SHORT EXTRACT FROM THE BOOK

'There is no ceremony or fanfare to mark our launch, no champagne, flags or bunting, but I say a few words wishing us a safe journey, almost a traveller’s prayer. We finish our picnic, toss a few crusts to the gulls circling outside and start the engines. Here we go. Deep breaths. We are off.'Golden sand dunes run right down to the sea just a few miles from the Tropic of Capricorn, and the only way of crossing them is to head inland a few hundred metres and go over the top, one by one. Our drivers, Doug and Jacques, both originally from South Africa, are old hands at travelling through this remote corner of the world, but I still find the dunes intimidating. Initially they rise gently and the Toyota engines purr. Gradually the height increases and the slopes become frighteningly steep, soon they begin to soar. I grip my seat and our engines scream as we battle our way up a dune hill hundreds of metres above sea level.'We reach the top, balance precariously on the sandy crest and the Namib Desert unfolds before my eyes. I gaze in awe. The landscape of the desert, running 2,000 kilometres from South Africa to Angola, is simply out of this world. Mountainous glowing dunes rise from the very edge of the deep blue Atlantic. Inland, endless ripples of sand snake into the empty distance. I laugh out loud. Any lurking doubts I have about this Capricorn journey evaporate instantly. From the very beginning this random line has already brought me somewhere ethereally beautiful, somewhere remote I would never normally be able to visit.'

In this exciting new book and TV series, Simon Reeve finds giant rats detecting landmines and is forced to eat penis soup by Madagascan royalty. Simon meets miners scrabbling for gems in dark, dangerous tunnels and the British anthropologist fighting to save forest communities in South America. He goes hunting with a legendary tribe of former cannibals, struggles the equivalent of half-way up Everest, survives on ‘piss pills’ and coca leaves, eats dried caterpillars, grilled llama, sheep eyes, and searches for wild honey in the forests of northern Argentina.

While following Capricorn Simon is surrounded by a pack of hungry cheetahs, finds flamingoes 4km up in the Andes, a pregnant humpback whale off Australia, lemurs in Madagascar and elephants under threat of culling in southern Africa. He witnesses the age-old ceremony that sparks the Holy Fire of the Herero tribe, discovers desperate Zimbabweans jumping razor wire to get into South Africa, meets a traditional healer now becoming part of the Botswanan NHS and is taught to shoot an AK-47 by Afrikaaner farmers.

Simon visits a diamond mine described as the most lucrative hole on the planet, but discovers villagers living in poverty next to luxury hotels, squalor in the shadow of Uluru (Ayers Rock) and bleached coral on the Great Barrier Reef. He meets the French ‘Catman’ saving cheetahs in Namibia, Chinese businessmen making their fortune in Africa, prostitutes ravaged by AIDS and surviving Bushmen who live deep inside the Kalahari desert alongside their lion ‘cousins’.

Next to the worst asbestos-contaminated site in the world Simon finds a devoted couple refusing to leave their home. He travels along Capricorn by van, car, train, boat, horseback, helicopter, plane, and roars through the Australian Outback in a 50-metre-long $1m road train. Simon learns how ‘tavy’ has destroyed the forests of Madagascar, and visits the Great Barrier Reef, the Kruger National Park, and the Iguaçu falls, the most impressive waterfalls in the world.

Silver Award winner at the Wanderlust Travel Awards

This Capricorn journey starts in Namibia, and takes viewers through Botswana, South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, Western Australia, the Northern Territory, Queensland, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.

Daily Telegraph: “like all the best travellers, Reeve carries out his investigations with infectious relish, and in the realisation that trying to understand the country you’re in is not just fascinating, but also hugely enjoyable.”

Radio Times: “moving stories and remarkable sights”

Time Out: “amusing, disturbing and fascinating…engaging and informative”The Sun: “an epic quest…extraordinary stories”

Daily Mirror: “Epic of Capricorn...fun, fascinating and frightening...Simon Reeve would give even Phileas Fogg a run for his money”

Wanderlust travel magazine: “a romping good travelogue”

PRESS

• Capricorn marks the southern border of the Tropics region of the planet, because it is the most southerly point at which the sun can appear to be overhead (during the winter & summer solstice).

• The tropical conditions of the tropics have expanded towards the poles by more than 170 miles over the past 25 years. Scientists expected this, but only under an “extreme” climate change scenario, and only by 2100.

• The tropics are mercilessly exposed to the furnace at the heart of our solar system, the region receives a higher dose of the Sun’s energy than the rest of the planet. It is simultaneously the attraction of the tropics to outsiders, and the cause of much of the human suffering in the region.

• 75.67% of the Tropic Capricorn passes over sea – mostly the Pacific Ocean. Of the 24.33% that covers land, the country with by far the biggest section is Australia at 2,350 miles.

• Over a 41,000 year period Capricorn crawls around in a band between roughly 22.5 and 24.5 degrees. In the year 2000 the line was at 23° 26’ 21.448’’. By 19/11/07 it had moved to 23° 26’ 17.76’’ (information courtesy of the team at The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World).

• Because Capricorn moves by tiny amounts the length of the line also varies. But on 19/11/07 Capricorn was 36,748,889.697 metres long, or 36,749 km (22,835 miles).

FACTS