Michael Palin's Himalaya

By SUE GAISFORD

The Kho people of Chitral, high in the mountains of Pakistan, speak a language called Khowar.

From his guidebook, Michael Palin learns some vocabulary: father is tut, mother is nun, grandfather is bap, grandmother is wow and foot is pong.

"This is the sort of language I like," he writes approvingly, and he begins trying out some phrases on his Kho companions.

It's not everyone who knows how to say "Don't go naked" in Khowar, but Palin is an unusual man. He is an enthusiast, travelling the world optimistically and inquisitively, snapping up huge experiences along with innumerable unconsidered trifles. His latest journey takes him and his faithful crew along the length of the Himalaya range, "the raised eyebrow above India", from the Khyber Pass right down to the Bay of Bengal.

It's a complex project, comprising television series, book and audiobook. Thinking now about the emotional peaks he scaled, he remembers flying in a tiny microlite over the lake at Pokhara and enduring unrefined terror as the lavishly moustachioed Russian pilot turned, grinned, gave him a thumbs-up and swooped down sideways.

He recalls meeting the Dalai Lama and being seriously impressed: "For a world leader he seems extraordinarily well-balanced, natural and unaffected: his emotions are spontaneous, his judgments carefully pragmatic." And, should all this sound a bit Mary Poppins, he adds, "there is nothing remotely weak and woolly about the man himself. He just doesn't do cynicism".

Nor, really, does Palin. But, happily, he does a lot of close observation. The absurd is never far away and little escapes him, whether it be the old houseboats of Kashmir, glorying in names such as "Young Monalisa" and "Balmoralcastle", or hoardings encouraging him to visit, say, a tailor "Where Fashion Ends", or a jungle paradise where the tempting prospect is briefly described: "Come. Get Lost".

Coupled with this eye for detail, he has the good diarist's willingness to try anything and to laugh at himself. When told that eating apricot kernels will lengthen his life, obviously he buys them. He genuinely admires many Buddhist principles but, when visiting a soothsayer who predicts he will be reincarnated as the daughter of a rich family in the West, he thoroughly enjoys his photographer's conviction that this means he'll be reborn as one of John Cleese's grandchildren.

"Charm" is often a freighted quality, ironically bestowed and uneasily received, but Palin carries it lightly. He is, famously, a very nice man - and meeting him does not dispel the image. In the eclectic study of his rambling north London house, even early on a stormy Monday morning, he looks much younger than 61, wiry and energetic. He has remarkable deep brown eyes, and is dressed in blue from denim shirt to neat suede shoes. Asked to define himself, he wriggles a bit before telling a story about doing a one-man show in his native Sheffield that he called "Forty Years Without a Proper Job. And it's true. I've never had a proper job - not a salary, nor an office, nor a long-term contract. I just sort of slipped through the net."

Although these days he is probably best known as a television traveller, for many he will forever be the man who sold a dead parrot to John Cleese in one of the most famous Monty Python sketches. His own favourite role, however, is the agonised liberal centurion in Monty Python's Life of Brian.

"There he is, sending people off to their deaths, but it's taking such a lot out of him. He really doesn't want to do it and then along comes Eric Idle and says 'Guess what? I've been set free!' and he's so pleased and everything has come right in the world. And then Eric says 'Nah! I'm going to be crucified!' and he's been had again. He's so lovely: a man who goes through history being decent, hopeless, liberal - and continually fooled."

There are some marvellously Python-esque moments in Himalaya. One comes when young Tibetan monks unwittingly re-enact the Argument Sketch (you remember it; the clinic where clients can pay to be shouted at) in a trumped-up quarrel, traditional, formalised, furious and performed just for the sake of it.

Another time, an old Chinese poet sings his famous poem (a love song to a yak) and Palin, called on to respond, obliges with a snatch of the Lumberjack Song.

Most bizarrely, on the hostile, bristling border of Kashmir, Palin is solemnly commanded to suck one of his travel sweets in front of the guard (presumably to prove its innocence) and then his director arrives and has to eat one of his sultanas and bite an apple. "If we'd dared even to smile," Palin recalls, "heaven knows what we'd have had to eat."

There were moments of pure delight, such as being asked to help bathe a 55-year-old elephant and making him rumble with pleasure, but there were also unnerving episodes. In a remote Nepali village, three young Maoists materialised and abducted the Gurkha officer who had been looking after Palin's group.

"They were young, only about 19. They had no weapons, just a pocketful of pens and a clipboard. They looked as if they were doing a survey about bus routes - but the village people, even our wonderfully brave Sherpas, were so terrified they could scarcely speak. Their fear frightened me, or at least produced a feeling of uncertainty. Why should I think these people like me just because they smile? And then, of course, the Maoists have killed lots of people ... "

As for the anti-British feeling he might have expected in the wake of the Iraq war, he saw little of it, even in Pakistan, although he admits he might have been protected from it. He smiles at a memory: "I was in a street in Rawalpindi, on my own, when a rather shady man comes up with a proposition. First he asks, am I CNN? And when I say no, BBC, that's okay: 'BBC good. CNN shit.' Then he shows me a tape he wants me to buy: 'It's Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar,' he hisses. 'Never been seen before!' And that's when I notice he's wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap. So, you could say, there's a certain amount of confusion."

- INDEPENDENT

On screen

* Who: Michael Palin's Himalaya

* Where and when: TV series, TV One, tonight 8.35pm; the book, out November, $60