nose in a book than with my nose in a caipirinha (particularly good with passion fruit). And I should, once again, have some travellers tales to tell.

Meanwhile I just have to live off other peoples. So, keep travelling and keep telling us your stories. Thanks for reading. Enjoy the website. Yours always,

Michael

Michael Palin: Still (working like) Crazy After All These Years

Thanks to Simon and Garfunkel for most of the title.

Way back last October I told you of my plans to write a novel. Well, I still have plans and more words to show for it. But it's difficult to clear the days and just concentrate on writing. Being President of The Royal Geographical Society (I started a three-year term in June last year) involves a lot of appearances at the Society to introduce speakers and occasionally give talks myself and this last year, a lot of time spent fund-raising for improvements to the Society's headquarters just along from the Albert Hall. Which is where I joined Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam as one-night guest stars in Eric and John Du Prez's take on The Life Of Brian called Not The Messiah. So for the second time in my life (the first being at the Concert for George) I found myself singing The Lumberjack Song at the Albert Hall. Only this time I got the words of the chorus wrong! Must be old age!

There was also a Python reunion in New York, so the old bugger is still alive and well and giving me yet another excuse for not finishing the novel.

Recent interruptions have included a brilliant visit to Bologna in Italy for a Film Festival celebrating the work of Peter Sellers. Every time I see work by him and Spike Milligan I realise how much I've been influenced by them both in acting and writing. In a rare clip from 1953, one of their sketches begins with two men banging coconuts together. "Give the horses some water", someone says, and they drop the coconuts into a bucket.

Also to Warsaw last month to promote the publication of the book of my journey Around The World In Eighty Days which now joins Himalaya and Sahara (and my first novel Hemingway's Chair) in a specially translated Polish edition. And earlier in the year, as the ash clouds gathered over Europe, to Paris to promote the first French language edition of Pole to Pole.

Have tried hard to resist the temptations of book festivals. I feel that I should write the book first and then go to the festivals. But I've been seduced by the delights of southern Ireland to attend the West Cork Literary Festival to which I'm paying a flying visit this Thursday, 8th July.

That same day sees the publication of the easy-to-read, lightweight, all-singing, all-dancing paperback edition of my Diaries from the 1980s, Halfway To Hollywood, so I'll be doing some signings and radio and TV interviews over the next two weeks. Again, instead of writing the novel!

Two bits of travel news. If negotiations work out well I plan to reunite with the team next year to shoot a three-part BBC1 series in Brazil. I hope we can sort it all out satisfactorily as I shall soon be too old to move unaided. (Though whenever I think I'm too old I look at David Attenborough, now into his eighties and still showing us whippersnappers a clean pair of heels!)

In late March I spent a week in Orissa, a state on the Eastern side of India, south of Kolkata and north of Chennai. I can recommend it. Little known by tourists from outside India, the capital Bhubaneswar has plenty of accommodation and some of the finest Hindu temples I've ever seen. Beautiful craftsmanship dating back nearly 2000 years. There's wildlife and dolphins in an inland sea-water lake nearby and further upstate are forested hills which are home to the adivasis - the oldest indigenous tribes of India. They are sadly not being left alone. The hills amongst which they have lived for many centuries contain valuable minerals and a huge aluminium refinery was built near the Nyamgiri Hills recently. The mining company want to get at reserves of bauxite, and a particularly rich seam runs through the Nyamgiri Hills. Unfortunately several indigenous peoples still live there including the Dongria Kondh, for whom the hills gave always been sacred.

The company is currently awaiting a decision from the Indian government which they hope will allow it to begin mining, which will involve bulldozing and blasting the top of the hills to a depth of some 30 metres. The villages of the Dongria Kondh will be destroyed if the project goes through. Depressing because we all use aluminium so we're all to an extent complicit. But for the people who have lived here for so long, and whose way of life doesn't need aluminium, the impact of what is to happen is impossible for them to understand.

I found this head-on collision of ancient and modern ways of life deeply sad. Recently in the Independent newspaper the business section advised that the shares of the company that is mining in Orissa might be a good buy despite its record and reputation. I wrote this letter in protest and it was published in the paper last Thursday 1st July:

"At least your Business Section is commendably honest about claiming the moral low ground. "If You Can Stomach It, Vedanta Is A Good Buy", Independent 30.06.10.

I certainly couldn't stomach it. But then I've been to the Nyamgiri Hills in Orissa and seen the forces of money and power that Vedanta Resources have arrayed against a people who have occupied their land for thousands of years, who husband the forest sustainably and make no great demands on the state or the government. The tribe I visited simply want to carry on living in the villages that they and their ancestors have always lived in. Vedanta shares will doubtless go up when and if permission is granted to bulldoze their sacred hills in order to extract bauxite. If you want to make some money out of that, as the Independent recommends, that's up to you. If, on the other hand you have any reservations about destroying a way of life, you might wish to pause, think and read a little more about what's going on in the Nyamgiri Hills".

It's a story to watch.

Now I'm escaping into the wonderful world of fiction to avoid all this awfulness. Or better still, to confront it.

Love to all. Thanks for continuing to join me on the site and, whatever you do, never lose interest in the world!

Michael

July 5th, 2010

Michael Palin: Geography: NOT boring...!

Oh cripes and crikey. Four months since my last letter. Honestly, it's not laziness, it's just a surfeit of stuff to do (and the arrival of a second grandson, Wilbur Spike Palin, on August 6th was a lovely distraction). And in the middle of it all, I managed my first foreign travel since the West Bank - a week's family holiday in north-east Mallorca.

Mainly I've been attending to the latest volume of Diaries - Halfway to Hollywood, 1980-88. A lot to do at the last minute - checking we've spelt names right, making sure we won't be sued - then preparing for publication with interviews, radio and TV, recordings of the audiobook and so on.

All pretty good but Paul O'Grady show was the best fun. It helped that Paul is a great traveller and loves diaries. Now I'm on the road defacing people's books. I notice someone has very helpfully put the signings schedule on the site. Thanks for that and see you there.

At the same time, I've been taking time to fulfil my duties as President of The Royal Geographical Society, which began on June 1st for a three-year period. We're now into the Monday lecture season and have already had amazing talks on the ancient rock carvings of the Sahara, Frank Gardner's unstoppable enthusiasm for all dangerous sports despite being paralysed after the attack on him and his film crew in Saudi Arabia, and coming up is a talk from the great mountain climber Andy Cave. All proving geography is NOT boring!

As if this weren't enough there's been a lot of interest in how old the Pythons are. In fact, our first programme ever went out on the BBC forty years ago this October. A new documentary "Monty Python - Almost The Truth, The Lawyers Cut" has been made to celebrate our fortieth birthday. Six hours of new interviews recently discovered material and some of the old classics put together for television and condensed into a 105-minute film for theatres. I'm off to New York this week to reunite with all those Pythons still alive for a premiere of the movie and a BAFTA award. Then back home to appear at the Royal Albert Hall on 23rd October playing a few minor roles in Eric Idle and John du Prez's oratorio "Not The Messiah" - a musical evening based on the Life of Brian and featuring a huge orchestra and a huge choir in the huge Royal Albert Hall.

In between all this, I'm trying to press on with a new novel - my first since "Hemingway's Chair" in 1994. I'm keen to let my imagination loose. It's been cooped up too long.

I'll continue to be tempted by a return to the road, but it doesn't look as if I've much time for new places - at least for a while. I'm still looking at the atlas, though.

Thanks to all those who've come along to the talks or signings I've been doing for Halfway To Hollywood. It's always good to meet you and your loyalty is greatly appreciated by me, my wife, my bank manager and both our cats, Elsie and Edith.

Sometimes I'm quite glad to be able to stay at home for a while. I've seen so much these past 21 years that I need to take it all in. Try and make sense of what I've seen. Otherwise, it becomes a blur. Fortunately, I have time, through the Royal Geographical Society, to stay in touch with travel and travellers, and I like to hear of your own experiences - especially of places I've never been to. My list of must-see before I die places would include Brazil, Iran, Oman, Sri Lanka and Bridlington. Oh well, I can dream.

Enjoy yourselves and stay restless,

October 11th 2009

Michael Palin: 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 & 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
www.palinstravels.co.uk

Michael Palin: Eighty Days Revisited

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

Michael Palin: 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 - 12th May 2008.

Michael Palin: 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 worldwide 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

Michael Palin Goes the Dzong in Bhutan

“If the fabled Shangri-La exists beyond the legend, this is it.” – Michael Palin

English comic and now celebrated travel documentary maker, Michael Palin, is currently enthralling television audiences with his enriching odyssey, Himalaya.