Best travel documentaries: name them

Dostoevsky

I started with hope watching Michael Palin's collection on UPC On Demand. I thought they'd be brilliant, but they weren't. For instance, he visited this group in the mountains of Eastern Europe who were dancing around a circle. About 8 minutes on them. Interesting, but not helpful for somebody who's interested in visiting the country.

What I'm looking for is a sort of 'Top 10" things to do/places to see in a country or city. At the moment, I'm looking for a Top 10 for south-east Asia. But in the future I expect I'll be looking for many other places.

What are the best travel documentaries that you've seen?

Columbia

Some travel documentaries are intended to be informational (Globe Trekker, for example), whilst others just want to tell a story or enlighten people. Palin's stuff falls into the latter category. TV studios prefer this kind of documentary, as it becomes dated less quickly.

Check out Departures. The two hosts are sometimes a little laddish and irritating, but mostly pretty fun to watch. They have some episodes on Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam as far as I remember. They also get into some really out-of-the-way places like Antarctica, Northern Canada, and Ascension Island. The documentaries are beautifully shot too (in my opinion), and the cameraman, Andre, really knows how to capture a landscape.

My other favourite is BBC's Holidays in the Dangerzone. It's more difficult to find, and you may not be interested in it (not a huge amount of practical information, focusses on relatively unknown places), but it's quite good, and some of the hosts (Simon Reeve in particular) are very journalistic and really find interesting things about the places they visit. Each season has a different title, my favourite was Places That Don't Exist, hosted by Simon Reeve. Reeve has a bunch of interesting travel series.

If you're purely interested in documentaries that are more guide-like, I think Globe Trekker pretty much has that sewn up, although I find their formula a little tired at this point.

Yamanoto

Dan Cruikshank's 'Around the World in 80 Treasures' for the BBC is a great watch imo.

Australasia & the Indian sub-continent are covered in episodes 3, 4 & 5.

Around the World in 80 Treasures is a 10 episode art and travel documentary series by the BBC, presented by Dan Cruickshank, and originally aired in February, March, and April 2005. The title is a reference to Around the World in Eighty Days, the classic adventure novel by Jules Verne.

In this series, Cruickshank takes a five-month world tour visiting his choices of the eighty greatest man-made treasures, including buildings and artifacts. His tour takes him through 34 countries and 6 of the 7 continents (he does not visit Antarctica). He did not visit Iraq due to the dangerous state of the country at the time.

In addition to seeing some of the world's greatest treasures, Cruickshank tries many different kinds of food including testicle, brain, and insects. His means of transportation included airplanes, trains, camel, donkey, foot, bicycle, scooter, hang glider, and boats.

A tie-in book of the same title was also published, written as a journal during the trip and containing much behind-the-scenes detail on the making of the programme in addition to Cruikshank's reflections on the treasures themselves.

Cruickshank's fondness of architecture is evident, with many of his chosen treasures being buildings or other man-made structures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N3kkw4aeME

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBptpRRqqpw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeMY1KI_d9E

Stinicker

Michael Palin's around the World in 80 days was very good I think, I actually am a big fan of his materials. Trabant Trek was a very good documentary too.