Inside Himalaya: The Journey

click here for more details, find new or used items	Basil Pao Our price £22.99 (£30.00) New from £5.61 Used from £5.04 Pages: 200 (Hardcover) ISBN: 0297843702 Pub: Weidenfeld Nicolson Illustrated Pub date: 2004-09-27 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 170048

Reader Reviews:

Beautiful and interesting photographs from the incredible Himalayan mountains (10/10 people found this helpful)

"Inside Himalaya" is a beautiful coffee table style book. It is large format and hardcover and printed on glossy paper. There is very little text in this book, just a 2-page introduction by Michael Palin, a 3-page postscript by Basil Pao and a short caption for each of the 300 pictures.

The pictures are wonderful. Some of the best are presented as impressive 2-page spreads, and most of the pictures feature the local people in some way or another. Landscapes may be beautiful but people are what makes life really interesting.

Highly recommended for anyone who appreciates beautiful photographs and/or is interested in the Himalayan region of the world.

For those who might be interested, I'll provide some background information:

It all started in 1988 with the BBC TV program "Around the World in 80 Days". Michael Palin was the "presenter" who had to do the trip, and even though we know that a film crew was also involved we focus on Michael Palin alone.

That program was followed up by five others: "Pole to Pole" (1991), "Full Circle" (1997), "Hemingway Adventure" (1999), "Sahara" (2001) and "Himalaya" (2004). Each TV program was a great hit, and I can recommend them all. (They are all available on DVD in the UK, and there is a great box set containing all of them.)

During the "Around the World in 80 Days" trip a relatively unknown Hong Kong born photographer joined the film crew on the section from Hong Kong to Shanghai. Basil Pao was a friend of Michael Palin's, and he took such great pictures during that stretch of the "Around the World in 80 Days" trip that he was invited to be the full-time stills photographer on "Pole to Pole", and then on all of the subsequent trips.

Following each of the six trips Michael Palin wrote a book that described the trip as he experienced it. Each of these six books is richly illustrated with beautiful pictures from the trip. For the last five books the pictures were taken exclusively by Basil Pao, while for the first book the pictures were from a variety of sources, in addition to Basil Pao's pictures for the Hong Kong to Shanghai stretch.

I also recommend all of these books by Michael Palin.

For three of the six Michael Palin trips there exists a second book, a book based almost exclusively on the pictures of Basil Pao. These three books are "Pole to Pole - The Photographs", "Inside Sahara" and "Inside Himalaya" (this book).

These three books by Basil Pao should not to be confused with the six better known books written by Michael Palin. In the six Michael Palin books the text is primary and the pictures secondary, while in the three Basil Pao books the photographs are primary and the text is very secondary or almost non-existent.

Rennie Petersen

Stunning photography from some wild places (13/13 people found this helpful)

I am a great fan of Michael Palin's adventurous journeys both on TV and in book form, but this book, based on his journey to the Himalaya's, contains as a real showpiece, some of Basil Pao's fantastic stills shots. Stunningly beautiful scenery, exotic locations and fabulous images of the indigenous people that they met.
It is the sort of book that you can pick up and look at many times and admire the tenacity of Basil and the rest of the crew to bring us such an amazing insight into such inhospitable areas.
Truly magical!

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