Pole to Pole (Paperback)

~ Michael Palin (Author) "It's 3.45 on a Saturday afternoon and I'm 17 miles from the North Pole..." (more)
Key Phrases: degree meridian, restaurant car, South Pole, South Africa, Soviet Union (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Actor Michael Palin has managed to keep busy since his days with the British comedy group Monty Python. First, he traveled Around the World in 80 Days while a BBC crew filmed his adventures; in Pole to Pole, Palin once again straps on his old kit bag--this time to traverse the globe from north to south. Accompanied once again by a dauntless film crew, Palin begins in the far, frozen wastes of the Arctic Circle, then passes through 17 countries, including Norway, the former USSR, Turkey, Egypt, South Africa, and Chile, before standing at last at the South Pole. Along the way the company is faced with revolution, illness and injury, and not a few bumpy plane rides--occurrences they meet with the obligatory stiff upper lip. Palin also rides in a hot air balloon, acquires a camel, consults a witch doctor, and plunges into the heart of a South African diamond mine, two kilometers beneath the surface of the earth.

These adventures and more are related in Palin's journal entries and illustrated by dozens of color and black-and-white photographs. The best travel stories often chronicle trips no sane person would care to experience herself; in Pole to Pole, Michael Palin has done the suffering for us, leaving readers to enjoy the humor, excitement, and joy of exotic climes from the comfort of our armchairs. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

'The cracked and fissured ice-pack offers no comfortable reassurance - no glimmer of any reward to the traveller who has made his way to the top of the world. The Arctic Ocean, known to the Victorians as the Sea of Ancient Ice, stares balefully back as we descend towards it, reflecting nothing but the question: Why?' Michael Palin's adventure begins when he is enrolled in the Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society...Travelling by train, truck, raft, Ski-Doo, barge, balloon and bicycle, Michael Palin experiences every extreme the world has to offer. Braving the cold grip of the Arctic Circle, and the swirling snowstorms of Spitsbergen, Palin has to cope with friendly locals, occasional gunfire and his own unruly digestive system before he can finally stand in Scott's shoes at the South Pole, in the Land of the Midnight Sun.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd ) (March 5, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0753823268
• ISBN-13: 978-0753823262
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #689,526 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Travel Book, June 8, 1998

By	R. Vosik "vosmo" (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Pole to Pole With Michael Palin: North to South by Camel, River Raft, and Balloon (Companion to the Pbs Series) (Paperback)

In this, the best of his travel works (see also Around the World in 80 Days and Full Circle), Palin travels along the 30 degree longitude line, which takes him to many rarely-travelled places, including Chernobyl and parts of Africa where there simply are no roads to travel.

Throughout, Palin is witty and insightful, and one wishes they were with him (except for the scene with the maggots). While travel writing might seem boring, Palin makes it interesting, and exciting. I devoured all his travel books within a very short period of time, and was left wanting more.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars On top of the world, and underneath it, October 24, 2007

By	Allan M. Lees (Novato, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Michael Palin - Pole to Pole (DVD)

After the success of Around the World in Eighty Days, Michael Palin embarked on a highly successful career as an adventure tourist. Each of his journeys has a hook: circumnavigating the Pacific Rim, going across the Sahara Desert, or in this case making the journey from the north pole to the south pole following as best as possible longitude 30 degrees.

Along the way, from snow to savannah, from Norway to Nairobi, the charm of Palin's travels comes from the unassuming way he interacts with the people he meets on route. His personality carries the relatively unstructured travalog along on a sea of well-meaning interest and curiosity. He tells us when he's tired, anxious, and bored. We are touched by the genuine friendships he makes, however fleetingly, and the partings are often touching. In Pole to Pole the meat of the journey is Africa and we travel from relatively cosmopolitan Egypt to what in politically incorrect days was referred to as Darkest Africa. Even in 1991 witchdoctors outnumbered the western kind, and random violence was never far from view. Indeed, at one point Palin stays with a European estate owner in Zambia and his family and after the visit is concluded we learn from the voice-over that they were slaughtered six months later.

I spent a few formative years in southern Africa and it was shocking to me to see how little had changed since last I saw it. If anything, most of the change was for the worse: the old trains and buses simply have grown older, the disorder greater. Only in South Africa did time seem to have moved on. For the casual viewer the sheer range of experience in Africa should be fascinating, even though we get the merest glimpse. How can one capture a continent in just a few minutes of video? Like many people, I suspect, my favorite moments were of Palin sitting on top of the slow train creaking its way through Sudan, talking with those who can't afford to travel any other way, and seeming perfectly at home. Somehow Palin makes us forget how unlikely it all is: a well-paid BBC personality squatting among the illiterate and impoverished, interacting with them as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Perhaps no other TV presenter could really pull it off convincingly.

In the end the "hook" seems a little forced: Palin flies in to the north pole and he flies in to the south pole. It's not really much of an epic journey but it was more hazardous than it might seem: when he made the trip to the South Pole there was inadequate navigation and infrastructure and it would have been all too easy for him to have perished due to half-baked preparation and execution on the part of those tasked with ferrying him around. Fortunately all survived and went on to make several other telejourneys to various parts of the world; journeys which are now slowly being remastered onto DVD and released by the BBC. If you don't have the chance to travel much beyond the usual tourist haunts, by all means pick up a copy of Palin's travels and experience the sights, sounds, and people you will otherwise never know of.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superhappyterrific fun-time video series, September 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Pole to Pole (4pc) [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Michael Palin takes us on a voyage from North to South Pole and along the way introduces the interpid couch-traveller to some great sights, inateresting people, and the usual Palin humor. Highlights include the fjords of Norway, Russia and the Ukraine before the general's coup and a crazy long trip through the heart of Africa. Lots of fun...a great way to spend a cold autumn saturday.