History Channel has shown us what perils and victories can be found in the cold of Alaska for truckers brave and skilled enough to drive the seemingly impossible roads and conditions there. The Himalayas comes next for a few of those truckers looking to prove their the best but when they arrive to face an inevitable culture clash they find that maneuvering the deadly roads to their destination is only the tip of the iceberg. History Channel may have outdone themselves with this show in regards to intense edge of your seat panic and given us a real reason to stand up and cheer for the truckers who somehow manage to pull off the terrifying.

Fact number one. Semi-trucks here in the states are built around a steel cab which is designed to protect a driver in the case of a collision. The rigs found in India (the Tata 1613), not so much. The only thing protecting the driver from certain death in a head on collision is a cab made out of wood. Yeah, you read that right. WOOD! As insane as that sounds there are several changes to the drivers rigs that they’ll have to master if their going to make the perilous journey. Now some facts about the roads they’ll be driving. Someone dies every four and a half minutes on these roads and last year 180,000 people died in total. The odds seem exceptionally stacked against the three drivers. So stacked only two of them will make it on their first day.

Seriously one of the most intense shows to come out of the History Channel camp in awhile. Just getting out of Delhi, the groups point of origin, is an adventure itself but when they hit those mountain roads the show becomes a thriller, a comedy, and a horror film all rolled into one. IRT fans will recognize Rick Yemm immediately by his bright blue Mohawk but even his usual persona is out of its elements in the Himalaya’s as he narrowly escapes collisions with cars, motorcycles, and buses all the while voicing his frustrations to his Spotter Abdul, nicknamed by Rick himself,  Boyo. Its hard not to look at Rick as the Ugly American…err…Canadian, shouting at his native Spotter how “Everyone in this country drives like an idiot”. Its all frustration, understandably, but not the best representation for a foreign driver. Lisa Kelly’s experience may be the most comical, being a female truck driver in a place where not many females are, if any, as she collects roadside fans who run alongside her truck to snap off pictures of her. While this episode is mostly the Rick Yemm show it’s a better showcase for the hardships of the drivers in rigs where everything is the opposite or completely different then what their used to driving. Finally the veteran driver Alex Debogorski is probably the most interesting driver of the three who suffers from the greatest culture clash, in my opinion. All will face difficult problems, stare into the abyss of 1,300 foot falls, and face off against new dangerous elements of their trade and I’m not just talking the weather. In the end though I just have to ask myself weather or not Stephen King sort of called this in his book The Running Man (under his pen name Richard Bachman) where society has taken to watching reality television that has the prospect of a human life coming to an end all in the name of entertainment. As always final judgment is yours. Enjoy.