Himalaya & Sex and the City

This column first appeared in The Age on November 20, 2004

I had been feeling ill enough before the cosmopolitans we had at our Sex and the City finale party, suffering, as I was, from a stylish trans-seasonal cold. Post cosmopolitan's I found it impossible to assess the raging debates about the episode. Had the show gone all conservative? Well yes, probably. (Though it must be noted that Carrie left the Russian before Big arrived). Did that ruin the end for me? Well, no. I will merely concede that, statistically, the chances of four single women in Manhattan all ending up living happily with a man are very low.

In a week of multiple finales there are new beginnings to be found. For me the six-part Himalaya With Michael Palin (tonight, ABC, 7.30 pm) is a twin joy because I love both Palin and the Himalayas. It is a series that finds beauty in everything from the soaring peaks of Pakistan to the ship metal junkyards of Bangladesh. Palin is never patronising, and is often a dork - perfect qualities in a traveller. As often as not it is the Indians and Tibetans laughing at him rather than the other way round. When it is the locals that are the providing the humour, Palin keeps a straight face, as he has to this evening in 'A Passage to India', when he attends a performance of an English suburban comedy at the Gaiety Theatre in Simla. He is introduced to an audience that has clearly never heard of him, as 'Michael Plain'. Occasionally Palin's attempts at humour fall deep into a cultural abyss, but even that can result in unusual pleasures, and in the final episode, 'Bhutan to the Bay of Bengal', when asked to sing a song to an ancient local, he launches into 'I'm a lumberjack'. It is received with polite bemusement.

The flavour of this series is quite different to his last series, Sahara, in part because Palin seems much more physically challenged by this journey. Next week, in 'Everest to Annapurna,' he undertakes a 10-day trek up to the thirteen and a half thousand feet base camp of Annapurna and his exhaustion - partly a result of altitude - becomes so profound there is real doubt he will complete the trip. Even walking through 50-degree heat in the Sahara did not seem to reduce him so completely.

Tonight's episode, which takes us to Kashmir and Dharamasala, brought many travel memories flooding back to me, and a renewed admiration for Palin's ability to find ways of showing places that are unpredictable. In Dharamsala Palin learns he was an elephant in a previous life, a fact the Dalai Lama finds unsurprising - elephants are curious, just like television reporters and travellers, he points out. Elephant lovers will have the chance to see their favourite beast in many different guises in this series, including playing soccer in North East India. In the fifth episode Palin bathes an elephant and remarks that it is 'a rare and wonderful privilege to make an elephant happy.'

In two weeks Palin goes to 'The Roof Of The World', Tibet, and it was here he disappointed me slightly, painting a far rosier picture of Chinese occupation than I understand to be the case - though as he himself points out to have got camera crews into Tibet is an achievement in itself and the archival footage incorporated certainly suggests there is more going on that they were able to show. Later that episode the time spent with nomads is felt by Palin, and by us, to be precious beyond words. Up there on the Tibetan plateau the lives of those Manhattan girls sure feel a long, long way away.