Joanna Lumley's Nile

The epic river journey brings the actress to Khartoum, where she watches whirling dervishes practising their devotional dancing and experiences a Sudanese beauty treatment that makes use of wood smoke. She then takes a short diversion into Ethiopia's Simien Mountains to meet an unusual group of Olympic hopefuls training in the thin air of the highlands

The actress follows the river into the deserts of Northern Sudan, where she meets the survivor of a crocodile attack and goes in search of the creature. She is then introduced to the treasures of Nubia, an ancient kingdom of Africa ruled by the little-known Black Pharaohs, before visiting Sudan's capital city Khartoum, where she talks to nomads who live in the remote sub-Saharan desert.

She begins her adventure on a fishing boat on Egypt's coast, where the Nile spills into the Mediterranean, before capturing the spirit of Agatha Christie in Cairo and enjoying a Nile cruise. She also travels along the river by train, road and felucca sailing boat, and ends the first part of her trip in Aswan, a town the Victorians described as being on the edge of civilisation.