On top of the world? (Pole to Pole - Michael Palin)

Member Name: Belgian999

Product:	Pole to Pole - Michael Palin
Date:	07/03/02 (116 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellently written, an epic adventure

Disadvantages: It's crying out for an update ten years on!

It is truly amazing how much the social and political shape of the world has changed in the last 10 years. You simply don’t realise how much progress (whether for good or for bad) has been made in the last decade, and sometimes the simple act of reading a book brings it all home. At least, this is the experience I had when I decided to pick up ‘Pole to Pole’ again a few weeks ago.

The BBC series that Michael Palin’s book accompanies was screened on BBC digital TV when I was back in Britain for Christmas, and I watched a couple of episodes, mainly because I had been given the book some years ago and vaguely remembered that the programmes themselves had been quite interesting. I simply can’t have been paying attention the first time around, or maybe it was because the events described were then so recent – either way, it soon became clear that the former Python had chosen not only a remarkable route but also a remarkable, if not unique, time to travel.

This is the story of one man’s journey - well, one man and his BBC camera crew really, but that detracts from the romance of the thing a little! Having completed his epic journey following in the footsteps of Phineas Fogg, in 1991 Michael Palin decided to embark on another great adventure, this time travelling from pole to pole, north to south, sticking to the 30 degree line of longitude as much as possible on the way and using air travel only as a last resort.

This seems remarkable enough in itself, but what is even more amazing to note is that Michael Palin was almost certainly one of the last people to travel through the USSR, as it then was. If he were to attempt the same journey today, then he would have a considerably larger number of border controls to negotiate after leaving Finland. Estonia, Russia and the Ukraine would bar the path to Turkey, all now independent countries, freed from Communism but still attempting to shake off the debt and po
verty that the collapse of the old regime left behind.

What you get is a fascinating picture of the journey from one world to another – having left behind the home comforts of Norway and Finland, two prosperous nations, Palin and co have to submit to the vagaries of travel and accommodation behind the Iron Curtain. Bureaucracy and secrecy are constant companions on their travels around Tallinn, St Petersburg (which was still Leningrad at that time!) and Odessa. The hotel rooms are spartan, the food apparently not the most appetising and most people were not allowed or encouraged to talk to the visitors from the West.

I remember watching the television pictures of tanks firing on the Soviet parliament buildings in Moscow, with Yeltsin and Gorbachev looking haggard and drawn, and realising very slowly that we were witnessing the end of an era. It seemed unreal then, which means that the whole situation must have been almost incomprehensible to Michael Palin when he managed to get hold of a newspaper in Turkey and Egypt and found out what had happened since they had boarded a ship to cross the Black Sea. They had passports with visas for a country that to all intents and purposes no longer existed...

As if this wasn’t enough, the journey also took them straight through what many have referred to as the heart of Africa. After the relative luxury of travelling down the Nile in Egypt, we are treated to descriptions of poverty and disorder in the nations of eastern and central Africa. It is much to Michael Palin’s credit that he avoids the temptation to lapse into a patronising tone when describing the haphazard scenes in cities and at border crossings, but once again you are presented with a world far-removed from your own in every possible respect.

Ethiopia was another country enduring massive upheaval at the time – the Marxist regime of Mengistu had just been overthrown and the country was taking its first ten
tative steps towards a new future. Hopes are expressed that Eritrea and Ethiopia will be able to settle their disputes peacefully, hopes that we now know were in vain as the bloody war for independence was only recently brought to a halt. The former British colonies of Kenya and Zambia are not presented in the best of lights, and Kenya in particular comes across as a largely unsafe place to visit outside of organised tourist areas. The safari lodge is fantastic, the city slums less so, while Zambia seems ordered enough – but the British Zambian family who are Palin’s hosts on their estate are found murdered shortly after the BBC crew head south, which gives the whole story a sinister edge.

However, the description of one country in particular is especially interesting given recent events in southern Africa. Zimbabwe is described as every inch the former colony – you see pictures of tree-lined boulevards in Bulawayo, with colonial clubs and all the trappings of imperial life. It is as if the transition from empire to democracy has been seamless – an image which has since been revealed to be very far from the truth as Robert Mugabe lurches slowly over the precipice into insanity. Of all the African nations visited on this journey, Zimbabwe is the one that looked least likely to succumb to violence and corruption. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

The contrast between Zimbabwe and South Africa and the rest of Africa is quite remarkable – these two nations come across as prosperous and safe, while all points north are not really places you’d want to be out on your own in after dark. For all that, South Africa just doesn’t seem to come across in a very favourable light – apartheid had just been abolished and the process of integration was still in its infancy. Although black and white could now nominally shared the same space, it is clear that for many Afrikaners at that time, the mindset remained unaffected
.

If you have not yet seen the TV series or read the book, I won’t reveal quite how the BBC crew reaches the South Pole, suffice to say that it’s not how they planned it! It would be fascinating to see Michael Palin repeat this journey ten years on, and make some sort of comparison to the places and people he saw in 1992. I would wager that the scientific stations at the poles, and the people that live and work there, would not have changed a great deal, but everywhere else would have developed almost beyond recognition. And still no one would have a definitive answer to this question: If you are standing at the South Pole, are you at the top or the bottom of the world, or both at once?

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