Amazing Train Journeys

Season 2

2012 · 6 episodes · 5h 30m in all · 7.3/10

Episodes

1. 

   1. Thailand

   26 Jul 2012 · 55 min · 7.0/10

   The journey starts with Bang Yat, a fisherman from the Trang region, then heads north on a colourful night train. In Bangkok, a tiny train winds its way right through a local market. Next is Lopburi, the city of monkeys, where people live surrounded by the animals, and finally the ruins of Sukhothai, where a devoted monk helps young Thais take charge of their lives through boxing.

2. 

   2. Bolivia

   2 Aug 2012 · 55 min · 8.0/10

   Bolivia's trains are trains of extremes, like the country itself. Philippe sets off from La Paz, at almost 4,000 metres, to an unusual station and people whose bodies have adapted to very harsh conditions, then rides to the salt desert of the Salar de Uyuni to meet the lonely workers sitting on one of the world's largest lithium reserves.

3. 

   3. Turkey

   9 Aug 2012 · 55 min · 7.0/10

   From Istanbul, Philippe takes the train west to watch oil wrestling. Back in the ancient city, he climbs the minaret of the Blue Mosque with its imam for the call to prayer. Ten hours by train bring him to Cappadocia, a lunar landscape of caves and canyons where people carved homes, granaries and even churches into the rock. The journey ends in the Kurdish region, on the train to Iran.

4. 

   4. Romania

   16 Aug 2012 · 55 min

   Philippe crosses Romania by train, from the Carpathians to the Danube Delta. It begins in Iași, near the border, where the track gauge was changed so the Soviet Union could not run its trains into communist Romania. In Bukovina, the land of monasteries, he attends an Orthodox mass followed by a picnic in memory of the dead, then heads west to Maramureș and the Vaser valley.

5. 

   5. Malaysia

   23 Aug 2012 · 55 min

   In Malaysia the train links very different worlds: jungle, rice fields and cities such as ultra-modern Kuala Lumpur, where religions seem to live side by side in harmony. A snake hunter guards the farmers of the northern rice fields, the Hindu festival of Thaipusam draws a dense crowd, and in Malacca a local guide shows the old streets. The "jungle train" then heads into a remote region still home to the Orang Asli, the country's aboriginal people.

6. 

   6. Argentina

   30 Aug 2012 · 55 min · 7.0/10

   The journey begins in the north of the country, at the famous Iguazú Falls deep in the tropical rainforest. Then on to Buenos Aires, whose metro, opened in 1913, is the oldest in Latin America, and to La Boca, one of its liveliest districts, where tango has taken on a style of its own. Next comes the pampa, the land of the gauchos, Argentina's cowboys: one of them, Martín Tata, shows how he tames horses by whispering in their ears. But Argentina is also a graveyard of railways, with most lines abandoned, such as around Alemania, a ghost village in the mountains. In the same landscapes runs the famous Train to the Clouds, at more than 4,000 metres.