BBC – Sahara with Michael Palin [Complete Set] (2002)

March 26, 2008

BBC – Sahara with Michael Palin [Complete Set] (2002)
English | Xvid | 704×384 | MP3 | 128kbps

Episode One

Michael’s journey begins in Gibraltar, and with a 21-gun salute in honour of the Queen’s birthday ringing in his ears, Michael crosses the Straits to Tangier in Morocco.

It is only after pausing in Fez and Marrakech, and scaling the High Atlas, that Michael’s “Line in the Sand” enters real desert.

This is hard, hot country, controlled by the Polisario Front who have been in confrontation with the Moroccans for over 25 years.

But this inhospitable land is softened by the warmth shown by the Sahawari people, who guide Michael south to the Mauritanian border.

Here he climbs aboard the “longest train in the world”, breaking his journey at Chinguetti.

There is just time for Michael to defeat the local champion at a game of desert draughts, played with stalks and camel droppings, before he gets literally taken over by the 24th Paris-Dakar Rally and its sole surviving British entrant, Dave Hammond from Cirencester.

Download:

http://rapidshare.com/files/101726925/swmpep1.part1.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726907/swmpep1.part2.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726863/swmpep1.part3.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726874/swmpep1.part4.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726821/swmpep1.part5.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726842/swmpep1.part6.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726906/swmpep1.part7.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726717/swmpep1.part8.rar

Episode Two:

Leaving the desert behind Michael briefly savours the delights of cosmopolitan Senegal: jazz clubs, wrestling competitions, dance troupes and the Queen of the Senegalese soaps, Marie-Madeleine.

Joining the so-called Bamako Express, he endures two days and nights on the train, but in the process gets to know a school mistress who is nothing if not forthright about the disadvantages of polygamy.

In Bamako he finds renowned kora player, Toumani Diabate, and delights in a master class before heading off to Dogon country.

The Dogon people have one of the most distinctive and celebrated cultures of West Africa and they nearly kill him with a combination of excessively complex origin myths, an exploding flintlock and boiling hot millet.

Celebrating the Muslim Tabaski feast in the beautiful city of Djenne with a man called Pygmy, and securing a passage on a cargo boat with a Norwegian missionary called Kristin, the rest of the journey down the Niger River to Timbuktu seems plain sailing till the boat runs aground a day out of its destination.

Download:

http://rapidshare.com/files/20159334/swmpep2.part1.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/20159451/swmpep2.part2.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726881/swmpep2.part3.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726905/swmpep2.part4.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726848/swmpep2.part5.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726841/swmpep2.part6.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726835/swmpep2.part7.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726730/swmpep2.part8.rar

Episode Three:

Michael reaches the city of Timbuktu along with a camel train carrying the giant salt blocks that made the city one of the greatest centres of Islamic learning up until the 16th century.

Michael wanders through the rubble that is 21st century Timbuktu to find the Imam who shows him original astronomical textbooks that predate Galileo’s discoveries by 200 years.

Leaving one of Timbuktu’s most famous addresses, the house of Alexander Laing, the Scottish explorer who had his throat slit for not converting to Islam, Michael heads East to the land of the Wodaabe.

These nomadic herders are some of the last true pastoralists of the African continent – famous as much for their male beauty pageant as their stylish cattle.

Living in the bush with them Michael watches the complex rituals surrounding this extraordinary annual pageant, the Gerewol, where the girls get to choose the prettiest boy.

It is the season after the rains, a time of relative plenty for the nomads, and Michael’s Wodaabe family, led by the English speaking Doulla, travel to Ingall for the Cure Salee – a
gathering of clans that takes place every year.

Amidst the chaos of camel races, shopping and general mayhem, Michael meets up with a group of Touareg for the next leg of his journey: a camel train across the Tenere desert to Algeria.

Omar, the cameleer’s cameleer, introduces him to the delights and vicissitudes of life on the move in the most desolate landscape on the planet.

Walking 12 hours a day, eating the odd sheep, and learning the rudiments of Tamashek, the language of the Tuareg, Michael finally gets to grips with the heart and soul of the desert.

The going is tough, like the sheep, but the sense of comradeship with the cameleers and the camels, who are their lifeline, is palpable.

When the time comes to leave Omar and his retinue the tears are not all crocodile ones.

Download:

http://rapidshare.com/files/101726801/swmpep3.part1.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726915/swmpep3.part2.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726896/swmpep3.part3.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726850/swmpep3.part4.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726886/swmpep3.part5.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726868/swmpep3.part6.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726872/swmpep3.part7.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726732/swmpep3.part8.rar
Episode Four:

Michael arrives at the border of Niger and Algeria, the most desolate crossing in the world, where banditry is a way of life in the absence of law and order.

This was where Mark Thatcher famously got lost; but the country has a harsh beauty.

Turning north Michael passes through the dramatic mountains of the Hoggar massif before he pauses in the oil and gas fields of central Algeria.

At this point he makes a brief diversion into Colonel Gadaffi’s Libya to attend the very last reunion of the Desert Rats of Tobruk, before turning west along the North Coast past stunning and deserted classical sites at Apollonia, Cyrene and Leptis Magna.

Crossing into Tunis Michael re-lives the filming of The Life of Brian in Monastir, before taking the Maghreb Express to the dangerous city of Algiers.

Just along the coast is Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on Morocco’s coast, a little chunk of Fortress Europe in Africa, and so a magnet for Africans.

Michael talks to would-be immigrants before returning to his original starting point, Gibraltar.

En-route he learns of the terrible fate that has engulfed so many Saharan men, women and children who attempt the eight mile crossing in search of a better life.

Download:

http://rapidshare.com/files/101726853/swmpep4.part1.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726846/swmpep4.part2.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726802/swmpep4.part3.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726875/swmpep4.part4.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726931/swmpep4.part5.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726870/swmpep4.part6.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726900/swmpep4.part7.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726738/swmpep4.part8.rar

Extras:

http://rapidshare.com/files/101726909/swmpex1.part1.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726879/swmpex1.part2.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726772/swmpex1.part3.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/101726917/swmpex2.part1.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726812/swmpex2.part2.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726892/swmpex2.part3.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726659/swmpex2.part4.rar

http://rapidshare.com/files/101726932/swmpex3.part1.rar http://rapidshare.com/files/101726795/swmpex3.part2.rar

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