Travel from New York to Los Angeles with Ludovic Kennedy.
Travel from Sydney to Perth with Michael Frayn.
Travel from Bombay to Cochin with Brian B. Thompson.
Comic Michael Palin travels historic routes on a tour of Great Britain that includes stops in York and Edinburgh, and a ride on the "Flying Scotsman" steamer.
Historian Michael Wood travels from Cape Town to Victoria Falls on the Zambezi Express.
Travel from Lima to La Paz with Miles Kington.
Travel from Paris to Budapest with Eric Robson.
Clive Anderson takes a humorous look at the contradictions and confusions of present-day China as he makes his way from Hong Kong, via Shanghai, Beijing and the Great Wall, to end up in Ulaan Baatar in Mongolia.
Finally in South Africa, Rian Malan escapes riot-torn Cape Town and makes his way across the country to Johannesburg, talking to people of all races and wrestling with South Africa's violent past and increasingly ominous future. He ends his journey amid the bizarre splendour of the Palace of the Lost City hotel in Bophuthatswana.
From St Petersburg to Tashkent with Natalia Makarova.
Palin's second Great Rail Journey (1994) takes him from the ancient walled city of Londonderry to the most western tip of Ireland. He travels his 'family line' as he attempts to trace his great grandmother who left Ireland for the USA over 150 years ago. His trip through still a war-torn Northern Ireland takes him on to Belfast before headng south to Dublin, the capital of the Irish Republic, and on to Wexford, Waterford, the little village of Buttevant and finally Kerry's Dingle Bay, the most western point of Ireland.
In South America Lisa St Aubin de Terán travels from Santos on the coast of Brazil, near Sáo Paulo, over the mountains and plains of Brazil to the Pantanal Swamp, a wilderness of lush vegetation, and on to the city of Santa Cruz, home of the cocaine barons in Bolivia. She vividly describes the contrasts of beauty and poverty which she finds in the two countries.
In Pakistan, Mark Tully journeys from Karachi in the south to the Khyber Pass on the Afghan border in the north, making a diversion to travel to Quetta via the spectacular Bolan Pass on one of the most challenging lines built by British engineers anywhere in the world.
From Crewe to Crewe via Scotland and Northern England with Victoria Wood.
From Aleppo in Syria to Aqaba in Jordan with Alexei Sayle.
A train journey from Zimbabwe to Kilimatinde with Henry Louis Gates Jr.
A train journey in Argentina from the High Andes to Patagonia with Buck Henry.
Journeys by train in Kenya and Uganda with Benedict Allen.
Train journeys through England, France, Switzerland, Italy and Greece with Ben Okri.
A train journey through Canada with Chris Bonington.
From Calcutta to Rajasthan with Ian Hislop.
A train journey through Spain with Michael Portillo.
Train journeys in Japan with Fergal Keane.
A train journey through Mexico with Rick Stein.
A train journey through Cuba with Nick Hancock.
A train journey through Senegal and Mali with Danny Glover.
A train journey through Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand with Stephen Tompkinson.
In this affectionate documentary, Michael Palin confesses to being a train spotter when he was a boy and fulfils his ambition to travel to the Isle of Skye by train. On the way, he contrasts the practical world of modern trains with the nostalgic dreams of steam and stops off to hop on a steam train in Yorkshire. His mission fulfilled at the Kyle of Lochalsh, which route will he take home?
