- Title: Going To Extremes: The Silk Routes (Nepal)
- Date: 4th April 2005
- Description:Geographer Nick Middleton,an Oxford academic with an interest in desertification,explores the hostile lands that lie on the ancient border between East and West,which,for millennia,could be crossed only via a network of ancient caravan ways known as the Silk Route. (episode one) Mid-latitude man Nick Middleton continues to explore the hostile lands that lie on the ancient border between East and West,taking on the rocky Gobi desert. Last time he went it was 38 degrees in the shade. Now it's the dead of winter,he's travelling in a motorcycle sidecar,and it's colder than a deep freeze. Second only to the poles,this is the least populated place on earth; but for the nomadic descendants of Ghenghis Khan who do live here,life is sweet. Mainly thanks to the myriad uses they have found for the desert's most ubiquitous resource: stones. In these temperatures,where even engine oil freezes,stones can keep you alive at night,cook your meals and even act as a pre-prandial tonic. Travelling south into Turpan in China,Nick meets people who earn their daily bread underground,keeping ancient hand-dug canals flowing so that they can produce the famous pigeon-flavoured wine that has been the region's speciality since the time of Alexander. Then Nick heads east to the 130,000-square-kilometre Badain Jaran sand sea,home to the world's highest sand dunes. Having crawled to the top of one of them,he ends up helping to deliver a present to the staggeringly isolated Lao Gao and his family. Prod/ Dir: James Bates; Exec Prods: Zam Baring,Andrew Palmer
- Broadcaster:Channel 4
- Collection: KEO Films
- Genre:Documentary and Factual
- Producer:Keo Films Ltd.
- Programme Episode:Episode 1
- Transmission Date:04/04/2005
- Rights:Worldwide
- Decade: 2000s