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 and poverty, altitude and freezing cold, and meets, amongst many others, the Dalai Lama, the Bhutanese Royal Family and 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, and then on to the Bhutanese capital before finally arriving in the Bay of Bengal.