Travel

Great Road Journeys

John Silby

Bolivia’s Yungas region boasts two of the most dangerous roads in the world. All I can say about the one in this video, Yungas Road, or Death Road, is “I’m glad it’s them and not me!” Warning: viewing the video full-screen will give you better idea of the danger… but might give you acrophobia!

The uploader’s notes (as translated by Google) read, “Through Yungas, DEATH ROAD, The world’s most dangerous road. By one estimate, two vehicles crashed a month and 200 to 300 travellers were killed yearly along the road. That is why you will find numerous roadside crosses marking the accident sites.” The “todesstrasse” in the video title means “death road”.

Death Road was featured on the BBC’s The World’s Most Dangerous Roads, with Phill Jupitus and Marcus Brigstocke.

Around the world by… armchair 1

John Silby

I have no idea why, but from a young age I’ve always been interested in where other people live. When I was a kid I loved watching films or seeing photos of peoples’ travels – no matter where in the world. It’s a long time since I was a kid, but I still have that childhood curiosity about other places. I haven’t done much real roaming, so most of my exploring has been as an armchair traveller.

Holiday videos usually focus on the traveller’s point of view. This one focuses on the means of travel – in this case the VIA Canadian train on a small part of its journey across Canada. The complete trip from Vancouver to Toronto takes four days; this part, from Kamloops in British Columbia to Jasper in Alberta, takes a few hours. The cameraman is The Old Railfan (aka Hans-Joerg Mueller, who claims he was “born March 1945; railfan since 1947”) and he does a superb job. Although his interest is mostly the train, he also manages to make a very nice travel documentary. He says in his uploader’s comments, “This is as good as it gets! A beautiful sunny day and enough time to get to the pre-selected shooting locations to catch a twenty-one car Canadian in typical landscape through British Columbia into Alberta.” H-J has numerous videos on Youtube and Vimeo.

This map shows the location of Kamloops and Jasper. The distance between the two is about 450km (or about five hours) by road, so H-J had a busy day!


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