9/05/2005 04:52:00 PM|||The Zen Master|||For those of you whose cable carriers bring the brilliant programming of BBC World into your homes, I have to recommend this awesome show, "Holidays in the Danger Zone." The BBC World website describes host and author Simon Reeve's project thus:
There are almost 200 official countries in the world, but there are dozens more breakaway states which are determined to be separate and independent. The breakaway states have their own rulers, parliaments or warlords, and are home to millions of people, but they're not officially recognised as proper countries by the rest of the world. Several have their own armies and police forces, and issue passports and even postage stamps which the rest of the world ignores.
All of the breakaway states have declared independence after violent struggles with a neighbouring state. Some now survive peacefully, but others are a magnet for terrorists and weapons smuggling, and have armies ready for a fight. All could be at the centre of future wars which threaten their regions and the wider world.
In a world of easy adventure tourism, Simon visits breakaway states & unrecognized nations which don't usually feature on the tourist trail: Somaliland, Transdniestria, South Ossetia, Taiwan, Abkhazia, Ajaria and Nagorno-Karabkh.
I caught the episode on Taiwan this weekend, and sadly missed the first two on Somaliland and Transdniestra. However, there's still two more to come in the following weeks, and I'm sure they'll repeat the others like they unfortunately do all too frequently. (Why when they clearly have such amazing thinkers brainstorming programs in some London thinktank must the BBC resort to reruns the vast majority of the time?)
Still, as I contemplate my hopeful odyssey through Central Asia next summer--I'm hoping to travel overland from Beijing through Yunnan in southwestern China to Tibet and onto Xinjiang in the northwest, then across the border into Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, from Turkmenbashi across the Caspian Sea by ferry to Baku in Azerbaijan, and then by plane to Istanbul, whence I'll either head by train back up into Eastern Europe or island-hop around Greece to Athens before heading home--I'm particularly attuned to any discussion of very out of the ordinary travel destinations, especially ones that might not be perceived as the safest of vacations by those less in the know.
I'm sure there'll be more on here about my work planning that trip as it comes together (or falls apart), but for now, a television show that's even tangentially related is certainly enough to catch my eye. Besides, its exactly the kind of television this world could do with a lot more of.|||112591032652564475|||"Holidays in the Danger Zone"