TV's favourite adventurer heads off through some of the

most remote and rugged terrain on Earth en route to the Himalayas.

Brian Courtis reports.

Michael Palin is pretty sure now it is an addiction.

Television's best-known world traveller says his insatiable

curiosity, the places on the map he still wants to visit, and his

very real interest in other people's lives all suggest he will keep coming back for adventure.

Travel is his drug. And the British comedy actor feeds the habit

by producing some of the most watchable of television documentaries

on visiting places. It has led him into a second phase of an

outstanding TV career. After Monty Python's Flying Circus

and Ripping Yarns, they see him here, they see him there,

those viewers see him everywhere.

It began with Around The World In 80 Days in 1989, an

attempt to replicate the adventures of Jules Verne's fictional

adventurer Phileas Fogg by travelling around the world in 80 days

without modern flight. He met Monty Python fans in Greece,

surprised us with a rare display of homesickness from an Arab dhow

in the Red Sea, ate snake in China, and, while fighting that

deadline, took us from one delight to another.

After that there was no looking back. In the 1992 trek Pole

To Pole, he took the team south bearing as close as he could

to 30 degrees longitude, heading through the ice to Finland, the

Soviet Union, Turkey and, after Egypt and the edge of war zones in

Sudan and Ethiopia, down through East Africa to South Africa. Alas,

a visit to a witchdoctor brought some bad luck as he tried to

complete the final trip to the South Pole. There was no room on the

boat to Antarctica. Still, as always Palin came up trumps.

Next came the more intriguing 1997 doco Full Circle, a

25,000-kilometre trip through Alaska, Russia, China, Vietnam,

Australia and other Pacific Rim countries. As always, it was packed

with surprise venues and entertaining characters. We went through

Spain, Florida and Cuba for the more personal, more macho

Michael Palin's Hemingway Adventure (1999), and then were

surprised by the visually overwhelming Sahara (2002). The

camel train took Palin through Fez and Marrakech before leading him

into real desert country where, with tribal people, he still found

some curious links with home.

And now life sees him aboard yet another dusty old former

British steam train, chuffing along the rugged, impossibly hilly

border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, a place of sterling

military history, now home to warlords and bandits and, presumably,

all sorts of American special forces.

Palin has a passion for these railways, and indeed the trains;

they've even named one after him in Britain (it embarrasses him

occasionally by breaking down on remote sidings). But the

controllable nature of train journeys allows him time to speak to

the locals, while his camera picks up the detail or reveals an

extraordinary landscape slipping by as his backdrop.

This time, for his six-part ABC series Himalaya With Michael

Palin, the charming Englishman is heading into what initially

looks like a Kiplingesque back-to-the-future trip through the

Khyber Pass.

What makes it special is the smiling traveller's

self-deprecating humour, his unquenchable interest in the everyday

life of a Pakistani frontier town, and his willingness to try out

local ways that make the opener, North By Northwest, one

that quickly hits the heights.

The train drops him in Gunga Din territory, in a bizarre wild

town where making and repairing guns is a local art. Kalashnikovs

and Dillinger-style pistols are all over the place, but if he

wanted a couple of WMDs I dare say they could point in him the

right direction.

"So do they have anything James Bond might want?", wonders

Palin, trying to pretend it's all impromptu and not for a moment

rehearsed. To the visitor's delight, his host produces a pen that

fires bullets. "I don't believe it!" says the pleased-as-Punch

Palin. "I was only joking."

There is more stagey fun and games in the streets of Darra, with

the rattle of the locally made AK7s and old Lee Enfields being

tested from the doorways. Palin always appears willing to play

along. He risks his jawline to a local dentist, becomes the

visiting professor of English for a day in a tribal school, and, as

a Yorkshireman should, plays cricket with the local schoolboys.

But here is a man with whom students and kings can get along. At

a splendid palace somewhere in the Hindu Kush, the local prince

shows off his palominos and racing bulls, not to forget a jockey

who lost an arm at last year's races. Then our man travels from

Chitral to join 10,000 spectators watching a wild freestyle game on

the highest polo field on earth.

Next in the diary will be a visit to Simla, once the summer

capital of India's British colonials; then Kashmir, for the

houseboats of Lake Dal; later, Dharamsala for an audience with the

Dalai Lama; and into troubled Nepal and Tibet before facing the

might of Everest.

There is, of course, always one deception that comes with these

documentaries. While he seems to be exploring with you alone,

Michael Palin the affable, boyish Englishman so jolly excited by

what he learns in the desert, the snows, or the mountain ranges,

has a camera crew of six travelling with him.

And they are not alone in his wake. Adventure tour operators

will undoubtedly be ready again for the phenomenon they call The

Palin Effect. Every time the ex-Python shows us the result of his

explorations, the agencies are swamped with calls showing interest

in the most remote destinations.

Not all that surprising, I suppose. In a recent survey of more

than 1000 travellers, it was again Michael Palin who was

overwhelmingly selected as everyone's ideal travelling

companion.

Himalaya With Michael Palin, Saturday 7.30pm,

ABC.

The Age