Author/Presenter: Michael Palin.
Full Circle could be subtitled Palin's Book of Wonders. As he and his television crew undertake what may be the first-ever circumnavigation of the Pacific Rim, they prove that there is an awful lot of the world Palin hasn't seen. In this, the third and most ambitious of Michael Palin's adventures, he travels for almost a year through the eighteen countries that border the world's largest ocean. It is a voyage of epic proportions, longer and more demanding than anything he's taken on before.
The Pacific Rim is one of the most volatile areas in the world. Not only are economies expanding faster than anywhere else on earth, but the earth itself is in a constant state of flux. Volcanoes mark Palin's journey like stepping stones. He climbs one which has freshly erupted and is still smoking. He is forced to negotiate mountains and plunging gorges, cross glaciers and dodge icebergs. He follows great rivers like the Yangtze and the Amazon to some of the most remote places on earth, and he confronts the notorious Cape Horn and the windswept beaches of western Alaska.
The people Palin meets provide a constant supply of surprises, pleasures and lessons in life. He visits a Gulag camp in Siberia with one of its few remaining survivors, talks to head-hunters in Borneo, eats maggots in Mexico and rustles camels in the deserts of Australia. He's stood up on a date in Adelaide, taken short on the banks of the Amazon, allowed to land a plane at Seattle and sing with the Pacific Fleet choir in Vladivostok.
Full Circle is the record of a journey of several lifetimes and of the often colourful, sometimes disgusting, frequently hair-raising, once or twice hysterical but almost always beautiful world that stretches around the Pacific Ocean. Photographer Basil Pao's dazzling colour photographs reflect the staggering diversity of the people and the landscape. Whether you prefer your travel in an armchair or a war canoe Full Circle will delight the senses, stretch the imagination and spark off a thousand holiday arguments. And you won't have to take malaria tablets. © Michael Palin 1997. BBC Books.