Michael Palin undertakes his most challenging journey yet in this BBC travel series, across the Himalayas, the greatest mountain range on earth, made up of a virtually unbroken wall of rock stretching 1800 miles from the borders of Afghanistan to south-west China. Along his journey Michael Palin encounters extremes of wealth & poverty, altitude & freezing cold, & meets, amongst many others, the Dalai Lama, the Bhutanese Royal Family & the once-feared head hunting tribe of the Konyak. His travels take him through Afghanistan, across India to the feared ' Death Zone' near the base of Mount Everest, & then on to the Bhutanese capital before finally arriving in the Bay of Bengal.