Journeys to the Ends of the Earth is a 1999 television series commissioned by the Discovery Channel. Its two year production made it the most expensive adventure travel series ever commissioned in Australia. The series was co-produced by David Adams. It was nominated for Best Documentary Series by the Australian Logie Awards.
Seasons & Episode
Adams travels across the simmering heat of the Sahara with a Tuareg caravan, haggles for a pillar of salt and skis down the biggest sand dune in the world. This is the Land of Fear.
Libya is Africa’s last great unknown. A vast desert country veiled from the West by fear, prejudice and misunderstanding. Once it was home to the richest cities in Africa. The headquarters for the African empires of Rome & Greece. Now it is reviled as “a desert with a dictator in it”. David Adams follows in the wheel tracks of Ancient Rome’s “chariots of fire” - the first wheeled vehicles to explore the Sahara - and discovers a little-known land of exotic brilliance, ancient cities & forbidding deserts.
The battered dhow carves its passage though the tourmaline waters of the South Indian Ocean. Its patched lateen sail fat with monsoon wind, the salt air fragrant with cloves. Barely heard at first, the faint cry of a muezzin crackles through the dawn’s early light. Heads turn to the horizon. The turbaned helmsman eases off the sailrope & utters just one magical word.... Zanzibar. Zanzibar. The Spice Island. A real world Shangri-la. The island at the end of the earth. David Adams sails south in search of the lost world of Arab seafarer.