Tropic of Cancer: Simon Reeve

Crossing the tropics for TV

Simon Reeve presents BBC2s Tropic of Cancer, a fantastic circumnavigation of the globe that highlights major issues on the way. WideWorld met up with Simon to look over his voyage, the significance of the stories he reports on and the finer points of Kabaddi.

Why take on the Tropic of Cancer?

It completes the set! I’ve spent the last five years travelling around the tropical region. It’s the region of the world that has the most natural biodiversity and also the greatest concentration of human suffering, so it’s stuffed with amazing animals and creatures but also blighted by poverty and conflict. Two thirds of the planet’s population lives in the tropics, which is about half the surface of the world.

How much of the journey was planned, and how much just occurred around you?

I love anything that happens spontaneously, but I think it would be slightly foolish of us just to set out without some plan or scheme of what we’re going to do, because filming costs money – licence-fee payer’s money ­– so we have a shortlist of stories we’re going to try and tell on the way, and places where we’re going to try and do that. We do spend months before we go working out the route we could take, and filming spots along the way, and things to do. Because as I say, we’re spending your money.

You tackle some important issues on your travels. Are there any stories you’re really proud to have brought to the screen?

I can honestly say there was not a single day when I was on this journey when I wasn’t learning something new or discovering something new or being confronted by something that questioned my preconceptions. The moment I’m proudest of is that we went in to Burma; we had an option of going in as tourists but the whole point of following a line like this is that you follow it wherever it goes.

It was a frightening experience, because if we’d been caught, we’d have been in horrendous trouble. We had scouts ahead of us and behind in case we came in to contact with a patrol, and locator beacons, camouflage equipment, ropes, machetes, food, water – even survival kits strapped to our legs in case we had to run for it. Anything could have happened. However bad it would have been for us, it would be worse for our guide: a young exiled woman called Cheery Zahau. She took us to her area in Burma because she wanted to show the outside world what’s going on there: she’s on a Burmese military 'wanted' list, and God only knows what would have happened to her if she’d been caught. She was an extraordinarily brave woman.

We actually had to flee in the middle of the night because we discovered that a Burmese army patrol had arrived in the next village and was heading towards ours.

Covering something so unreported on television is a real privilege then?

It is exactly that. It’s an extraordinary privilege and it’s an awesome responsibility. That bit has kept me awake at night, because there are a lot of stories that you can’t fit in – we’ve only got an hour.

So what didn’t get in that you’d like readers to think on?

Travelling through Bangladesh, we looked in to one of the world’s worst poisoning cases, where the ground water supply has been poisoned by arsenic. The number of people who are slowly being poisoned runs in to the tens of millions. It’s an extraordinary story.

Would you encourage viewers to visit these places for themselves though?

Most are places that people can visit, though I would not be able to advise people to go to western Burma. The key is not just about where you go, it’s about how you travel. And I think we’re all now starting to realise that we can’t just hop on a plane without considering the impact of what we’re doing and the fact that travel is a privilege more than it is a right. And if you’re going to travel to some far-flung part of the world then let’s get the most out of our journey. Let’s get the most memorable experience we possibly can.

Is climate change an issue for people you met in the Tropics?

It became more apparent in some places than others. But it is something that I’m starting to see serious evidence of everywhere on the ground. So, yes, from southern Egypt to Bangladesh I met local villagers who were saying that their climate is starting to change. They don’t know about the global story. They just know that their village and their way of life is starting to be affected by an experience that they haven’t had in their lifetime. Their ancestors have left no records, and there are no oral stories about how you cope with, for example, a seven-year drought in Egypt’s Southern Desert.

It's not something that’s going to happen in the future, it’s something that’s really started happening now. What do we do about that as travellers? Well, I think we travel respecting the fact that this is a privilege. My ancestors never had the opportunity to travel like I am doing now and I expect my descendants won’t either. I think we live in an extraordinary moment for travel.

What about people who suggest that travel is the root of the problem?

I think that’s nonsense. I think that travel and tourism can be a great force for good. I know that there are wildlife reserves and national parks around this planet that are entirely dependent on the money they receive from tourists for their continued existence. And without tourists visiting them, then those places will be turned into a palm oil plantation or something. So we have a role to play - it’s about travelling with our eyes open. Travelling intelligently. Planning the journey, getting the most out of it, giving money to the local folk rather than the son of the dictator who owns the 5-star hotel, and just being aware of the impact that your journey has. You don’t have to beat yourself up about it, but just recognise it as a bit of a privilege and with that comes a degree of responsibility.

Your travels seem to have been blessed by some amazing guides – are there any that stick out for you?

There are two people who really spring to mind. One guy called Handi in Mauritania and Tanjil in Bangladesh. They were lovely blokes, fantastically intelligent. They were interested and keen to talk about their country and guide us around it and show us all the facets of it. What more could we ask for? They were just wonderful. Handi, the Shakespearian scholar quoting the Bard at us dressed in his flowing robes in the middle of the desert. It was just bizarre and wonderful. The most memorable travel experiences come from interactions with people, and from making a friend abroad in a place you weren’t expecting to. Yes, I love the physical challenge of going off the beaten track and going off alone and travelling into the wild. But there’s something about human interaction that’s memorable.

Finally, how did your adventures affect you physically – we saw you get mauled by a female Mexican wrestler in Episode 1!

It was painful. She does bounce off my chest, and that isn’t faked or set up. And yes, I did have some really black and purple bruises on my body – particularly on my arse actually, and unfortunately although I quite like the idea of getting sympathy from the camera in some pathetic way, I can’t really go showing my bruised arse to the BBC viewers.

I was actually more injured playing a game called Kabaddi in Bangladesh. You run around holding your breath saying ‘kabaddi kabaddi kabaddi’ while trying to tag the opposite team. I think I played against a team of guys who are half my age and four times as fit and I got thumped to the ground a few times, and I thought at one point I’d fractured a rib.

Watch Tropic of Cancer on BBC2, Sunday nights at 8pm. Visit the Tropic of Cancer site here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00n8vtk  If you're in the UK you can watch old episodes on BBC iPlayer here