Himalaya is the book that Michael Palin

Michael Palin

Michael Edward Palin, CBE FRGS is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for his travel documentaries....

 wrote to accompany the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 television documentary series Himalaya with Michael Palin.

This book, like the other books that Michael Palin wrote following each of his seven trips for the BBC, consists both of his text and of many photographs to illustrate the trip. All of the pictures in this book were taken by Basil Pao

Basil Pao

Basil Pao Ho-Yun is a Hong Kong-based photographer who is perhaps best known for his work as the stills photographer on the BBC filming teams that made Michael Palin's TV travel programs.-Early career:...

, the stills photographer who was part of the team who did the trip (Pao also produced a book, Inside Himalaya

Inside Himalaya

Inside Himalaya is a large coffee-table style book containing pictures taken by Basil Pao, who was the stills photographer on the team that made the Himalaya with Michael Palin TV program for the BBC....

, containing many more of his pictures).

The book contains eight chapters: Pakistan, India, Nepal, Tibet, Yunnan (China), Nagaland and Assam(India), Bhutan, and Bangladesh. The book is presented in a diary format; Palin starts each section of the book with a heading such as "Day Forty One: Srinagar". Not all days are mentioned, a result of the trip as a whole being broken up into shorter trips (a fact that is not mentioned in the series).

Palin makes several treks up into the mountains, including one trek up to Everest Base Camp

Everest Base Camp

There are two base camps on opposite sides of Mount Everest. South Base Camp is in Nepal at an altitude of , and North Base Camp is in Tibet at ). These camps are rudimentary campsites on Mount Everest that are used by mountain climbers during their ascent and descent...

 at 17,500 feet (5,300 meters). Not bad, considering that Palin was 60 years old at the time. Other encounters and experiences that are related by Michael Palin include finding out that the Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama is a high lama in the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" branch of Tibetan Buddhism. The name is a combination of the Mongolian word далай meaning "Ocean" and the Tibetan word bla-ma meaning "teacher"...

not only knew who he was, but was a fan of Palin's TV programmes.

Audio edition

This book was released as an audio book, read by Palin himself, allowing the listener to hear his wit and charm, and his ability to do accents. Two versions of the audio book exist, an abridged version that lasts 6 hours and a more difficult-to-find unabridged version that lasts 11 hours 30 minutes.

External links

• Full text of Himalaya at Palin's Travels