Dangerous Roads

  1. Episode
  2. Description
Episode 1

Comedienne Sue Perkins and adventurer Charley Boorman travel to the Dalton Highway in Alaska – a dirt track built as a supply road to support the Trans-Alaska pipeline road in the 1970s. Highway maintenance is a full time job here with avalanche units operating throughout the year. The pair must make friends with the hardcore truckers for whom the highway is home.

The rules of the road are: drive with headlights on at all times, don’t exceed 50mph, and when an 18-wheel truck comes thundering down the rollercoaster towards you, get out of the way!

Episode 2

Comedians Rhod Gilbert and Greg Davies travel through the mountainous, landlocked nation of Nepal.

Starting from the country’s chaotic border with India, they travel across more than a thousand kilometres of the country’s most important roads, from highways that maintain its cities to freshly-dug dirt tracks connecting isolated communities to the rest of the country for the first time. There are uplifting stories throughout, but it’s a journey that’s fraught with danger. Besides having one of the world’s highest rates of road traffic accidents, floods and landslides are an everyday occurrence, blocking traffic for days on end and claiming dozens of lives every month. After days of swerving overloaded buses, digging their way out of mud and clinging to crumbling mountain roads, disaster strikes within sight of their final destination.

Episode 3

Ben Fogle and Hugh Dennis travel from one of the highest points of the Peruvian Andes to the depths of Peru’s Amazon jungle, along roads built to realise man’s unceasing dream of unleashing – and exploiting – the potential of the mighty Amazon. It’s a rollercoaster ride of a thousand foot drops and hairpin bends on one lane dirt roads, stretching from the roughest reaches of the Andes high above the clouds to the muddy, humid jungle trails of the Amazon. It’s one of the most deprived regions of Peru, and among its most isolated.

The recent arrival of the roads has connected countless isolated communities to the outside world for the first time. Ben and Hugh’s journey unlocks the secrets of one of the planet’s most secretive regions.