Chris Tarrant: Extreme Railways

This week Chris Tarrant is in South East Asia to experience two very different railways. From Bangkok in Thailand to Mandalay in Myanmar, Chris's extreme railway journey takes him nearly two thousand miles through some extraordinary places, rich in history and culture as well as stunning scenery… on a series of extreme trains that will push his love of travelling by rail to the limits.

In this episode, Chris Tarrant attempts to cross the Andes by train. From the coast of Chile he must traverse some of the highest, driest and most inhospitable environments on the planet, hitch rides on some very unusual trains and deal with altitude sickness at over 4000 metres to reach the capital of Bolivia, Sucre.

In this episode, Chris Tarrant heads to Russia to travel on the most northerly railway line in the World which crosses Siberia's Yamal Peninsular deep into the Arctic Circle.

In this episode, Chris travels the entire length of Cuba from Havana to Guantanamo Bay. He's amazed to discover the island has over 4000 kilometres of railway, but less surprised to discover that, cut off for so long from the outside world, they struggle to maintain them. This is not going to be a smooth ride!

In this episode, Chris takes a wintry journey across Japan in a quest to find out exactly why the Japanese are so passionate about their railways and so determined to make them the best in the world. From some of the fastest to some of the strangest, some of the oldest to some of the wildest, Chris rides an amazing variety of trains in this railway winter wonderland.

In this episode, Chris crosses about two-thirds of Canada from a town near Toronto to Vancouver. He's tracing the path of the Canadian Pacific Railway from first spike to last and telling the story of how the building of this railway unified Canada as the country we know today.