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EXCESS BAGGAGE
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 Listen to Excess Baggage for 10am听16 July 2005
Journey of a Lifetime
On this week's programme Sandi looks at Journey of a Lifetime, the joint award given by 大象传媒 Radio 4 and the听Royal Geographical Society听 The award is aimed at helping travellers undertake a journey which will inspire an interest in peoples and places - a journey which can then be communicated as a programme to be broadcast on Radio 4.
See the website for details on how to apply for next year's award
10am听16 July 2005
Presented by John McCarthy
This week's guests:
John Pilkington has been called "one of Britain's greatest tellers of travellers' tales". In 1983, after journeys in Africa and Latin America, he completed a 500-mile solo crossing of the western Nepal Himalaya and told the story in his first book, Into Thin Air. His interest in Asia grew further with the opening in 1986 of the border between Pakistan and China, making it possible - for the first time in forty years - to retrace virtually the whole of the Silk Road. John was one of the first modern travellers to do so, and he wrote about the journey in An Adventure on the Old Silk Road . This was followed in 1991 by An Englishman in Patagonia, recounting eight months spent exploring the southernmost tip of South America. Nowadays he is perhaps more familiar as a broadcaster with the 大象传媒 World Service and with Radio 4, for whom he has made adventure travel documentaries such as The Uttermost Part of the Earth, Pilkington in Patagonia, Pilkington in Kyrgyzstan, Pilkington in Ladakh, and most recently On the Trail of Butch and Sundance.
'Journey of a Lifetime' was John's idea. He says that one day he realised that he had been really lucky in his radio career, and that he should give something back.
Chris Brown won the award this year, His project is called, 'Moving with the Kharnak'. Chris is a photographer by profession and the award enabled him to spend a chunk of time living in Ladakh. He spent several months living and travelling with the Kharnak, the nomadic yak herders of Ladakh, Northern India. The Kharnak are pastoralists who move three or four times in a year in search of fresh pastures for their yak and pashimina herds. Chris joined them at their summer home of Yagang and travelled with them on their winter move to Dat and then on to their Spring camping grounds. Conditions were particularly harsh for the Kharnak while Chris was there, it was an incredibly bad winter. The people live at an altitude of over 5000 metres, one of only a couple of groups anywhere in the world who permanently do so. While Chris was there the temperature regularly dropped to -40c at night. Because they are a nomadic people, Chris was living in a tent.
Damian Welch was the second winner of the award. He went on an expedition to the tiny atolls of Tokelau in the middle of the South Pacific. Damian experienced the culture and customs, midnight fishing, massed singing in church, and the chatty and original sanitary arrangements called va-vas. But he found that underneath this surface lay a real environmental threat, a small rise in water level will eventually make the atoll disappear. He discovered how the inhabitants are facing this.
Jonathan Breckon is from the Royal Geographical Society who run the award jointly with 大象传媒 Radio 4.
Applications are welcomed for next years award. See the website听for details.
Additional information:
- listen to last year's winner, Luke Freeman
Chris Brown's experiences in Ladakh听will be broadcast in听Journey of a Lifetime, Radio 4, Friday 16 September at 11.00amThe 大象传媒 cannot be held responsible for
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